When you’ve been working on something for as long as we have been working on Together Alone, there’s always the danger of going native. You become so engrossed in this one project that you forget about the world outside of it. The project becomes your world and you its god and creator. Before you know it, you’ve set yourself up to be worshipped by the very images and classes you’ve created. It happens more often than you realise, and it’s not pretty.

Nope, not finished yet. But it’s totally close! I’ve finished the last images. Alternative animations for the characters. I’m sure small stuff will still come up, but the bulk is done. Jan is totally cracking down on those nasty bugs. The big important list is almost empty.

What’s left: some sounds to add, (code) polishing and music. The tempo has not always been very high the last months, but we have kept going and it pays off! The end is in sight. Halleluja!

Dropoff rates are fairly stable until about 3/4 through the demo.

When you make a game, you want people to enjoy it. But how do you know if they do? Most of your friends will tell you it’s great, even if they got stuck on level 2 and decided to go do something more fun, like cleaning the oven.

Another problem is that of numbers. If you don’t have hundreds of friends, and the ones you do have are busy sanitizing their kitchen appliances, you’re not going to get enough data to base decisions on. In other words, you need a lot of people who are actually playing your game, and some way of figuring out what parts they’re enjoying, and what parts they’d rather do without.