Update

Alright I'm back! After starting a new job, flying across the country for a week and learning all sorts of new things, I finally managed to get some time to work on Space Duck again. After a bit of a push late last night, I've managed to put out a demo build on Itch.io and Steam. Ready for "press" to get their hands on it this morning. Supposedly next fest is open to the press at 10 AM PDT today. Here's hoping someone looks at what I've built and has anything nice or otherwise to say about it.

Admittedly I didn't get as much packed in here as I was hoping, and some things are still a little rough (looking at you settings menu...). But all in all I got close to my goals here. There's 9 levels, 3 unique items and 3 unique obstacles to over come. I really do think the demo is a good representation of the game I'm building - and hopefully folks can look past the rough edges and enjoy it. That said, if you're reading this, and you do find bugs... I want to hear about it. That email link at the bottom of the web site isn't just for looks.

Story Time: Demo!!

Alright - building a demo is hard. Making games is hard. There's a lot of attention to detail that gets overlooked until the final hour. That said - I sort of set out on this journey with that being the intention. Don't perfect the thing too soon. I know this isn't as polished as it could be, but I think its a fun little experience and not a bad first stab as a solo dev.

There are 9 total levels, and a run consists of 3 of those 9. As you play and finish levels, they get taken out of the pool, forcing you to play the rest of the content. I'm not set on that choice, but it seemed like a good way to ensure folks saw the entire game and not just zipped through the first few levels.

As you progress you can unlock 3 different pieces of equipment. A jump boost, which I've discussed at length in an earlier blog post, a remote control to assist with those tricky disappearing blocks, and a dash boost. You can only equip 2 of these 3 at any point in time which, once the full game is out, will make for some hard choices in how to prep for your run. Unlocking the items themselves is also tricky. You'll have to take a more difficult path to reach them, which risks your entire run! So long as you finish the level you get to keep your equipment, hopefully making the next run easier.

I've primarily been testing this on desktop and my steam deck and it seems to run well on both. I'm still astounded at how well this runs on the steam deck. That's a huge win to me.

This was a pretty big effort to get this far and I'm really looking forward to getting real feedback from people as they get their hands on it.

Sign Off

That's it for this week. My goal for the week is to finish the rest of the 15 levels I intended to put in the demo. Maybe I can get them added before Next Fest officially starts for the public.

Thanks again for reading and following along!

Lee