Progress Report: October 12th 2015

This is normally where I'd apologize for not posting anything for so long. However, I'm not sorry anymore (and I haven't been in a long time) because we're killing ourselves for you. But we wouldn't have it any other way! You're going to LOVE. THIS. GAME. But it still sucks to not know what's going on! As a way of keeping you guys in the know, I'm gonna start dropping progress reports on your desk every 2 to 4 weeks until release.

"BUT WHEN IS RELEASE?"

We don't know yet! We're still just two ambitious idiots trying to release a super technical, highly replayable product. And it's going well! But whenever anyone asks what the release date is and we still don't know, it erodes our living souls a little bit more. So consider these reports a very heartfelt concession. If you wanted to stop asking in return it would help us grow some soul back. Haha!

First official progress report drops right now!

Let me break this all down for you as best as I can!

1. Weapons: 7 of our 8 weapons are completely done and rockin'. The last weapon will be one of the very last things we do before wrapping up because it's so very...unorthodox.
2. Enemies: 19 of our 25 enemies are done, polished, and have been partying with our testers for the last 3 or 4 months. The remaining enemies are special and final bosses that I will design once we've wrapped up most of the game structure and most of our missions are in place.
3. Environments: 39 of our 50 Mesoamerican cities, arenas, vistas, and mystery places are all done and gorgeous. I love posting screens of these to the official Aztez Twitter. These drip in slowly as we make progress and the only reason they aren't already all done (I know what they all are and exactly how they will look) is simply because we're always so spread out.
4. Audio Assets: Most of Aztez's OST is composed at this point. We've got two amazing musicians who have contributed jams and they're magnificent! We've got a small handful of sound effects left to produce, and those belong mostly to the last weapon and few remaining enemies.
5. UI Assets: I'm referring to the combat HUD, the empire HUD, and all of the menus and interactions out of the primary game modes. We've had a combat HUD in place for quite a while, which is fine and dandy, but UI is only not where everything else is because UI is tied pretty closely to structure...
6. Structure: This is the catch all metric for all of the glue that binds the modes together, and the content that guides the player through the experience. This looks a little scary now, but that (along with its cousin UI assets) is currently picking up huge speed and is going to look like everything else before you know it. All of these little details tend to get ignored or forgotten or brushed aside until so much is done that you just can't push it aside any longer. We're there and it's very exciting!

Before too long here we're going to be hitting content complete, which is when there are no more things to build and it's just design/quality work. There is as much of a workload as there ever has been, but we're starting to feel less spread out, which is nice. Keep your eyes peeled on the Aztez Facebook and Twitters for updates and we hope this was informative and enlightening!