The heat wave has finally passed in the UK; are you feeling cool or still boiling?! Put on your sunglasses and dive into the pool! Here comes our August dev update!

First of all, LUNA is going to Gamescom and PAX West!

Thanks to our convenient remote team structure, were able to attend both of these super-big game conventions this month! Beidi, our Art Director will be going to Cologne, Germany for Gamescom and Susie, our composer, will bring LUNA with her to PAX West in Seattle. Come and say hello if you are attending any of the events; wed love to chat with you and share the latest news and our inside story!(**)

Hows the game going?

We can now confidently say that we are 99.99999% of the way to reaching our biggest milestone yet! All sound FX for the gameplay have been completed and the cinematic sound effects will also be finished within the month. The game is almost ready. Hurrah!! No more extra graphics nor gameplay changes are needed and we are starting to push towards the testing stage. This month, were going to start a full-length internal test and debug round, firstly within the team. With the help of our publishers, we will then invite professional QA to help us with the formal bug reporting. Once we have the full build ready, we will need to test the SDK the game platform to make sure our players can download a playable build with all the achievement features.

What else are we working on at the moment?

Were working on the design of the hardcover copy of the upcoming official artbook. Some of our Kickstater backers will receive it as part of their chosen reward level and it will later be available for everyone to purchase as well. The hardcover book will be jam-packed with visuals and more on the background story of how the game was conceived and developed. Although we may release a digital version of the book at a later time, the physical book will showcase a tonne of exclusive content ONLY in the hardcover version!
This little bundle of fluff has almost become LUNA's unofficial mascot. We're definitely looking into the possibility of making merchandise of them as well. We will keep everyone updated! Go on, give us your own nickname for this furball?

Health issue

After almost three years of high-intensity workload and pressure, from early in the year it was clear that some of our team members health issues had started to become a cause for concern. A healthy body and mental state are always the foundation behind any work and unfortunately, we are no longer at the prime age to recover from a few sleepless nights and still be able to work at full strength. We knew from the beginning that health issues can be quite common among indie developers. Without health benefits, regular exercise and a very tight budget, health issues are easily ignored. Once health problems like constant tiredness or back pain begin to show, it is hard to recover. As a result, after doctors advice, we gave some of our team members a one month (July) break from game development and went for necessary treatment and rest. Now in August, we have resumed our normal workload but have consciously decided to take things a bit slower than before. In order to avoid a delay, were also trying to optimize our workload more efficiently than before, so we can deliver LUNA on schedule. (ov)

Last but not least, check out our brand new interview series on our YouTube Channel!

Its really our pleasure to share this behind the scenes development story with you. Were getting closer and closer to the final goal and we really couldn't achieve this much without you guys! Thank you all for supporting us all the time! Until next time, peace out!

[ 2019-08-12 10:26:10 CET ] [ Original post ]