A Gaze into the Future - I

I'm going to write these "Gazes" occasionally, most likely one per month, but at least for now, without a specific deadline date ^^ The Gazes will cover my plans, thoughts, some data etc, regarding Hunt'n'Snare.

Hunt'n'Snare launched 29th of March (one day before my birthday, I forgot to time the launch xD) with a small Showroom demo. Huge portion of time (of the nearly two weeks) since has been spent of polishing and there's still quite a bit I want to refine before properly adding new features, like full acts, sound effects, and so forth.

Thus far 99% of everything you see or experience is made by me solo, some of the animations are by Hareress and in future more and more will be delegated to them. I will keep doing patterns myself, at least for now, because I'm too poor to buy another license for Substance Painter 2... x) Ferred's case is still slightly unknown, they're still busy with other projects but hoping to clear schedule soon! The plan is that I would keep my programming focus on the Showroom and the animation system, and Ferred would tackle the basic gameplay.

Currently the build releasing plan is to make a new Version (e.g. r001 v1, v2, v3 etc) every 1-1.5 weeks with couple of more animations and/or patterns each, and bunch of polish, fixes, and new things for the Showroom, and while making versions, we would be working on proper releases too. Current plan is to have a bigger Release (e.g. r001, r002 etc) each month and those would focus more on the main gameplay than content. 

Thus far we've released 2 versions (excluding the initial release!) that have added 3 animations and 3 patterns, POV camera, some slight scene customization options, and a bunch animation polish. The plan is to have r002 out by the end of the month or early next month, but no solid promises yet. The r002 will have first island gameplay demo, primarily ability to bring preset characters around and sexplore locations ^^

I have been very happy with the reception so far; the general comments have been stellar (I was really nervous when I released the first build x3), I've gotten very nice feedback and basic feature suggestions (e.g. POV, scaling gui for smaller resolutions) and good bug reports. The amount of downloads has been really nice I think! 944 downloads in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS <3 Generally 200 downloads in the first day, of which majority are Windows, with OSX and Linux sharing 10% of the total. We're currently at 5 patrons (Love you all!!) which isn't a massive amount of course, but I'm definitely happy for every single one :3 I know there isn't a huge amount of content yet, none of the basic gameplay is in, and this is pretty much the only project you know me for, so you all took a risk and jumped the "early boat" and I am very very very grateful for that show of trust. If there's anything specific you'd like to see, do let me know! Anything that benefits everyone as a whole, is definitely worth doing (like POV cameras) ^^

As for marketing, I haven't done much in terms of it thus far. I only tweet on Twitter and push content FurAffinity. My idea is to start proper marketing push after r002 v1 release, by posting builds on various forums that generally like developers showcasing their work, and start posting gifs (as I do on FurAffinity) on other gallery sites.

With r002 I will most likely start doing Patron builds too. There will still be public builds of course, but they'll be updated less frequently. E.g. couple of builds behind from a Patron build. Not sure which setup I'll go with. I don't want to "kill" public enjoyment or content progress, but I need to have some incentive for players to become Patrons and reward for those who are already supporting ^^

If you have any questions or things on your mind, shoot away! This is my first "Gaze" and I probably didn't cover everything that people would want to know. Feedback is more than welcome.

Thank you for reading :3

Ruffleneck