Friday 26 April 2019

[SPEE] The End is Coming

Hello everyone, hope you had a good new year.

It's a decent way into 2019 now, and well, it's been a long journey. 

It feels like just yesterday when I started SPEE.... it was during my first year university break. Years ago I had worked on a Pokémon fangame called "Pokemon Illusion", and was starting to get the itch to create another one. 

The game went though a lot of early iterations. From being about humans hunting glitchy pokemon, to considering gen4 graphics, then using gen3 graphics, then downgrading to gen2 graphics. 

One thing which set the direction firmly was how I'd always been fascinated by the idea of an Eevee which could switch evolutions, almost like a digimon... 
(Later I found out that the Pokemon Manga had this very concept!)

I managed to implement the eeveelution system, and started tilting the game to be focused around it. the concept started evolving to be more like "remix" of the 2nd gen games (my favourite ones). Breaking the 4th wall was a bit of a revelation to the story, because it allowed me to raise the stakes in a way that the official games couldn't. 

The game started taking same, it actually started becoming fun, I added the first gym, and made a thread on pokecommunity.com, where I released by first demo.

Anyway, that was back in 2010.



Now I've finally added the 8th and final gym. 

Wow, it's been literally 9 years of development so farIt feels surreal. 
I can see the finish line in sight. The only thing remaining is victory road and the final hypervisor battles. That means it's only 1-2 more update to go.

I can't believe I've made it this far. I've super proud of what i've accomplished in this game. It's everything I always wanted it to be. The game has been evolved and iterated a lot.... 

In this time I finished university, I got a software development job, I lost a lot of my free time.... and as much as I like working on the game, it was sometimes tough to stay motivated, especially during the middle years. 

I took breaks. I started other game projects that are in different states of development....
but I never gave up on SPEE because of all the love and effort I poured into it, and because of how much dedicated fans there.

So, thank you, to everybody who has supported the game, and I hope you continue enjoying the journey, and I also hope you continue following my other game projects after SPEE!



Also; here's some new screenshots of the upcoming update.