A letter to all our new fans

Hello everyone, on Itch.io, on Sidequest, and wherever in the universe, multiverse, metaverse, or infoverse you are tuning in from.

I want to discuss a bit what this project is, what this project aims to be, and probably most importantly, what this project is not.

Let's start with what it is not.  This project is not Deus Ex.  This project is not The Fifth Element.  This project is not open world.  It is not an RPG.  The world will feel as big as I can make it feel, and as complete as I can make it feel, but it will not be go-anywhere-do-anything and it will not be huge.  This project is not really made by a team, not yet at least, but if there's enough interest or enough financial support from you kind folks at home, that might change.

It is a small, creative work, being made by a small person, with the help of friends and loved ones here and there.  It is an original work, it is a cyberdystopia, and it is intended to be creepy and have meaning behind things, and in fact even now is and does.  It's a linear, puzzle, adventure game.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we've only seen the very very beginning.

It is a story game with a mostly linear progression, and some non-linear re-progression.  It will play similarly on subsequent play-throughs but you will have more access than you did on your first time, like New Game+ mechanically.  The storyline is also tied into the development; as features and progressions are added to the game, I intend to make it very easy for those who enjoyed an earlier version of the game to go back and visit at-will, in case later builds get too creepy, too silly, or too out there for people looking for a moment away from worldly troubles.  I've set up tags in version control to make this very easy even if I wasn't already working on the system right now for Phase 2.

The game is going to have some things that may cause motion sensitivity.  Possibly *extreme* motion sensitivity.  This one is a tricky one for me.  Really tricky.  I don't have motion sensitivity.  Some of my favorite times in VR have been in Boneworks and in Jet Island, and I jump into new VR games with reckless abandon, and even if my character bumps or grinds or rotates or freaks out, even if bugs happen and I'm forced to spin and spin and spin... nothing.  I sometimes seek these ridiculous behaviors, like you might in Garry's mod.  So I need feedback when things make people feel bad, but I also have a strategy that I am going to try: skippable *everything.*  I'm going to be providing the ability to skip sequences when new sequences are made, just in case there are things that are either too intense, too hard, or too scary/stupid (they really are the same thing when you work on them lol).  This all said, while the game is under construction you should consider that everything may be rough for motion sensitivity while I focus on building the narrative and setpieces.

Once we get further down the line, (and this is really, really speaking waaaaay ahead of ourselves, we'll go back to this post someday and laugh at it hah, hopefully) I would like to figure out a way to get playtesters to test various motion aids that I can add to sequences or minigames so that we can make as much of it accessible as possible.

Regarding the most basics of VR accessibility though, today snap turn goes into the game (Initially 60 degree; will have more options this week), and I'd like by Friday to have a prototype teleport system; this system will be a little different than the usual fare; the game has climbing and jumping as a verb and some folks can't deal with smooth motion climbing, and if I decide to get fancier later and add physics well it's all downhill from there.  So the teleport system has to support the ability to both physics climb and air climb.  The first version will be very simple, basically a cursor which has a set maximum distance.  If you hit the teleport button (Likely going to be grip; as climb-as-a-verb will be disabled when in teleport locomotion mode) you will teleport to where the cursor is (it collides with the environment).  If you grip and hold, you stay in place, and don't fall till you ungrip.  Moving your hand doesn't move you around, you are just static in place.  Air teleport is the same deal, just grip and hold while the cursor hovers in air (It has a max distance) and then you are there, hovering till you ungrip.  It will likely make more sense once you try it, but I'm interested in critique even now.

Anyway, that's about it.  The main thing I really don't want: I don't want to get No Man's Sky'd, if I haven't already No Man's Sky'd myself as it is... *sweatdrop.*  I have nightmares about what that development team went through and for no good reason.  They managed to turn things around and appease the angry mobs on a long enough scale, but, quite frankly, I don't think I'd survive an experience like that.  If I had made a full, living, breathing universe, that was infinite on all sides, and shared that with the world, and it was received like it was?  That's brutal, it was brutal what happened there.

I'm not making a full, living, breathing universe, I'm making a game, which is really, just a slice, just a facade, to give the impression of a universe, or maybe at least a peek at it.  Nothing in your headset is real, but maybe for a moment, we'll be able to forget.