Hi all,
Hope you're having a good week and looking forward to the end of the year. My Spotify wrapped came in this week so I took that as inspiration to look back at our progress on SD2 and what's happened throughout the year.
Thankful
You might remember that I moved to the USA last year to join North Beach Games. Well, last month was my first proper Thanksgiving so I decided to attempt cooking a traditional turkey. It went great, thankfully. It was a good time to slow down for a day and reflect. I'm grateful to be part of the NBG team and to be here building Stranded Deep 2 with them. I'm also grateful to everyone here in the SD community who are getting behind SD2.
Looking back at the year, we've made good progress. We began the year with a two-part strategy: allow room for experimenting with ideas, while also pushing forward with the core features we knew were going to be in the game. We've pulled at threads worth exploring, moved ahead with some ideas, and circled back to others. The overall design of the game is better off from this process so it has been time well spent.
Playtesting
We completed our first prototype playtest with the team and gathered a lot of feedback. In the following weeks, we worked through each and every comment. Some useful insights came from team members not actively involved in development. Their fresh perspective helped us quickly identify any sticking points. Getting on top of these early gives us confidence that we're delivering a good experience. We've come out of this round of feedback with a clearer, refined design that feels very authentic. I'm happy with how we've been able to take key features from SD1 and adapt them in the next game.
Sandbox
Another question that has been answered is how much narrative to add. We explored how far we might go with this and built out some great ideas in the process. Ultimately, we decided that Stranded Deep is first and foremost a survival sandbox so our efforts should be laser-focused on creating the most satisfying sandbox experience. However, we're still going to keep a lot of the world-building that was developed during this phase. Even without telling an explicit story, the underlying themes still inform the visual designs and 'story' of objects that you find in the world and why they might be there. Something important to me has been ensuring our game systems are as modular as possible to allow us to expand with regular content updates. So, building out the story is something that we'll be able to circle back to if it makes sense. For now, we're confident in our core vision to create a satisfying survival game loop bolstered with regular, meaningful content updates.
Looking Ahead
We're planning an internal game jam to start the year. The team recently spent some time workshopping ideas and thinking outside-the-box to come up with innovative mechanics they might add to the game. We'll use the game jam to see how these ideas could be executed. This is also part of our efforts to keep the spirit of our small indie studio and speedy workflows in a larger production schedule as we grow bigger. I'm looking forward to it.
I'd like to wish everyone happy holidays from the team. We hope you all have a safe holiday and get some time to rest and recharge. I'll be using the free time to clear my mind and let the creativity bubble to the surface. I find it really important to get outside of my head and play other games, read books, or watch some movies. I'm looking forward to playing some games. I've started playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and having fun with that. I'm also in the middle of playing through the Gears of War series with my buddy back in Aus. What are you playing? Let me know if you have any good recommendations!
We're also working on improving the blog website. Progress here has been a little slow but I'd like to get a comment section going at the bottom of these blogs so I can interact more with you again. We'll also be looking at getting Discord up and running for the same reason.
Lastly, I want to thank everyone who is reading along and sharing these blogs. We see you and appreciate it!
Enjoy the holidays and we'll see you on the other side.
-Stay Alive!
