Aztez – A Game of Conquest and Brutality
9May/1613

Progress Report: May 9th 2016

Big update! Look at those bars. We are essentially at "soft content complete" over here.

Here's the business!

  1. Weapons: STILL DONE.
  2. Enemies: FUCKING DONE.
  3. Environments: All that remains is incidentals.
  4. Audio Assets: All that remains is incidentals.
  5. UI Assets: All that remains is incidentals.
  6. Structure: More systems done and glazed and now glue glue glue glue glue!

The Road To Being Done!

The combat experience is completely done now that all of the weapons and enemies are completed. There will be some balance fixes before release when you maniacs inevitably break my combat system, but otherwise the core Aztez experience is in the bag. <3

Traditionally, I have been in the garage making go-karts while Matthew was out building the track by himself, but now both Matthew and I are out there finishing up the track. The next few months is dedicated completely to gluing all the systems together into a product you'll have fun with for a long time. And that's what the last 25% of structure is. The incidental environments/audio assets/UI assets are things that will crop up as we finish the gluing.

Filed under: Development News Leave a comment
  • Curious

    Are you guys still [planning to release this for Vita?

  • JamPants

    Holy shit I’m so excited, do you guys have any inkling of an expected release window? I seriously cannot wait anymore!

  • law2811

    Oh boy oh boy oh boy

  • Canopus Walf

    Get hype!!

  • Mischief Maker

    You guys think you’ll make it by the end of summer?

  • Dylstew

    Hey, I really like your blog. May I ask a question?
    How do you not get hit in traditional (belt scrolling) Beat em ups? It just feels kinda random wether I succeed or don’t.

  • gr3yh47

    time to go early access guys.

    • disqus_UuylW4a7ke

      I want to agree with you but I also don’t really like the trend of games releasing EA before they are ready. We don’t want another NMS on our hands, and that only happens because people are constantly pressuring deadlines.

      That said, while I’m hoping they’re trying to put the best product they can on the market, we do need SOMETHING.

      • gr3yh47

        if the game is as ready as the progress bars indicate from 8 months ago, it’s well more polished than 99% of EA games.

        also comparing this to NMS is comparing apples to… shopping carts. just incredibly different projects at every level.

        there are some very good examples of EA done right out there. I’ve bought 8-10 EA games and never been disappointed because I do my research and understand what I’m paying for. People who buy EA games because they want the finished product are doing EA wrong.

        If the game was that finished 8 months ago, and there have been no progress updates, it seems like they could probably use a funding infusion. EA with such a finished product would be a perfect answer.

        • disqus_UuylW4a7ke

          I’m not going to argue that there aren’t any good EA games. I don’t know why you’d turn my comment into that, of course there are gems of EA games, and you should always do your research on them before you buy. I just don’t understand why you’d prefer they should do EA rather than just give us a completed project. Yeah, it’s been a while, but I’d personally rather wait for the finished thing.

          I wasn’t comparing it to NMS either. Only that pushing deadlines causes situations like NMS, where they give us a barren games that need constant patches and updates. I doubt that would be the case with this game judging by what they show us. I just don’t like when I see constant pressure for things to get released before they are done.

        • Matthew Wegner

          Hey! Some good discussion here.

          We have considered EA, but decided against it for a few reasons. A big factor for us is just team size (the two of us). Managing a *large* audience playing the game in alpha/beta stages would be pretty overwhelming.

          The empire side of the game is turning into something pretty big, so EA would actually make some sense from a content perspective. We’re running weekly builds right now with a very small pool of testers, and collecting feedback from a private backend (and in-game issue reporter). Feel free to ping us to get on it–we’ve kept it small, but will slowly grow as we inch towards shipping. Just ping [email protected] with info.

          As for the progress bars–I’d say these were accurate, but keep in mind “75% complete” is still a ways to go. The game is in year 6 of development now. The first year or two was nights-and-weekends, so really it’s more like year 4, but still, the remaining 25% on structure could probably take a year.

          (That actually might prove true–we’re hoping to ship right before summer, but it’s still a tad too early to throw around concrete ship dates)…

          • disqus_UuylW4a7ke

            Thanks for being involved in the discussion man. I really love when I see small devs keeping up with the “common folk” lol.

          • Matthew Wegner

            No worries! Almost everything out there pings us somehow (comments on blog get email, Twitter mentions show up in our Slack channel, etc)…

« Progress Report: April 28th, 2017 Progress Report: January 6th 2016 »
Aztez is being made by Ben Ruiz (Designer/Artist) and Matthew Wegner (Programmer/Business), formerly of Flashbang Studios. It's set for a PC/Mac/Linux release in summer 2017 (consoles to follow).

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