THE Hat Devlog #3 | Concerning a new release.

Hey guys, Niflax here.

It's been a really long time since I gave any updates of the game, or even published an update. I am sorry for the time it took to develop the game. I'll make an apology later in the post explaining why I haven't released new updates. But for now, let's talk about the most important of them all, the game itself.

So as some of you may know, there is currently three updates of the game that exist. Those are all Alpha versions, and it's been like that for around 4 years now. Currently, I'm making the first Beta release of the game. It will be more complete with more content than it used to be. Unfortunately, there is some features that got removed because I didn't saw them fitting well with the gameplay. This includes the dash, and the diversity of weapons that were planned. They were too hard (from my experience) to include for a game like this and I didn't thought of how they could be used. However, I do have some plans to use another mechanic that I did think could work, but I won't give any spoilers concerning that.

As for the rest of the content for the Beta release, there is going to be a lot more of other things. Of course, new mechanics, better ennemies (they're much smarter now), and the first amount of level is now official. There's going to be 12 levels for this beta release, and some levels will even have their own bosses. Obviously, there's going to be more levels as the game updates, but I think 12 levels is a good amount for a beta.

Now here's a more interesting part, concerning the release of that first beta release. I have planned to work on 2 or 3 levels per day, everyday. So the update should come soon, I'm estimating within 1 or 2 months, or maybe this month if I'm working on it hard enough. Of course, that much levels aren't gonna take much time to make to release the update, but it's rather going to be adding stuff like the sounds and if I can manage to do so, musics.

So in short, the current plan is to release the beta of the game within 1 or 2 months with 12 levels.

Now concerning the wait time, I'm really sorry if it took that much time for me to give any updates on the game. I have been busy with a lot of things in my life and I wasn't able to keep up with making the game. The other reason is that I didn't originally planned to make any sort of deadline. I did make a Trello organizer before to help me with that, but I never used a deadline for a personal project like this, except during game jams. If I put myself a deadline, I'll be able to do much more with a project that I really love making. I looked at guides on how to increase productivity for making games, and one of my main mistakes is that I didn't knew in what direction the game would go, and I didn't gave myself any restriction so that made me go "well there's so much I can add, so I'll do it later" and never finished it. Again, I'm really sorry for the amount of time it took, but now I'm here again and ready to make games again.

So that concludes that Dev log of THE Hat Boy. I hope you have a good day, and I'll see you in the next Dev log, a bit before the beta release, so that I'll give more updates about what's coming up.

See y'all.