Not a Dead Game! [Roadmap Update]

               So, I've been working on this game and often I'm finding myself unsure of the direction. I'm not sure what the game is lacking but there's a distinct "empty" feeling. I don't feel having 100+ items and a bunch of potential areas that generate based off hand crafted experiences will fill that emptiness. It's like when you drink your coffee and think "It's good enough" and you keep sipping but after you don't get any energy boost and realized you spent $6 on a meh experience. Meanwhile you're wondering why the coffee the other day was unique, why it tasted exceptional and really lifted your day.
Then you realize, it just is lacking an important trait; passion. Each barista have their own preferred drinks and what they excel at; sometimes it's even just the mood their in that can change that coffee experience.

So how does this apply to my game? It's simple, I don't prefer large 3D games with a lot of open endedness to them. I really enjoy hand crafting a story that makes you feel something. I like to create fun experiences that while offering choice hold a fated story. While working on a game with friends I realized I was enjoying building it far more and it felt far more rich and larger than my technically larger world. 
Which is why Wish Upon a Brew is being...cancelled. This game just isn't what I want it to be and I failed it. But it's not dead, this version is cancelled but a new version is being crafted!

Wish Upon a Brew: Reimagined
Staring at the game I asked myself, What's the part of this game that I actually feel isn't needed and is an annoyance; just something to serve a "standard" and not the experience I want to offer. It was surprisingly easy to pick out, the game is blandly 3D. Most of my favorite games are 2D and 2.5D as well as 2DHD titles. While I love a lot of 3D games, the ones I go back to are typically not straight 3D.

I will be making the game more of a "Paper Mario" styled game where the characters will be 2D drawings and the world 3D but still 2D in a visual sense. This will reduce the size of the game while also increasing it making it more enjoyable with the new charm of the art I'm getting together for it. 

A lot of the gameplay is going to stay though while on the other hand A LOT IS CHANGING! And I gotta say, I'm in love with the changes. Besides the obvious shift to a 2DHD style the whole story will remain intact, the overall roadmap is staying intact, the whole running the cafe and exploring the wilds will remain intact. The bigger gameplay differences will be there's no longer a planned combat update, instead I want to add an action turn based combat system into the game the first update to this new vision!

People keep saying turn based is dead and I simply disagree, sure some series that strongly clinged to it like Final Fantasy are departing from it in newer titles. But I feel that's mainly due to them wanting to tackle their games in new ways because most games offer a "free" combat and it's lame almost every time. There's hardly any games with combat as satisfying as pulling off some moves in a game like Baldur's Gate 3 or Disgaea and other fantastic titles. I remember playing Final Fantasy IX and being at the edge of my seat each combat situation. Recently playing Fire Emble: Path of Radiance I was celebrating each win despite the game being tactics it still offers that slower turn based feeling.

So you'll run into beasts and monsters in the wilds off the bat that can complicate your adventures! And yes the areas in the wild will remain platformer-centric while offering some exploration which is why I won't say it's 2.5D but it's just no flat 3D.

Stuff like the phone menu and online ordering will persist. The city will be scaled down like in Paper Mario where a bigger area like a city may have 5-10 buildings rather than my original blockout with way more than that. This will make the whole game more manageable and more special. There's nothing special about endless rows of houses and shops, most of the time cities are known for their plazas and tourist centers; not their residential areas or commercial areas which make up the majority of the city.

Moving To a New Home
I've been a Godot ride or dev for years now, it really clicks into place for me; but is my comfort engine the best engine for my games? The answer is no, I want to be able to easily optimize and port this game to as many platforms as possible. I want to be able to run this on my phone and show it off. I want it to challenge me so I can grow as a developer.

Godot is great, but Unity and Unreal are the standards and Unity has a lot of great features Godot doesn't have or doesn't do as well. Plus Unity allows for much simpler and better exporting. I will always love Godot, but for now I need to build with another set of tools.

How Long Will This Take?!
The time between versions is unfortunately....long. And this will take a while to do, I'm rebuilding a month almost worth of work while reworking a lot of it and trying out new features. I'm also going to have to wait until art gets done for the game and I'm still in the middle of finding an artist who will do the art for the game.

I'm hoping to realistically have a new base version out within a month. Which seems wild since the original demo took 7 days and then another week or so for the update. But I want to carefully craft each piece this time to make sure the game is done properly.