I figured that we should revive this thread. I'm going to start with a CROSSPOST from our kickstarter, but will start posting in-progress development stuff here! FROM KICKSTARTER
So, as many of you lovely backers may be aware, the original flash demo of Dad Quest (and a lot of our Kickstarter content) focused on a certain set of features and mechanics that were, at that moment, our intended vision for the experience of Dad Quest. As we briefly explored in our last post, a lot of these systems (child classes, equips, toys, the Dad Death cycle) worked really well for the short-scope of the demo that we produced for the Kickstarter, but fell apart in a number of ways as we started to actually begin implementing those systems into a larger game world.
This is, as it goes, classic game development. So after several months of spinning our wheels, building a NEW engine so we could switch to C# instead of Haxe, trying to produce what we promised and getting really REALLY depressed over how bad and uninspired it was, we decided to cut our losses, start over (in this new engine), and give it another try.
Dad Quest “2”
That was in August and since then, we’ve returned to our roots. At the beginning of Dad Quest’s development, we wanted two things.
ONE: To create a world where throwing Children around and using them as weapons was normal and internally consistent.
and TWO: To tell a story in this world that was funny, charming, and dumb.
We achieved goal one pretty early, but as we learned, our initial set of mechanics didn’t lend very well to telling a story--at least, not the type of story that we wanted. Great buzz-words like procedural generation, roguelike, and multiple generations of Dad got us excited and we tried to roll with it, but we’re being honest here, it just didn’t work out.
We wanted the absurdity, but we also wanted to have recurring characters too; and the narrative/gameplay mechanics associated with dying, time passing, and your Child growing up to be the new Dad was very funny, but made it difficult to create a world where we could tell our story, have the player feel a strong bond to their child, AND have it all make sense.
SO (part two), in this update, we’re going to address the new design of Dad Quest.
Changes:
- Hand-crafted levels with planned sequences (primarily humorous, occasionally heartfelt)
- A story where you play through the life of one Dad in the previously mechanical system of the Dad Cycle
- One Child that you raise and level up, getting attacks and Toys (passive abilities) as they gain experience and become a more powerful weapon
- Recurring characters
- Damp man
- Side quests
Here are a few images/gifs that show off some of these changes.
NPC Interaction 
Child Level Up 
The start of a hand-crafted sequenceOur goal is to release in early access in Q1. We decided to go with early access because we want to see what people think of the game and respond to that feedback as early as possible! We'll be looking primarily for feedback on what is the most fun for new players and then what mechanics, interactions, NPCs, etc that people want to see more of. Eventually we might even be asking for ideas for side quests and other content!
Community
