About the State of Things (2022 Update)

[musclecarfreak]

Dear Crumple Zone fans and players!

As there have been a couple of comments lately in the sense of "please add more cars/tracks", "I think this game is dead" etc. I wanted to give an update about the state of things.
It's important for me to always stay honest and transparent and not sugar-coat anything or raise false expectations.

So bear with me for a second, because this will be a lot of text, but hopefully very clarifying.

First of all - it depends on what you define as "dead" but I personally would disagree and say Crumple Zone is very much alive.
It is a fun simple litte single-player-focussed game that you can play and enjoy from start to finish.
I will always lend technical support and have a close look at bug reports that may come up via email or the community hub.
But to be honest there was none in about 2 years, so I think the game is very solid in that regard.

The other aspect is, of course, content. Again, I think for the asking price, the amount of content and play time of the base game is fair. Still, in a perfect world I would be happy to push out new cars and tracks every week, I 100% agree. But the reality is, with a small player base I will never be able to justify the invest of time, which I have little of these days anyways (will get to this in a second).

In short, my major goal for Crumple Zone shifted to extending the player base, which will then in return make all the effort feasable and benefit all players.

There are a couple of ways to achieve that, none guaranteed to succeed, but worth to try:
1) Actually, you the community, can help a lot. Spread the word, recommend it to friends, mention it on social media etc. Because I got zero marketing funds, regular marketing channels are difficult for me. I'd say currently it might be a bit of a hidden gem in the steam store, but I'd be more than glad if it becomes "less hidden".
2) Self-publishing is cool and all, but I am in the progress of trying to find an indie publisher that can support with distribution and marketing, because that is the difficult part.
3) Related to the point above: Doing marketing for a game from 2019 makes little sense. That's why ideally, if 2) succeeds it would also come with a re-release, big update or even sequel of the game.

In addition, on a more personal level, ever since CZ came out I quit my previous job and joined a game company full-time. So making my hobby become a regular job actually worked out, which is very cool. It's also about a racing game, but it couldn't be more different from CZ and a full size developer team is working on it. This is both good and bad for CZ. Naturally, I have even less time for hobby projects now, but at the same time I learn a lot about bigger game projects and get in touch with a lot more developers and people from the gaming industry, which can only benefit CZ in the long run.

So yeah, in summary, see Crumple Zone as it is today as "1.0" and don't keep your hopes up for any content updates as long as it doesn't blow up with sales for whatever reason. But a Crumple Zone "1.5" or "2.0" is very likely and all the great feedback and suggestions you gave over the years will define how these versions will look like and what kind of content and features they will include.

If you have any more ideas or suggestions on how to bring the game forward and reach more players, feel free to discuss below!

Thanks again for all the support and feedback, let's see what the future brings!

Cheers,
Moritz