February Thoughts and OoC v0.5.0

Hey there wonderful supporters!  

I hope you are having a delightful Friday so far! I'm reaching out for two major reasons. 

First of all, I desire to build on this community in greater ways. I built the Patreon with the intent of doing more with it, but nothing has quite felt right as an idea yet. I've thought about more technical blog posts, or deeper dives on OoC's systems, but I'm not sure if that will be interesting content. Which has led me to reaching out to you folks! Is there something you'd like to see more out of this OoC and its development? I'm curious if there is a community desire for something more. Its also a balance since I don't want to do something that takes too much focus away from the game, and I believe that that is also true for you, but ya I'm curious!  

At the very least, I intend to write more posts like these just talking to you, being transparent, and getting feedback.  

Second, I plan on releasing this next version early access, to you, by the end of the month. I'm not sure if it'll be finished, but its been in the cooker for long enough, and I tend to get perfectionistic about these things. I've got a lot of fire underneath me right now and I think I will have most of what I want to have in, in. That and having you guys play it will help me a lot in terms of balance of feel.  

In addition, this early access release will be a longer one than previous iterations. I want to work with you folks up to a month before I release it to the public. This is because my plan right now is a Steam launch! It's been a dream of mine to have a game on Steam, and I think this version will be the perfect gateway for it. There has been a total overhaul of a lot of the game's systems and progression, and while it feels familiar, it plays a lot differently. This version is also absurdly long right now. I recently replayed the game and I've currently clocked in 30+ hours on this run. And that's literally only getting back to the Lifestone.

Honestly, I have no idea if Steam is the right move, but its the one I'm desiring the most right now. I believe the game will do best with a low price tag, something like $3.99. I've debated launching it on Steam for free, but its feels more appealing as a player that the game has a cost, especially when free games imply it has in-app-purchases.   

I'm also still thinking about releasing the browser version for free a month after the Steam release, but I have no idea. I'm going to take this one step at a time.  

So ya, let me know what you think! I'm going to be head down working on the remaining content until the end of the month.  

And thank you all for your patience, contributions and presence. Its been a crazy journey for me and you all have helped make this possible, probably to a degree you don't realize. So again, thank you!  

-Marple