Alpha devlog #1

Welcome everyone to the rebirth of Crystal Realms's devlogs! You guys have been asking for them, so here they are (with a few changes).

Devlogs are back

Are you craving insider knowledge about the game's development? Tune in to the now MONTHLY devlog here in itch.io. We will discuss the state of the game, future plans and our thoughts about the game's direction. We have chosen to move away from weekly devlogs due to the high effort put into them and the lack of novelty in doing them so often. In addition, our current biweekly game update model made it very hard for us to have new things to say every week. 

The focus of these devlogs will also shift a bit. We plan on making it more about the game's future and development insights and less of a straightforward update showcase.

Update recap

Its been about 6 months since the last devlog, so lets revisit everything that we have done during this time.

Friends update: This was a highly requested feature, and with the rapid growth of the game it felt like the right time to do it. It also brought back emotes.

Ancient treasures: We had noticed that the desert and snow realms felt empty and not rewarding enough, so we added a unique way to obtain loot in them. We also added many decorative blocks to the desert and the snow golem. (This is when David took over as the main artist of the game)

Community wishes: This update introduced a bunch of items and features requested by players. Some examples include: The ability to change backgrounds, disabling knockback in realms, an expansion to the music system, and the highly anticipated water block.

Realm of the day: The ROTD update was something we had wanted to do for a while. This added a reward for showcasing your creativity, which was needed in the game.

Parkour update: This update was a way for us to introduce a few traps that we needed for the goblin hideouts update.

Daily quests: A small update that added daily quests, to encourage more variety in players' gameplay.

Easter update: Our first big scale event since halloween, which focused on adding an egg hunting mechanic that brings players together. This update also introduced a big amount of new items (and most importantly, spoons).

Special event madness: At first we were planning to just add these special events to the game but this didn't feel exciting enough. Because of that, we decided to turn it into a week long event, in order for players to get used to the different special events.

Goblin hideouts: Probably the most ambitious update we've done gameplay wise. It added our first ever NPC, a new way to earn shards, and a ton of new blocks and enemies. We had been planning this update since January and we are specially proud of it. A week later we expanded on this by adding a set of ancient goblin items.

Summer splash: The first ever PVP update to the game, along with a couple of amazing arenas built by our moderator Regas. It also added a ton of summer themed items.

Infection update: We wanted to introduce a new way for players to interact with each other. The vision was for it to be slightly annoying but also fun and silly. 

Current state of the game

Lately we have been hard at work at improving the stability of the game on some mobile devices. Since the launch on android there have been many devices that were unable to play the game. This was due to the graphics library we were using to render the game, so we have switched to a different one with broader support.

This switch fixed it for a lot of players who couldn't play, but it has also brought a new set of issues to other devices (we are working on it!). This last week we have focused on adding a way to monitor crashes in order to keep track of what causes the issues.

Besides that, we are happy with the current state of the game. The goblin hideouts have brought a more engaging way to earn crystal shards, while also adding interesting items and mechanics.

What the future holds

Let's talk about the direction we want the game to go in. We will NOT go into any detail about the next update, but instead focus on some of our long term objectives.

We wanna add new ways to progress in the game (just like what the goblin hideouts did). For the next one we want to add a more relaxing and cosy gameplay experience that doesn't require combat. This update will be BIG, and we wanna take our time to do it right. We believe that players will enjoy it thoroughly. Our current estimation is for it to release around the end of this year, or early next year. (P.S. it's not fishing, for now...)

Another thing we have been thinking about is the scale of the events we have been doing. As you probably know the game is in alpha, so we are still working on establishing the base of the game. Every event we do takes time and efforts away from improving the base gameplay experience.

The Summer splash event was our biggest yet and included 40+ new items, along with its own game mode. This was a huge effort, which might have been better spent on some permanent features. We are not saying we will stop doing events, but we don't wanna saturate the schedule of the game with them at the expense of improving the core gameplay. This said, you can expect the next event to be halloween (Although we will improve it, and add new items).

And that's everything, we would love to hear your thoughts about it in our discord server. Expect the next devlog to be posted here in about a month. Thanks for reading!

- PIEMEN, Anubis and David