Restoring a Village: Bonus Week, or: A Slipping Release

[h2]tl;dr[/h2]
A progression-blocking bug was discovered in the final stages of QA. To prevent a repeat of v1.0's troubled release, and to ensure v1.1 is the proper relaunch Village Monsters deserves, I am giving myself a - *ahem* - bonus week to fix and re-test.

The new release date is November 6th. That is unfortunately outside the Spooky Window, but I'm hoping it's close enough to be considered Spooky Adjacent.

Previous Restoring a Villages: Week 0, Week 1, Week 2, Weeks 3 & 4



[h2]Scorpion's Frog[/h2]

Here's the full situation.

A few weeks back I discovered a progression-blocking bug in the late game. It was one of those bugs that I couldn't quite replicate, but I fixed what I thought was the cause.

However, I ran into the same problem again on Saturday during my final wrap up, and this time I could reproduce it reliably. The good news is that I can fix it more easily now.

It is my upmost priority for v1.1 to be as polished as possible. Finding a major bug like this so close to release has made me exceptionally concerned that there are others I've yet to squash, including bugs that may crop up as a result of the fix (which is more common than you'd think).

I am delaying the release of v1.1 by exactly one week. This'll give me time to fix the blocker bug (among other smaller bugs discovered during QA), thoroughly test the fix, and then repeat my typical before-release testing.

I'm trying to focus on the silver lining, which is that I get another week of more thorough testing and polish. That is why I am choosing to call this a Bonus Week.



[h2]Haha, isn't this the --[/h2]

I know. I know.

There's no sugarcoating it: this really sucks. I guess I should have seen it coming given what this release is and my own history, but I still hate that it came to this. I said last week that I was finally confident, only to find my foot squarely in my mouth yet again.

One consistent bit of feedback I received after my hiatus was that people much preferred frequent (and well communicated) delays rather than waiting on patches. Obviously it shouldn't have come to this in the first place, but given the situation a delay seems like the best and only way forward.

Thank you for your understanding, and I'll see you all again next week.