A Development Update (or The Long & Twisted Path of Indie Publishing)

[Ed. Note. This is a long post, but wanted to bring you all up-to-speed.]

It's been a long while since we went back into closed development. Much longer than we planned. Thought we would provide everyone with an update about where we are and what we're doing.

At the end of our Open Beta, we learned a number of really good things about the game - we got good reviews; (enough) people thought it was fun; we had tech issues, but on the whole the game was stable - but also two big things we needed to fix.

1.) We needed a Single Player version of the game. To help people learn and to have fun on your own.

2.) We needed to put more card types into the game. Bashing each other on the head repeatedly is only fun for so long before you need more strategic options.

So we took the game back into closed beta, raised the cash we need to implement the new features, hired a dev firm to do the work, and waited for them to start.

...

Long story short, we lost many, many, many months with no progress from the dev firm. Coulda, woulda, shoulda... but there you go.

(We'll tell you about it over a drink sometime.)

...

So we ended the contract, got our money back, and started again on making the changes. This was about 6 weeks ago.

Now the good news! We have expanded our internal team to include new, rocking, highly productive coders working with our Lead Dev, Federico, in beautiful Buenos Aires! (R&R is nothing if not global. ;) )

In the last 6 weeks they have restructured the server, fixed a number of behind-the-scenes bugs, and implemented the math and client work required to suppport 9 of the (more than that) new card types (Add mana, Sabotage, Buffs, Leech, etc.). We're putting together the new cards, bringing magic into the game, and building towards our relaunch.

The team is excited and motivated again after a bit of a rough patch over the winter. Things are looking good.

As many of you know, Burdenday has taken on a new opportunity that will really help him advance his career. We're sad to see him go, but the opportunity was pretty stellar. Before he left, he wrote a long and detailed guide on how to make sure the R&R community continues to grow according to the culture he helped establish.

So, to sum up, we've got our heads down and we're going strong. We have more people working on it now than we ever have before. We have the cash in the bank required to get the game back up. And things are looking good.

In the meantime, please forgive us if it's a bit slow on the boards. It'll be best to e-mail us directly with any issues.

We truly appreciate your continued interest in R&R!

Sincerely,

Taliesan
Lead Designer
taliesan@riseandruin.com