The Technician will be releasing in Early Access on Steam on December 11th, 2018!
A few questions and answers regarding the release:
Why Early Access?
I need feedback! The Technician been a fun solo project of mine for almost two years now and I’ve learned a lot, but I still need more player experiences and input in order to take it the rest of the way.
How long will it be in Early Access?
Hard to say; Early Access is weird these days. My original plan was to take a year off of work and learn to make a game. I was fortunate enough to be able to take two years, but now I’m headed back out into the real world to get a real job again. This means that development on The Technician will no longer get full-time attention, but I intend to keep making updates and changes in my spare time with the goal of having much more fully fleshed out game in 2019.
What’s missing now?
A full “1.0” release of The Technician will at the very least have more of the type of content that’s in the game now – more puzzles, more tools, more circuits, and more enemies. It should also have more fully featured in-game editing capabilities for players to make and share their own challenges. That being said, the direction the game takes may change drastically depending on the type of feedback I get from players during Early Access, so who knows!
What *does* is have, then?
As of this writing, the Early Access release contains about 20 puzzles that can be played individually or successively in a single environment (detailed in a previous dev post.) About half of these are simpler tutorial puzzles, with the rest being slightly more challenging problem-solving experiences. These include around a dozen unique circuit components, involve using a small handful (3-4) of technician “tools,” and feature a single enemy type.
How can I give you feedback on your game to tell you what I hate love and what I want to see more of?
Feel free to send all of your feedback, thoughts, ideas, or general ranting to support@dumbgame.company or post them on the Steam discussions page. Player feedback is critical right now, so I’ll be checking both frequently to decide what I need to work on next.
In Closing
It’s been fun working on a game for the past couple of years and I look forward to continuing to do more game experimentation in the future, regardless of where real adult-type employment takes me. I’ll still be posting occasional updates on the blog here, but for the most part they will revert back to ‘notes-to-self’ style posts that I use to remind myself what the hell I was thinking about last week when I decided to write whatever code I’m currently trying to fix. If you have a question or want to see a particular post about anything (game related or otherwise), feel free to reach out and let me know!