Less than a month ago, we released the demo version for Project Paradise. Anticipating that many of you would enjoy an adventure game set in paradise, we knew that we’d get some positive feedback, but we were unprepared for both the volume of feedback and how quickly our little game demo would spread around the world!
In just three weeks we’ve had nearly 450 players from around the world try our game demo, and have received dozens of feedback submissions. (If you forgot to fill one out, be sure to visit the link here!)
Thank you all for making this demo launch so successful!
Next up, we wanted to take the opportunity to respond to some of the more common feedback and suggestions we’ve gotten. (If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll know we’re also scheduling a Q&A video for YouTube, which may answer some of these issues while also responding to questions we’ve gotten there on Instagram.)
1. Where’s the playable girl character?!
From early on in development, we suspected that this would be a frequently requested feature, so this one wasn’t surprising in the least! A good number of you would much rather play the game as a woman, and we totally understand. We also love games that allow character customization, which certainly makes the gaming experience that much more immersive and personalized.
However, unlike an open-ended “sandbox” game like The Sims, one of Project Paradise’s core elements is the story-driven game play; specific events are triggered in the course of the game that contribute to a overarching, cohesive story. Since much of that story is anchored to the main character, James, changing the gender is no trivial matter.
The other issue here is that a female character would create some rather tricky situations (ie, would a sister be alone with Otto in his cabin at night?). While being sensitive to these types of issues may seem overboard to some, we feel we have the responsibility to take everything into consideration here.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that there are only men in the game. In fact, we’re working right now on a female NPC in the game who will play an important part in rebuilding the town. These sisters will have their own stories to tell, and will be as active and capable as the male characters. (Side note: for those of who were concerned with Jan's lackluster personality, expect to see her character evolve over the course of the game!)
2. Help! I want to play this game in my language!
One of the most surprising things about our demo release is seeing the amount of traffic and downloads coming from non-English speaking regions, like South America and Europe. Judging from the feedback we’ve gotten (some of which has been written in Spanish and Portuguese), we’re not exactly sure how these players are experiencing the game (our guess is Google translate?), but you can be assured that we would LOVE for all of you to be able to experience this in your native language.
However, with so many other things taking precedence with game’s development, translation (aka “localization”) is still a ways off. The game is still in early production; jumping into localization this early would almost certainly mean redoing much of this work later on.
So yes, multiple languages are coming for Project Paradise’s final release, but not for the demo versions. Please be patient with us!
3. Demo versions, you say?
Yes! We’re currently at work on Project Paradise Demo Ver 0.1.1. This build will be slightly more robust than the current one, and we’ll be fixing some other issues, like making the tutorial clearer and solving some tricky edge cases (fainting in Otto’s cabin, for example, or how the meeting would occur on the first Sunday even if you hadn’t yet built the tent. Two players even discovered an exploit for infinite sticks!) So yeah, we gotta fix this stuff. We’ll release the updated version and then get to work on new content.
In other news, we received our very first piece of fan art a couple of weeks ago! How cool is this rendition of James?!
Finally, we recently released the Project Paradise OST on YouTube. Check it out below!