Consider trying out the Monsterstone: Prelude demo and add the full game to your wishlist, and share it on social media, it would mean a lot to me, thank you!

A lot has happened in 2022. I was able to establish Bended Rules as a legitimate company for 6 months after several weeks of business related training and sparring. Many crucial elements like sound and music were added to the game. A lot of time was spent setting up a Steam page with all its assets. Thne, Monsterstone: Prelude got released into Steam Early Access, but I had to remove the purchase option as the game had not garnered much of any interest.

I made a lengthy post about the removal which you can read here if curious: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2115730/view/3422198662376369935?l=engli...

Though motivation plummeted, I managed to develop a playable demo version that is also available on Steam. Check it out, and why not wishlist the full game for later? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2115730/MonsterStone_Prelude/

Development of the game grinded to a halt due to a combination of christmas/new year, as well as the aftermath of having to close down my company and a lot of annoying ordeals related to my return into the “regular” Danish welfare system. I won't go into detail, but from a practical standpoint, I might as well have been allowed an extension that was requested, which would have allowed me to continue operating the company well into January. Had I been granted the extension, I would not have had to rush what little promotion of the game I managed to achieve, as well as the associated stress with having to do months worth of work within a few weeks instead. Monsterstone: Prelude was also not included in any sales as a result, as I had to spend the last of my 6 months closing down everything, which happened to be October, when the halloween sale was going on. I could rant about it for a long while, but to cut a long story short, I felt pretty burned out towards the end of 2022, and decided to chill out a bit to recuperate, get through christmas and new year, before looking at the game again.

What is next then?

And this brings me to what comes next. As it stands, I am not legally allowed to operate a business at the moment, so to do that, I am looking for a job (again). I also want to spend the time in between to work on the game. Right now, the main priority is to create more levels, specifically, tier 1 levels. Right now, the game has about 10 levels, including the tutorial and main story level, which is not a lot. The currently available levels also reflect what I want to do with all the 5 tiers, which is to have each tier reflect certain themes/biomes and naturally, resources.

Therefore I started work on more “temperate” or as I call them for now “forest” type levels. That can facilitate some level variation, and eventually allow me to implement tiered levels. So far, I have made and polished the terrain for 4 new levels. It takes somewhere around 2 hours +/- to make just 1 of these, which is quite fast considering the actual complexity of how it all works. I might talk a bit more in detail on this process in my next post, as I made somewhat of a cookbook for myself to ensure I remember all the steps.

On average, it takes about a day or two worth of work to make an entire level from scratch, so considering I need about 8~10 levels for each tier, + tutorial levels + potential storyline levels, it becomes clear that this will take months to achieve. This is also assuming that any prerequisite assets such as resources and other terrain features are already finished. There are a multitude of reasons why I eventually might have to remove any non-tier1 levels from the rotation until I have enough levels of the respective tier, but the primary one is the “bookmarking” system, which requires me to have at least 7 levels for each tier, in case 5 are bookmarked, and I want to avoid looping of 1 level. There is lots to talk about, but for now, I want to leave you with a teaser for one of the 4 new levels.