Hey gang. Sorry the second blog post ever is a negative one, but I’ve been thinkin about it, and I think publishing my thoughts would be beneficial - if not to you, then at least to me.
Back in ye olden days of 8 years ago (fuck) there was a lil game called Mighty No. 9. You almost certainly know how this story goes, because you almost certainly weren’t born yesterday. My point is, back then crowdfunding and the idea of a solo developer putting something out was fairly new and fairly exciting. Cave Story was probably the first one to do that, but that game came out in 2004(!) and there hadn’t really been something equivalent since. In 2015, Undertale come out, and was a surprise success - not that toby fox was completely unknown, but Earthbound ROM hacks have never been mainstream.
So after this incredibly well liked game had come out, the fact that it was made by only two people gave people a lot of optimism about solo- or solo-led games. Unfortunately, that optimism was exploited. Projects like the aforementioned Mighty No. 9, Red Ash, the OUYA, Fur Fun, the infamous Star Citizen, Hunt and Snare, and even the recent Friday Night Funkin’ decimated the public view of solo development.
There have been some winners in the solo-led development field who keep people from completely discarding it - Lucas Pope, toby fox, and Daniel Mullins being the biggest ones I can think of (play Pony Island god damn you!).
After all these massive failures, people are much more wary of a single developer or small team announcing they’re going to do something great - and I’m 100% with them on that. But I worry about this affecting my own project, and pre-emptively removing any interest people have in Wrangler. It’s understandable to think it’ll never come out - there have been so many devs that promise the world and deliver nothing or not enough.
As a consequence, I’m keeping details on Wrangler fairly tight and as private as possible. I think Wrangler is fun, I think Wrangler is interesting mechanically, and I want other people to have fun with it too. This means not telling people how incredible and awesome it is and all the super cool shit you can do in it and blah blah blah. Wrangler has also gone through 3 entire overhauls in its short development life, so promising people a bunch of stuff would be pointless if all of it gets thrown away. (Wrangler used to be a 2D game. And now it doesn’t have world exploration anymore, it’s mission-based. The battle system is the same, but there’s more information available after using moves)
So. Development on Wrangler is not going to be as open as I’d like it to be, because I am a fickle lil rat-man and like to throw away work when I think there’s something better worth pursuing. In this case that’s the way you interface with the game. Wrangler will come out. Wrangler will come out soon. Wrangler will be enjoyable.
Here’s some screenshots for you. It’s a look at the new user interface, and it’s super not complete, but hopefully this will give you a lil more hope for what was once my side project.
The new mission screen.
Opening a mission.
Showing much more information after a move is used.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your attention and support.