We're back to writing development blogs again! Welcome everyone, it's been a wild few weeks. Lots of things have been happening. Development blogs will once again appear every two weeks, but as stated before, we're aiming to have one bigger development blog each month, and the one in between will likely be smaller in scope or slightly different from the usual.

Quick recap

So let's start with a quick recap of what's been going on in the last few weeks:

• Closed beta was released. There was a minor delay during the release, as Apple took a lot longer than expected to review the game.
• I spent 5 days in London. Almost immediately after the release, I flew to London for the Pocket Gamer Connects convention. The convention was really nice, and I also met some local WalkScape fans there!
• Back to Helsinki. A few days after I came back, I got the flu. This delayed my original plans a bit and really ruined my progress.
• After starting to feel better, I needed to do quite a bit of management stuff and catch up with everyone. We started working our way through the feedback and bug reports.
• Reworking Patreon and Buy me a Coffee server code. This was deployed yesterday, and now I'm finally able to fully return to game development itself.
• Onboarding a new developer to the WalkScape team. We'll make more announcements about this later on when the onboarding process is done. Having only a single developer working on the project is currently our biggest bottleneck, so hopefully things turn out great and we can expand the team.

So, lots of things have been going on. The main thing I was able to complete for now was completely reworking the Patreon and Buy me a Coffee integrations. They have been causing us quite a lot of problems lately, where we have needed to manually help people who have encountered issues. This should now be working. The full list of changes regarding Patreon & BMAC connections is here:

• Our server now sends you an email when you are eligible for the next closed beta wave.
• Our server now sends you an email when you are invited and can download the game.
• Patreon and BMAC should both now work for users who have entered trailing spaces at the end of their email address.
• BMAC linking should now also support the one-time support events (coffee, beer).
• You should be able to see the earliest date of your support in WalkScape Portal.
• You should see if you are eligible for the next closed beta wave in WalkScape Portal.
• You should also see an estimate of when the next wave will get an invite in WalkScape Portal.
• BMAC and Patreon status is now checked every 20 minutes instead of every hour.
• Both BMAC and Patreon status checking are no longer time-constrained on their running time, which caused the problem where after we had a certain number of supporters, the new supporters didn't have their status updated.

It was a major rework of the system, now built for scale. Due to it being reworked from scratch, if you encounter any issues, please report them to me!

Working towards Wave 2

Due to the circumstances, we're now looking to release wave 2 in about two weeks from now. I'm trying to get it out for people ASAP, which means I might cut something not-that-necessary from the list of things I originally wanted to include.

Our main goals to include before wave two are:

• Fixing the infamous "rollback" issue. Sometimes, if you lose internet connectivity or reopen the game rapidly, the game loads your previous save instead of the most recent one. This happens more often on iOS.
• Fixing all of the smaller issues & bugs. These include things like Miner's Shirt being considered as pants, some incorrect item attributes, leaderboards' "total level" being broken after server update, agility activities (skiing and frisbee golfing) not working, infinite waiting when character name has already been taken, and so on. Thanks to all of the wave one players for reporting these issues!
• Improving QoL (Quality of Life). There are multiple things that are being suggested by the wave one players that would greatly enhance the game's quality of life. There are plenty of good suggestions, and for now, I'll be prioritizing those that offer the biggest value with the least development time.
• Adding small content additions. We will be introducing new items and rare drops to the game, along with new recipes.
• Making balancing changes. The saved steps limit will be increased.-
• Adding localisations. We're also adding these to Portal and website, you can check https://walkscape.app/fi to check how those work!
• Working on consumables. Hopefully, I can get these done before wave two.
• Implementing achievements. Again, this was originally planned, and I'll try to fit it in.
• (Good to have) Friends system. We've been planning this for a long time, and I'm personally a huge fan of this feature. I'll also try to fit it in.

So those are the main things we want to accomplish before expanding the closed beta. I know the wave two players may find the wait a little bit frustrating, but it's critical for us to have the fixes and QoL improvements in place before inviting more people. This ensures that we don't just receive the same issues reported over and over again, but instead, we can shift our focus to new things.

Feedback

To be completely honest, I was scared to death on the release day. After working on WalkScape for this long and being really passionate about the game, my very pessimistic brain only thought of the worst-case scenarios. But I was honestly surprised that there weren't as many issues, and most of the bugs and problems are minor or relatively easy to fix. And most importantly, the wave one players are having fun, even when the game is still as basic as it is. This, to me, is the most important thing: if the core design is already good and even in this state it's playable, it can only get better from here.

We have a long list of things people have been suggesting to us. We'll be working through the suggestions, but as long as our resources remain limited, my current prioritization will be to work on feature additions that add the most amount of fun and longevity to the game with the least amount of development time. This way, we should be able to keep up with our planned development cycle, adding smaller but more meaningful things first, and then moving on to the bigger features once those are completed.

As previously mentioned, we're also working on adding polls to Portal at some point, so players will be able to influence what we'll be working on for the next updates.

Some feedback I would like to highlight here:

• Chest balancing. It's not perfect right now, and people who don't walk much can find it frustrating how rare the chests are. Additionally, having transformation skill gear locked behind chest drops makes grinding transformation skills (carpentry, smithing, cooking, etc.) much slower than we would like. This issue is mainly due to the game not currently having other ways to obtain cool items. When we implement quests, random encounters, factions, and such, the gear and chests could be obtained from activities other than just randomly.
• GDTE's current lack of content. It has some content, but it's currently too little. It's not as big of an issue since the entrance to GDTE is gated and takes quite a while to reach, but it's something we want to focus on.
• Quality of life improvements. I love the suggestions people have been giving us, and I'll be working on making the game even easier and more user-friendly. One notable addition will be an option to start an activity immediately after arriving when choosing to travel somewhere. This way, you won't need to check your phone as often when traveling.

The overall perception I have is that most of the wave one players have really enjoyed the game. And the most important thing is how much it's helping people walk more, and the players have exceeded our expectations. I've received many lovely messages from our players saying that the game has helped them become much more active than before and maintain a consistent exercise routine. And I've experienced it myself too, my daily average has increased significantly since the CBT release. This is awesome, and our focus is and always will be to encourage people to exercise even more and provide a game with enough longevity that it becomes a habit.

Here's an amazing video from one of our players, Eric, that really made my day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1H_VSrzMCM&ab_channel=Eric

Rough short-term roadmap

Alright, it's time to create a short-term roadmap on how we plan to proceed from here. Later on, we'll also develop a more comprehensive roadmap that we'll continuously update as things progress. Please note that this is once again my attempt to estimate how long tasks will take, so there may be changes.

February

• Invite wave two participants
• Implement bug fixes and quality of life improvements
• Add minor content
• Introduce a friends system
• Include consumables
• Implement achievements-
• Adding localisations

March

• Release the first "actual minor update" that adds a few new features and more content.
• Include consumables and achievements if they are not ready before wave two.

April

• Release the second minor update.
• Invite wave three participants to the game.

May-June

• Release the first major update, which will introduce a significant new feature aimed at improving the game's longevity.
• Also include a minor update with smaller features to enhance longevity and content.

So, this is our current plan for the upcoming months! If we are able to expand the development team during this time, you can expect us to accomplish more tasks at a faster pace.

Convention in London

As the last thing, a small recap of how things went in London!

After the Closed Beta release crunch, I was pretty tired to start traveling right away. But the convention went really well!

The Pocket Gamer Connects convention was free for us to join, as I won some tickets from the pitching event last year. However, I feel like business-oriented conventions - although I always make some cool contacts - are not really that great. There were a bunch of students attending too, and we had our best conversations with them. I love people getting excited about the game and playing it (so consumers), not as much talking with investors.

We had plenty of investment offers once again, but I turned them all down. I feel that taking on investors, especially as we have the option to keep being in charge with the support we’re getting from Patreon and BMAC, would be a mistake in the long term. As long as I stay as the only stakeholder, we’ll have full creative control over the game and when it comes to monetization.

One of the absolute highlights was meeting with some WalkScape fans during the last evening in London. We had a blast, and thanks to everyone who showed up. Also, a big thanks to AP White, who helped us on the first day of the convention and gave some awesome feedback on how to improve our setup for future conventions.

I’ll probably show up in PGC Helsinki as it’s easy, but I’m also planning to join EGX in London, which usually takes place during Autumn.

Until next time

That's all for today! Hope you enjoyed reading the development blog, and as I mentioned, we're back to the two-week schedule to keep you posted as much as possible on the progress of the development.

Also, thanks for your patience during wave two. Now that I have taken care of all the other tasks, I am working to bring it to you as quickly as possible.

Stay hydrated and keep walking!