I still think it will happen. Just typical KS videogame delay and scope creep stuff combined with a developer that falls in a communication hole from time to time. There were large depays from the get go, but they were pretty much anticipated once several stretch goals were hit that were always going to add significant development effort to the project, expanding scope greatly.
If the screenshots are any indication, there is plenty of work going on. I am fully confident the intention to deliver is there and has been from the start.
There hasn’t been real news in several months, the beta was supposed to have come out past year. The dev behavior in the internal forum has been… strange. I wouldn’t hold my hopes for this game.
Last KS update email was 9th May - just over 4 weeks ago, not several months. There were two updates each in March and April. No idea about the forum behavior though, might go check it out.
I’m excited every time I see the screenshots in the updates, but yeah, this sure is dragging.
Well the forums certainly are a mess. Josh has not been active on the forum since Dec 2015. The other main dev/business partner Fenicks seems to be sporadically active as well:
There are folk running forum games there tallying weekly disappointments, so it is easy to see why the main dev backed away from it as the community engagement was deflating.
Anyway, seems like Fenicks is the primary source of update information on the forum and even he has not had much in the way of news from Josh lately:
So yeah, not all that comforting, but I live in hope.
That Which Sleeps is a game with a massive simulation aspect, something I’ve struggled to get working 100%. It’s something that was meant to give the game personality that other strategy games lacked, but has in the end cost me years of work with little to show for it on the back-end. The recurring failure has been a source of crushing anxiety for me, and has made facing our backers with that failure something that I’ve struggled with. Any anxiety you feel over the game’s delays I feel just as strongly, and I was continually waiting for things to “come together” so we could release the game in its entirety to our backers.
We are now simplifying the Behavioral AI that was the foundation for the simulation. Whether or not I think it would have ever worked fully I understand now that it isn’t fair to continually delay the game for an ideal vision.
I’d forgotten about this. That’s disappointing, but a simpler AI can also end up being a more challenging on, so fingers crossed this is still something worth investing in at some point.
I just wanted to take a moment to thank Joe (AKA Fenicks) for all the hard work, energy, and most importantly financial support he put towards That Which Sleeps over the past 2 years.
Unfortunately we have very different ideas of how this project should be handled moving forward and I’ve decided to continue developing the project without him.
Aside from the “the game basically can’t be played by the AI, so we’re scaling back our AI plans” post 4 months ago, I’m not aware of much being said anywhere, esp. since it looks like the official forums got wiped at some point.
I’ve seen him described as something as low as “community manager” and as high as “business partner.” The wording of today’s update makes it seem like the latter is absolutely possible, at least :-/
He was a business partner. Fenicks is the guy that has been desperately trying for a year to get the damn dev to talk to him properly, get access to the code, get info on releases/progress. Basically get any info at all from the dev who has withdrawn from basically any engagement - though he claims he is still working on the project
The forums are still alive but barely active.
I’ll put this behind spoilers as to not have it scraped:
[details=Summary]
Joe, aka Fenicks @ Nov 7 2016
Hi,
I am not posting in the other thread because it’s generally a nice place with a bunch of good people chatting away - so I didn’t want to ruin that vibe.
I have a few minor updates.
1 - I got someone to look at the code (not a game dev but someone that at least knows what they are looking at) and Josh still working and making regular updates. Due to the nature of the code being split up among his local machine and the cloud it’s hard to tell if its the equivalent of “food being pushed around the plate” or actual, impactful work - but he is definitely doing 'things’
2 - Despite my many attempts to get in touch it’s extremely clear to me that Josh has no interest in having me be a part of this project.
3 - I left the KDG bank account with about 10 - 12 months worth of ongoing “expenses” but I am officially done supporting this program as I have no insight, communication, or transparency to what Josh is doing.
I don’t really know where to go from here so I am stepping away for now - if Josh officially quits I will take over and try to find appropriate resources to get this project moving again - but due to some difficulties in my personal life and some questions rising in my -actual- work space I can no longer afford to fund this project blindly.[/details]
The differences in ‘how the project should be handled’ I expect come down to Joe wanting to get the community some progress transparency vs the dev wanting to hide away in seclusion after copping some flak from the community for repeatedly missing deadlines.
