The Year 1 update for Jupiter Hell.

Year 1 update!

It has been one year since you Kickstarted Jupiter Hell! 12 months ago our Kickstarter completed at 117% of our target amount, and since then we’ve been hard at work to turn your generosity into a fantastic game :)  

There have been some delays along the way, but we’re at a really good point right now. Some developments of late:

• We’ve expanded our team to 10 people, including 2 new programmers
• Our custom engine is working great, with Linux builds, optimised physics and light systems, and of course the unique adaptive animation system that makes the game so fluid to play
• We now have 6 separate environment tilesets, each with color schemes and varied amounts of decorative elements, so we’ll have diverse and interesting levels to explore
• Jupiter Hell is now populated with several new enemies, including the imp, fat demon, clawed demon, combat drone and summoner, with others in the production queue (these are all placeholder names, incidentally)
• Base gameplay mechanics are integrated, with the code for deeper elements already in place and ready for rapid expansion
• ASCII mode! 

What next?

Our next Inner Circle build is expected by the turn of the year. This will be a meaty build for our IC fans, and we expect a big amount of adjustments based on that.

We then plan to release Jupiter Hell’s first alpha build to our Alpha backers in March! Our roadmap to alpha includes a number of key games features:  

• Full game UI (though still mostly text-based placeholder)
• Character creation and character advancement (xp, leveling, etc)
• Inventory system, loot and ‘loot boxes’ (the fun kind!)
• Initial FX system, for cool explosions, shot effects and more polish on the visuals
• Many other fixes and polishing on technical features and quality of life improvements to make the game feel more playable and fun

Once we have the alpha released we’ll publish our roadmap to beta!