Warning: This is a boring technical update.
I've been working on a website, I'm hoping to get it up and running this week. It looks pretty nice. There's the website which is literally just two pages; the admin page which allows me to manage screenshots & downloads; and the API which will enable developing a launcher.
I think it looks pretty good though:
And so now I'm working on adding a launcher. (Small lie: working on analytics then launcher). The launcher will download the latest version of the game (if necessary) and then launch it. It's going to be a simple C#/WinForms app so it shouldn't be too hard to port to Linux / macOS using Mono.
I've had a few hundred downloads and only a handful of comments. Since I'd like to try and approach publishers in the future, I need data on play time, retention, etc when I launch the demo. There will be an opt-out mechanism (just run ItsyRealm.exe with /f:anonymous at the command line; it's a one-time thing unless you reinstall it or something like that). Analytics are pseudo-anonymous (they can't be linked to a specific player or person) but I'd like to give players the freedom to opt-out anyway.
I'm also adding a title screen and save select. This means multiple save files
. The title screen is gonna show areas of the game (only Isabelle Tower right now) in a Yoshi Island sort of way:
Unfortunately I'm going to need a code signing cert which runs upwards of $400 when I launch the demo so I don't have to deal with SmartScreen (that 'feature' is just a racket of Microsoft pushing the UWP/Windows Store platform, in my grumpy opinion) and have potential players freak out. But that's still about two months away...
It sucks, I want to be working on finishing the content but these little-big things need done at some point and I'd rather get them out of the way.
tl;dr: website, launcher, analytics incoming over the next couple weeks. As far as content, title screen & save select.