2021 Retrospective

Hey everyone,

with 2022 getting ready to get passed the baton, let us look back onto 2021, specifically the last nine months, from the Release in March up until now. After that we will take a little peek at what's still to come up to, and including, full release. Grab a cup of hot cocoa (or a cool beverage of choice for our friends down south), and let's start!




Ah yes, humble beginnings. Did you know we never made a Steam Announcement on Release Day? Fun times! We were quite humbled after the Early Access release, and completely overwhelmed! Given we did not have a Community Manager back then - Dom joined us back in June! - and did not at all think there would be as many players, and as much feedback, as there were, it threw a little spanner into the works. Thankfully, we have gotten a better handle on things since.

This first phase also was our longest, spanning from Release in later March pretty much exactly five months, until Gamescom in late August. We went from a rough outlook of our plans shortly after Release to a proper roadmap, with concrete plans and formulations (and a later Full Release delay), in late june. This was also the first bigger announcement after onboarding Dom, yay!

We mostly fixed bugs, added QoL changes and feature during this phase. Keyboard Rebinding, Cloud Save support, and localizations are a few of the bigger items here.




Summer Time! this phase kicked off with Gamescom in late August, where we released the Creative Update. This aptly named content update brought the much-requested Creative Mode to the game. Can you wrap your head around the fact this was just four months ago!? We also reworked the Main Menu to allow better visualization of Savegames, as this Update also brought the Savegame system with it, which allows you to have multiple concurrent Classic and/or Creative games going at once, and to convert your old Classic Mode games to Creative Mode (or just keep them around as Classic Mode Saves to revisit).

During Gamescom, we held a "Creative Contest" based on the, then active, Demo's tile Limitation. You guys liked it, and wanted to participate despite already owning the game! We liked the idea and this evolved into our Creative Showcase competitions.
We also held a live Q&A here on Steam, which was quite the set up! We enjoyed it a lot and we want to do another one at some point, probably closer around Full Release.



And just like that, it was Halloween! The most recent of the Content Updates, affectionately dubbed the Halloween Update, was released just in time for the big event.

This one was all about new Tiles, visual improvements, and usability! The big one was the Enchanted Biome, a mysterious biome. We also added new animals like everyone's favorite, the beaver, and a ruin which is a requirement in any Halloween update, no? Villages also got some glow-ups in the form of decoration: Bushes, creates, vases and, most importantly, pumpkins! Last, but certainly not least, we added partial lake tiles based on your requests - And we love them! We also upped our "Content Update Presentation Announcement" game quite a bit. Maybe even a little too much?

Our core dev team did not work much on Dorfromantik during this cycle, as they were busy writing their Master's Thesis, and outside of hotfixing the most egregious bugs, they pooled their energy completely into the upcoming Winter Update.
Dorfromantik was named "Best German Game" at the 2021 German Developer Awards in early December.
Lastly, we also launched the Serene City-Builder bundle with a bunch of our best friends:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/23122/Serene_CityBuilder_Bundle/




So, where does the journey go from here, you might ask. First of all, we released the Winter Update right before christmas! We are taking some well-needed, deserved vacation time right now. Once we are recharged, its all eyes on 1.0 - Maybe we'll put out some things earlier, be it as a potential 0.4.1, or maybe even as a surprise 0.5 - Either way we'll also need to work through lots of feedback, lots of suggestions, and even more plans of our own! There are still some unresolved items, like Controller Support and the long-awaited Undo Button waiting for us, after all.

And then, once we release version 1.0? Well, to be honest, everything post the initial hotfix phase is up in the air. Maybe we'll take some time off after an intense year. Maybe we'll work on more content. Maybe we'll look into those, erm, what do you folks call them again, "Port", thingies. Maybe we'll do something completely different for a bit, just to confuse you!
All jokes aside, we have some plans, and even more ideas, depending on the launch's reception. We also hope the world will finally be in a better place next summer, as we would like to meet you folks, and each other (That is, mostly our two remote co-workers, are they even real!?), in the flesh! No matter what 2022 holds for us, we would love to show off Dorfromantik in person at an event like Gamescom.
Here's to Hope!