Hey quddites!
As you probably know, we announced that Caves of Qud is finally releasing on Steam in its full glory later this year, after more than 15 years of work. But we havenât talked a ton about how we get there and whatâs left to do. So letâs get to it!
[h3]Very Soon: Spring Molting[/h3]
Weâve decided to put out one last pre-release feature arc on our Journey to 1.0. This update is already in private beta, coming to Patreon supporters extremely soon, and then going to open beta in early May & releasing a few weeks after that. Hereâs whatâs included:
- đ¨ALL NEW INTERFACEđ¨ The much-touted, transformational UI redesign is complete! Fully mouseable, fully gamepaddable, and gorgeous, but all carefully designed to maintain the essence of what makes Qud Qud.
- a refresh of the starting town of Joppa, with as much texture & lived-in feeling as the rest of the world
- hundreds of new sound and visual effects
- 40 new achievements
- several new narrative touches, big bug fixes, & performance improvements
Gallery of the gorgeous new interface:
https://imgur.com/a/slSlWbh[h3]Summer & Fall 2024: Secrets til Launch![/h3]
We donât want to spoil everything, but throughout summer and fall our central project will be to finish the main quest, and then add something to satisfy those who complete the entire narrative arc of Caves of Qud. Weâll add a more hands-on tutorial, too.
Thereâs also always tons of tâs to cross and iâs to dot when finishing a game: those last achievements, missing sounds and visual effects, more bugfixes, etc. All of these things will need to be built and tested behind closed doors, and theyâll keep us busy.
[h3]Late 2024: Launch[/h3]
No, we donât have a date, as itâs still awhile away and we donât want to be up against the marketing budget of the next Assassinâs Cry: Breath of the Duty (trademark pending).
Part of the lead-up to launch is preparing the game architecture so we can properly handle big meaty updates post-launch. Which begs the questionâŚ
[h3]What About After Launch?[/h3]
Yep! Weâre going to keep updating the game! Major content and system releases. Of course how many exactly does depend on the financial realities of sales, but no matter what, we have two big DLCs planned already. We honestly donât know yet if theyâll be paid purchases or free upgrades, but weâre thinking about the right approach.
Weâre also considering how to best support other platforms. Itâs not urgent or pressing, but we want to make sure we donât code ourselves into a corner if/when the time comes to maintain several control schemes, hardware, etc.
[h3]Back to Work![/h3]
Those are all the updates for now. Weâll shout-n-video when we have Spring Molting up on Steam for you, but hopefully this clears up any lingering confusion about what comes next. Feel free to keep asking us questions on the Discord; weâre watching out for âem.
Live and drink,
Tanya, Alexandra, Jason, and Brian
