If you're seeing this - WOW. You're OG. Welcome to the first 20 wishlisters. I am absolutely floored, and thank you for discovering this page and deeming it worthy of your W/L! I haven't even started publishing on socials yet so you guys are truly truly OG and connoisseurs :D

I wanted to give you guys some sign of life because - well, I'm working solo, so updates may not be terribly constant as I'm likely working on code, sound design, with composers, designers, trying to wrap my head around something.

But I WOULD love for you guys to list features you want to see and very importantly what truly makes you fall in love with a world, and a game, especially based on the premise of what you saw in the Steam Page.

Here's an example of how we can start that off. Today i worked on our pedestrians' AI a bit. They already walk around town, giving it a lively appearance. They wait at traffic lights, use their phones, get takeout... (and ultimately will be checking out your stores).

But having them interact with cars is crucial as well! So today I started writing code that would make them evade vehicles primed for a collision with them - perfectly human behavior, right? Turns out, it took hours upon hours to make it apply to not just the player car, but all our NPC cars (that you can carjack). It took some more to make the solution "lightweight" - that is, not lag your device, because checking dozens of cars against hundreds of pedestrians is quite a bit of thinking your computer has to do.

I ended up getting a pretty goofy but hilarious "kung-fu" dive away from the paths of the car. I think I'll keep this! It's something that doesn't happen too often but is a spectacle when it does. And ultimately, it DOES save the pedestrian (you can see one without the script on the road..)

Anyway, don't be alarmed at the colors, reflections, pedestrians and cars - we're in prototyping / testing phase now, which means to write the code that makes stuff work. There will be multiple design passes where I replace assets / colors / textures / look with something sleeker, tweaking them to give a nice, cinematic feel. As one guy this really has to happen sequentially, but I do want to make sure the core gameplay and the world feels good to be in and just hang out in before I tighten up the looks, and add more and more content to the game.

It's a crazy race, but I'm so glad you 20 were here to kick this off with me. It really gave me a ton of motivation and excitement. If you join our Discord, I'll know who you are and award you guys an "OG1" rank!

Let's stay brewing!
Jay, Lead Moo