Party Panic - Journal and Suggestions

[DMeville]

Topic renamed from "Roadmap to Release". I will continue to post what is happening and progress on the game in this thread! Feel free to post suggestions in this thread, or ideas for the board game mode!

For the sake of transparency, I want to explain what's going on with Party Panic and the plan for moving forward out of Early Access and into Release. I want to make Party Panic the best game I possibly can, and I'm still working as hard as I can. It's hard work and some days it feels like there's a lot of weight on my shoulders to deliver, but I have some big things prepared for the full Release, and the time leading up to it.

Currently, the live version of Party Panic is from Feb 11th, nearly 3 months have gone by without any updates to main version. This is because I shifted gears to work on a new game mode for Party Panic that got bigger and bigger as I worked on it, but in that process of creating something that (I think) is really cool, I kind of neglected the rest of the game. This new game mode is very close to being done.

May was set to be the "Pre-Release planning" month for Party Panic, where I would nail down dates, get in contact with marketing/promotional people and prepare for a big launch June 1st the best I can. I was right on track to meet that date, but as I was nailing down the details there was an issue that I (somehow) overlooked.

Everyone knows that every Summer Steam has a huge sale, and we're quickly coming up to this sale. Last year the Summer Sale was the last week in June, and went until the first week of July. There are some complications with releasing Party Panic any time in June for a few reasons.

1) Developers must wait 30 days between sale/discounts.
This is part of the problem. If I want to release Party Panic AND be included in the Summer Sale Party Panic needs to be released 37 days BEFORE the Summer Sale, or 30 days after.
37 days before would mean that I would need to release the in less than 14 days, which is absolutely impossible as that's not enough time to get release promo/marketing ready, and finalize the remaining things in the game.

30 days after the the Summer Sale brings us to the end of July.. Which means unless I do something there will have been no updates to Party Panic for 6 months. This is unacceptable.


2) There is the option to release a few days before the Summer Sale, but this seems like suicide for Party Panic's visibility, as Party Panic would get completely lost in the chaos, and can in no way complete with last years AAA GOTY on sale for 90% off or whatever other crazy deals there will be.

So all in all, there's some really unfortunate timing that I wasn't aware about that means I can't/shouldn't release Party Panic June 1st, when I had hoped.

After thinking about this problem for all of last week, I think I've come up with a solution I'm happy (mostly) with, and hopefully you guys will be happy with as well. Here's a breakdown of the roadmap as I see it, as I work towards the release of Party Panic.

----------

[May]
[7th-14th] [COMPLETE]
Prepare an update for Party Panic, with all the "quality of life" fixes and improvements I've made over the last few months. This will NOT include any new content, but will have things like a new server browser, matchmaking/find me a game, in game chat, UI improvements, Controller/keyboard improvements. All these things are already complete, I just need to clean up a few things.

[CHANGE OF PLANS][COMPLETE] Edited May 13th
Going to work on a progression system at some point before the Steam Summer sale. I have one minigame half done a week ahead of schedule at the point of writing this, so I might be able to squeeze this in before the end of the month.

[14th-31st] [COMPLETE]
Work on new minigames and content. There have not been any new minigames for the entirety of the time I've been working on the new game mode. I'm not happy with this, and I know a lot of people were looking forward to new minigames. During this time I'm going to come up with at least two new minigames that will be added to the game. Along with new hats, and an exclusive hat that will ONLY be UNLOCKED if you played the game while in Early Access.
This time was spent working on the progression system instead. I am going to spend the rest of this month working on more hats and costumes, and fixing bugs with the matchmaking system. I also made changes so when players disconnect mid game they are turned into AI rather than the entire game closing down for everyone.


[June]
[1st-14th] [COMPLETE]
One more minigame, and revisions to old minigames to try and improve the networked physics in the ball games and bumper cars.
EDIT: I MADE TWO NEW MINIGAMES INSTEAD OF ONE! Will be in the next update!



[End of June] [COMPLETE]
Steam Summer Sale. Party Panic will be available at a discounted price. This will be the current version of the game PLUS the Quality of Life changes mentioned earlier PLUS a few new minigames and some new hats and gauntlet things. I will also begin planning marketing/promotional things.



[July]
[Beginning of July] [COMPLETE]
Steam Summer Sale. Probably going to have to use this time for tech support/bug fixes from the (hopefully) huge influx of new players coming from the Sale.

[7th-21st] [COMPLETE]
Release Prep. New trailer, finalizing content, localization, achievements, etc.


[August 7th] [COMPLETE]
One year anniversary of Party Panic being on Steam. Launch window, and launch discount.
The game will launch with two new minigames bringing the total up to 30, and the new game mode 'Adventure Island'.

-------------------------------------- WE ARE HERE --------------------------------------

[Post Launch]
The launch out of early access is NOT the end. More content (minigames, costumes, maybe even game modes) will still be added at regular intervals!

Give me your input, what would you like to see added to Party Panic in the future? No idea is off limits! More minigames? New game modes?

That is the plan, some things may change slightly as unexpected things do come up. I want to make Party Panic the best game I can and I think this plan is the best course of action moving forward and gives me a few more weeks to add more content and polish to the current minigames, the new minigames, and the new game mode. Thanks for understanding the situation and all the support so far!

[matt_bentley9]

Hello,


I have some mini game ideas:

1) A sort of cooking game, let’s say to decorate a cake and bake it perfectly, for each cake, get more points.

2)A race game, to drive around a track.

3)possibly a trampoline game, to jump to the finish line.

4) A crazy fighting game, probably like super smash brothers.

5)A mode where you have to stay on the island/iceberg for as long as possible before it starts slowly crumbling away.

6)like musical chairs, where a colour flashes at the top of the screen and you have a certain amount of time to get to the correct coloured square before the floor around falls down and the time runs out, getting harder each time with smaller squares and less time.

7)Simon said following the text game.

8) parkour jumping game, where the screen scrolls progressively faster.

9)surfing/dolphin ride game

This is all the games I can think of for now to improve the game!

Hope you can add some, also could total wipeout give you some more ideas for guillotine.

Thanks!

From Matthew Bentley

Steam ID matt_bentley9

Pc specs: HP LAPTOP

windows 10 home

Intel i5 integrated graphics skylake processor.

8GB RAM

250GB SSD

BYE!

[DMeville]

Escrito originalmente por matt_bentley9:

Hello,
I have some mini game ideas: ....

Whoa, thanks! Those are some great ideas! I'll see what I can do with some of those ideas once I'm back to working on new minigames after the next update!!

[Chaos]

Escrito originalmente por DMeville:

Escrito originalmente por matt_bentley9:

Hello,
I have some mini game ideas: ....

Whoa, thanks! Those are some great ideas! I'll see what I can do with some of those ideas once I'm back to working on new minigames after the next update!!

Hey just stopping by to say amazing job on the game. My nephews loved trophyisland, they are now a bit sad we've completed it. I'd love to see more adventure style content but still excited about the board game.

If you need help adding more content (a free part-part-time developer) let me know!

[DMeville]

@Chaos

Thanks! I'm glad you all enjoyed the game! There probably won't be anything new added to trophy island, unfortunately. If there is, it'll be a while before new content is worked on. I imagined Trophy Island more of a 'sandbox' where you can just go and mess around with your friends. The trophies was just an added bonus to give a little bit of structure.

Here's another update:
https://youtu.be/lccANv7YCfM

Adding a bit of background stuff to figure out how the map should look and feel. Also got special tiles in (green spaces). These tiles are anything that requires a dialog box and input before the player is allowed to progress (eg, you land/pass by the space, a box pops up asking if you want to buy a pizza, you choose yes or no).

Right now the green spaces just freeze the player for 5 seconds so I could test the functionality, but now that it's working I can turn them into actual things!

[Tactile]

I enjoy the small updates you post while developing. Its coming along great!

[wawillmacha]

nice progress! i love it :) can i donate you a beer? ;)

[DMeville]

https://youtu.be/C7v4NPZuUzQ

Battle minigames are in AND the shop framework is set up and ready for me to begin working on item mechanics!

You'll notice that when the players land on a blue/red (non-event) space it changes to their colour with a bomb icon on it, those are trap spaces in the works!

I'm going to try to get all the item mechanics working this week!

[DMeville]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtZuwTTmR8U&feature=youtu.be

Everything except the board layout I think is complete. Played a test round with @ZStriefel today and it was great. Got 5 items completed and working, finished the game complete/victory cutscene, did another pass on the audio and made sure all the localization stuff was ready. Gunna nail down the board layout tomorrow and see how it feels!

I'm excited! Might add a few more special tiles (like a boo tile from Mario Party, or a "toll-bridge" tile) but I'm not sure yet. Everything feels really good so far!

[DMeville]

https://youtu.be/yNYoJMoMeCM

Was a productive day today. Willy's Pizza Party is done! Will work on board #2 tomorrow and then start making a few small promo things (short update trailer, promo art). Update should be releasing early Dec (7th-ish, maybe?)

Woooooo

[Tactile]

It definitely looks great! I hope we see a bug test beta of somesort, I wouldnt want this to be released buggy.

Anyways good work.

[✮︎ Gabi :)]

Hello dev, my friend talked about this game to me since i love Mario Party and nintendo games, and he said it was "mario party style" and i said yes it seems like it, nice mini games! But there is no board. Then i see here in forum that you guys doing it and from what i see it will be very nice!

Im going to buy this game as soon as possible. Please make this game like mario party! Like if you stop in X place on the board you earn coins, or lose, and these kind of stuff! Please please!

Me and my friends are going to buy this game for sure! It ill be our mario party in steam then.

EDIT: Srry i see the #8 vid now! and im gonna look at it all, it looks sooo nice! Yesssss boy

[DMeville]

Got the environment and rough layout of the board for board game map #2, The Temple of Goob! Should be finalized by the end of the weekend. Things are still on track for the update to go live early Decemeber! Woo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwICt3clPLE&feature=youtu.be

[Tactile]

I think i prefer Temple of Goob, it looks really cool. Hopfully everything goes to plan!

[DMeville]

@Slugger PRAISE GOOB

[[GER]SirStruction]

First off, hello! :)

So i started playing this game since yesterday and it's awesome, perfect PC Game if you want something like "Mario Party" (I'm totally hyped for the upcoming board game update).

I like the Minigame Mode, the Trophy Island Mode and i also love the (don't know the english name for it) Parkour Mode, but the Parkour mode needs more variety. You play 2-3 games and know the spots and timing for the stages. Also the stages with the huge axes seems a bit buggy to me, because you can (almost always) run perfectly through without getting hit because you get stopped by them without a scrape.

Trophy Island makes alot of fun but is getting boring after you finished.. maybe add some minievents or challenges there?

I really love this game and i hope it will get some more attention with the upcoming update! Worth every penny! :)


PS: Me and my friends found a sign "Don't look for the light. Become it" is there anything you can do there or is it just ..there? Because we searched and tried many things but nothing happend. Can you maybe give us a tip :) or doesn't it have any purpose atm?

Greetings, SirStruction!