Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.
December 8th, 2022 will mark our game's first year on Steam Early Access. Thus, I think it's time for this year's annual report. So, please take a seat. Let's start.
First, some data.
Between December 8th, 2021, and today, more than 300 updates have been released.
That makes more than 570 updates in total.
We successfully broke Steam's forum as it can only display 300 entries.
We got about 50 developer diaries, at least one for every week.
The Incomplete Chronicle has grown to more than 783KB
We have finished the main story in Queensmouth and are now in the Grand Library in a doomed city located in Egypt.
We currently have 14 fully 3D animated cut scenes, including 2 of them for some people's naughty ideas in their minds. Just you know, it's not a good idea to have sex with a succubus. My condolences if you insist you want to do that. On the good side, you will get another bad ending achievement.
Steam Workshop is also a perfect match for our powerful mod system. We even brought back the past iteration of our game in the form of the mods of our current iteration. The legacy from our past shall never be lost. And, you can even find anti-censor mods in the workshop. Not just to anti-censor sexy cut scenes but also including anti-censor of China. We will not forget what happened during the lockdown. But, to not risk the game itself getting censored, for now, it appears in the form of a mod. :)
Based on Steam data, the current "Average time played" is 4 hours 43 minutes with 4% of players having played more than 20 hours. I hope everyone is having fun in this strange world that mirrors our reality.
We also got an entire wiki just for the documentary. https://neolithia.fandom.com/wiki/NEOLITHIA_Wiki
The game reached its 18th anniversary this year and turned into an adult. :D
This is an interesting year.
I believe we are at a crossroads in human history once again. Whenever we are facing such a situation it calls all of us to action.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1519140/view/3119310025773834317
Thus, a lot of development efforts are reallocated in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine since February. Glory to heroes!
In order to make sure people in China can know what is happening in Ukraine. The game itself becomes media, carrying my daily Ukraine news, penetrating the Great Firewall. The previous plan of retiring the demo version after Queensmouth's main story is discarded. It's still updated fully in sync with the full game version so that people can acquire the news from Ukraine freely with Steam's auto update to bypass the censorship. The information is embedded in the game itself. As long as the game stands, the information shall flow. We now have about 260 entries in our game, one for each day, to the end.
It can certainly hurt the game's income on Steam. Not just because we are having a totally free demo version of the game that almost has all functions of the main game (except things not allowed by Steam, such as achievements and Steam Workshop), but I also saw a few people delete this game from their wishlist or just refund the game after I took my stance to fully support Ukraine. They said we shall not pick sides in politics. They said they hate America so they support Russia, as a result, they are now also boycotting our game. I don't care what they said. Because their voices don't speak for the rest of us. They made their choice and so shall we. You and I know the success of our game is not measured by how much money we make from it. You and I know when great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits, not animals. You and I know there's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. You and I will stand with Ukraine to the end.
This is my best investment for the year 2022. This time I am not talking about profit as someone who can survive even in the worst economic environment in the stock market. This time we go beyond that for the decency of being human.
This is also the year we faced the lockdown in China.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1519140/view/3202629790208223587
Things may get a bit better now. But, remember those people who perished in such cruelty.
It's upon us, those who are still alive to carry on their memories.
Along the road of our everlasting game updates, not every one of us made it to this day. Maybe even ourselves, even this game means nothing at the cosmic scale. We are doomed to the void and leave nothing behind one day.
Even those we once thought immortal can pass away this year.
But, at least for now. We are still standing. The game is still updating.
I will make it to the end. Either the end of this epic story or the end of mine.
Ladies, gentlemen, and people whose awesomeness is beyond the definition of gender, let's toast for our next journey. A sale to celebrate our unique tradition will soon follow.
We have more content updates for this week. But, it seems some people are so horrified to even see a white paper right now.
Let us keep them in their blessed ignorance, as one day they may learn what is written on those papers. More details can be found in our daily updates log for this week. Have fun! :D
Today's changelog:
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[Liu]You can now interact with the bookshelves in the Book Store
[Liu]Added a new document on the bookshelves in the Book Store.
