Desolation EP6: One Year Later - An Important Update

Hi folks! It’s been a good while since we have given you an update in the form of a development blog. I have dropped a few updates on our Twitter page which you can follow here and if you noticed the sidebar of the development blog here, I have given a few “smaller” updates there as well. But given how long it has been since we have given you a proper update in terms of development, it seems right to let you all know what has been going on. But before I go fully into depth…

Today marks one year since we dropped our Episode 6 update, and we just wanted to once again thank you all for the love and support you have given us and Desolation as a whole. Seeing you all enjoy the game, create fan art and craft theories really does help keep our passion alive for the project, even if we haven’t been that active in recent months, we are still here and we are raring to go! 

Now, many of you have properly been wondering.

Why hasn’t there been any Desolation updates since July last year?

As hopefully a good amount of you reading this are aware, we have been on an “unplanned hiatus” for a good while now. This was announced in my response to a bunch of questions asked on our Q&A thread, which you can find a link to those answers here (the thread is still open btw, please feel free to ask us questions still if you have any!). I didn’t go fully into detail regarding why we were on a hiatus at the time, but since it has been a good few more months since then, I feel it’s right to let you know what’s been going on with the Desolation team as of recent. 

To put it bluntly, our lead developer, or as you would know him as Caz, has been absent from development for a good while now. Outside of personal reasons for him taking a step back, he has recently gone head first into the medical profession as a career path, and for those who understand the ungodly hours that people who embark in healthcare have to work, you can imagine that his time to work alongside us on Desolation has been… limited. With this being the case and after having discussions with him, I have temporarily taken over the reigns as the lead for Desolation for the time being. Even though that is the case, Due to time constraints and our time zones not being the most cooperative, we haven’t been able to fully discuss how we want to progress with the story for Episode 7, hence that overall development for the game has been at a standstill for a good half a year now. 

I know for the fans out there, this is not the news you would want to hear from us after months of no updates. We on the team have been itching to get back developing the game for a good while now. However, without a clear indication of how we want to proceed with the story, we ultimately decided that announcing an indefinite hiatus from the project would be for the best.

With that said…

What’s next for Desolation?

To start, I think it would be safe to say that expecting Episode 7 to release this year would be a miracle. As annoying as that is to announce, we have to be realistic given our current circumstances, even if we were able to progress with development again within the next month, we do not want to rush out a product that is unfinished and unrefined. With the landscape of fangames evolving each year and the quality of games being produced consistently improving, it would not sit right for us to just quickly rush out something for the sake of making sure we release by the end of the year. With that said, I will try my best to make sure we give you all updates when we can, you can find us on X Twitter or in the Reborn Evolved Discord! Also watch this space as I might drop little updates here and there on the Blog Sidebar.

Even though Desolation has not made any significant progress in recent months, it fortunately doesn’t mean that nothing has been done in terms of improvements to the game. We have been getting updates for our codebase and development tools which should improve gameplay as a whole and make development a lot more convenient for us. I can’t say much more on this, but the team working on the scripts have been amazing and are extremely helpful, truly the power team of Reborn, Rejuvenation and Desolation coming together to defeat our sworn nemesis: code!

Also, I have been utilising this time recently in not doing much to give myself the most tedious job possible of organising the graphics folder for the game. This includes renaming sprites, deleting duplicates, and overall updates to make it easier for us to navigate the hellhole that is ~the Characters Folder~ if you know you know. This should also mean the download size for Episode 7 will be slightly less? By like a few MBs? Unless we go crazy and add a lot more? Which is very likely. Anyways this is not at all relevant to gameplay but thought I would share my pain with you all.

On that note, I don’t think there is much more to say. Our next development update will hopefully be showcasing progress made on Episode 7. Any further updates regarding our current absence will be made either on our Twitter page, on the Sidebar of the main Development Blog or announced in the Reborn Evolved Discord. 

Thank you all for being patient with us, rest assured that we as a team are still passionate about Desolation, and we will continue to work hard to bring new updates your way once we get back into the groove of development. I look forward to eventually showcasing the next chapter of our story. Until then, I wish you all a very positive and fulfilling 2024!

Posty