- Skeeter's Grid: Development Resumes! - 12 November 2024
After a hiatus, Skeeter's Grid is resuming development! This game has always been a labor of love and something I've always intended to see to the end, but some licensing changes in the gaming engine had me reconsidering my goals. Luckily, these changes were eventually reversed (thanks to community outcry), but while I decided how to move forward, I got out of the habit of developing. Then came a number of additional challenges (personal things), almost all of which have been resolved at this point. In short, things are looking up. So I'm back to developing and excited to get back into the groove. Communication will be random and infrequent for a time while I work to upgrade this project to Unity 6 and determine development priorities, but I hope to eventually get back to weekly updates. I'll also note that I spent the last year improving my musical abilities and understanding of theory…
- The PuzzleFest Update - 20 April 2023
Steam PuzzleFest seemed like a great excuse to promote a Skeeter's Grid early access update, and this build includes months of fixes, tweaks, content updates, and more! Yes, there are still a couple month's worth of work before this game is release ready, but I think we're on a solid trajectory.
- Skeeter's News : 3.17.23 - 18 March 2023
For starters, a PSA... The next build of Skeeter's Grid will be moving closer to production mode, and as part of this, all level names have changed. As a result, many new achievements have been added, but I'm keeping the old achievements around, which are now prefixed with *Early Access*. Once I promote the next build, it will no longer be possible to earn these Early Access achievements. Now the bigger news, and something I am very excited about... new Skeeter capsule art by the excellent Brenda Failache! I am still migrating the various storefronts to this new art, but I have started the process of updating Steam. And lastly, and maybe this is more aspirational, but I do hope to have a new gameplay trailer soon... definitely by Steam Puzzlefest if not considerably sooner. The current gameplay trailer is extremely dated at this point. It's always difficult to juggle developing the game…
- 0.13.1-early_access is now live! - 23 February 2023
Skeeter's Grid 0.13.1-early_access has exited beta and is now in production. This is a semi-major update, which has been brewing for some time. Some highlights: New splash screen with additional asset preloading: There should no longer be any lag (or much) when loading levels or screenshots. Skeet talks! Expect Skeet utterances during certain game events or when going idle. New 0.3.x music: I may need to continue tweaking transitions here, but the previous 0.3.x music was more ominous than I'd wanted, so I wrote a new piece using pure analog hardware. The old music will still be used elsewhere (probably). Storyline updates: I'm beginning a storyline rewrite, which I'll likely continue tweaking until days before release. The first pass is now in the game, but some cleanup of this content is ongoing. 0.0.5 and 0.0.6 level updates: The former is a new level, which has proven to be too hard…
- 0.11.0-early_access is now live - 23 January 2023
There is a lot of work going on in the Skeeter's Grid world, which has yet to be included in any release. This work has slowed down build releases and will probably continue to do so. The 0.11.0-ea release is fairly routine and includes none of the aforementioned changes, but it does include all minor accessibility improvements and stability improvements already in the pipeline. The next version, 0.12.0-ea, will require another data wipe to accommodate the larger updates in the works, which I do think (hope) will be the last before release.
- 0.10.1-early_access hotfix is live - 1 January 2023
This build fixes the collectables error introduced in 0.10.0-early_access.
- 0.10.0-early_access is live - 31 December 2022
This semi-major update includes the following: Character portraits -- This mostly affects collectables, but as part of this, I've added portrait popups after key AI encounters. Fixes to 1.4.x levels -- I discovered that a recent update broke two 1.4.x levels, including one game-breaking bug! This is resolved. Storyline expansion -- Lots of new disks with new character and world details. New Levels! -- These are scattered throughout. Corresponding Steam achievements are also added. And as warned in a previous post, save data will be cleared as part of this release. This could happen again before full release, but I do hope this is the last time. During testing, I encountered the following new bug: Collectables display no longer shows collectables... ugh. I will fix this in the next update.
- 0.8.0-early_access is now live - 5 December 2022
As scheduled, 0.8.0-early_access is now live in the default channel. This update includes the following: Storyline and content changes including underline logic New messages for when a player completes a grid using every fragment (will continue rolling this out in future updates) Check the community forms for anticipated 0.9.0-early_access updates, which will be entering beta soon.
- 0.7.0-early_access update - 26 November 2022
In addition to storyline updates, this build includes: Major changes to level progressions. Although you can still replay any level at any time (that you have visited) and generate stats for that level, story and rare collectables will be unavailable. This change has additional repercussions. Numerous stability updates and changes including a new level completion failsafe.
- 0.5.0-early_access - 19 October 2022
This build contains stability updates and general improvements including: animation fixes damage and juice updates audio updates message content updates across all levels collectable restructuring across all levels 0.6.0-early_access is in development and will involve a number of structural changes. It may take longer than the normal two-week cycle for release.
- 0.4.2-early_access is now live! - 2 October 2022
It's often hard to talk about the stability builds, because there aren't a ton of visual changes. This build has no new levels; no obvious visual tweaks; etc, but it is full of QOL adjustments and fixes... with more to come. By this I mean there were a number of smaller fixes that didn't make it into this release but will be part of 0.5.0-early_access. On top of this, I've been heavily testing the final batch of levels, and I think these are the best of the bunch. I did decide to remove one of these levels just yesterday... because it sucked, but otherwise I am loving the final few levels of the game. These will not be part of any early access build (final release only), but as I test these levels, I'm finding much that can be improved throughout the game. After all, the final levels are the most complex by far!
- Untitled - 11 September 2022
Magical Mortimer is live, and this version sees changes to the goals system and fixes to Skeet's death events... and those are both things discovered during testing that I decided to shoehorn into the release... maybe not the best development practice, but both of these issues seemed too critical to delay. In addition, I realized that some levels included in previous builds never got a proper developer testing before release (probably time related, but such is the life of a solo-dev). Anyway, changes have been made, and these levels should play better now. That said, I will be continuing to tweak/improve levels leading up to release, so no grid should be considered *done* at this stage. Without further ado, here is the complete list of changes: AI Core functionality partially added. This will be fleshed out in subsequent builds. 0.4.0 phase levels have been added and should be fully pla…
- 0.2.0-early_access Released - 28 August 2022
Overhauling the enemy spawn system. This existing system is only partially on display in the existing Early Access build so real changes will be visible. More info: https://strangeshuttle.itch.io/skeeters-grid/devlog/416151/rethinking-spawn-points Adding Skeet's collected cores to the main display including cues as to which core is in use at any given time. Phase 0.4.0 work (though not yet playable) Phase 0.3.0 refinements Story edits throughout Minor bug fixes as encountered
- Skeeter's Grid enters Early Access - 15 August 2022
Today I'm releasing my isometric puzzler, Skeeter's Grid, as an Early Access project. So the game isn't done... but it's getting there. I'm starting to post development updates in the community forum: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1773440/discussions/0/ And would be happy to accept any feedback there. This game is a personal project--inspired by the sorts of games I enjoyed as a kid on the Commodore 64. I've enjoyed building it and am looking forward to finishing it up during the next five months.
- Early Access Update -- Codename: Decadent Thunder - 11 August 2022
Release Update: Skeeter's Grid will be release into Early Access on 8/15/22. This update relates to that version. Personal Note: I started work on Skeeter's Grid in January 2021 as a pandemic past-time (after having spent the previous year or so learning game engines, Blender, music production, etc, mostly to teach my kid), and it has since my part-time, late-night avocation, because why not? This sometimes drives my wife nuts though she's been generally (and usually extremely) supportive. So, it's been fun, but it's time for me to round the bend and finish the game, and if all goes to plan, this game will be done within 5 months. I've built everything from scratch (except the particle and save systems), and continue to do so, which makes 5mo feel a little daunting sometimes, but the deadline is important to keep me from fiddling with features. Changelog: Skeeter's Grid v. 0.1.0_early-a…
- Streaming Skeeter's Grid - 21 February 2022
A Skeeter's Grid play-through plus developer discussion of both demo and unreleased content.
- Skeeter's Grid Livestream - 9 January 2022
A Skeeter's Grid play-through plus developer discussion of both demo and unreleased content. I will discuss in-development content, backend tech, and workflows as a full-stack solo developer. I'd also like to get community input into possible features I've been mulling over.
