We're finally here! After a little over a year working on the game, our demo has finally seen the light of day! We've been looking forward to this moment since the start of development and we're really glad it's finally out, so we want to talk a little bit about how we got here...

To be honest, we're pretty overwhelmed (in a very positive way) with the reception we've had so far. We never released a project this size and we didn't know what to expect in terms of numbers and interactions. The demo has had almost 300 downloads in the first 72 hours and almost 900 views. We've been on the "Popular" tab of Itch.io since the second day, starting at the 55th position and at 38th at the time we're writing this post. That is wild! And certainly surpassed any expectations we might have had.

The road to the release of the demo was long, though. Our first plans were to release it last March. Then it moved to April, then June and now here we are, releasing it mid July! There were many reasons for that, the first one being scope. Like we've said, this is our first project of this magnitude, and even though we try to keep everything controlled and organized, things do get out of our control pretty easily! In early March we started realizing we'd need more time, and the closer we got to finishing it, the more issues appeared, the more things changed. 

Some time in this process we realized we wouldn't be able to release the whole demo at once. Not if we wanted to put something out soon. So the decision to split the demo into two parts was made. This way we could really focus on polishing the first three levels and making them just as we wanted, with minimum compromise.

And as we got to this point we also decided to start calling the demo "The Prologue". That's because our demo is completely separate from the full game. Well, not completely, as we will use all the assets and tools we built until now to make the actual game. But none of the levels and story will be exactly the same. From pretty early on, we realized that for a game about unlocking all the six colors to make the world a colorful place, a demo that let you unlock only one or a couple of colors wouldn't cut it. We wanted to really give players a taste of the real thing and according to our plans for the story the player won't even find the first color right away, so the demo being just the start of the game wouldn't be enough. That’s when we decided to create this story about Iris exploring a small part of each area and unlocking the colors. It’s a similar story arch as the full game, but very simplified and just giving hints at much bigger adventures the character will go on later.

And then we had to think about platforms and how to maximize our reach at launch. We’ve always been set on using Itch.io, as the game was originally born during a game jam hosted on the platform (Rainbow Game Jam, 2017) and also, well, we just really like it. But we also really wanted to see our game on Steam. So a couple of months ago we started the process and got a Steam page as well. But it’s not published yet! Just as with the Itch.io page, we started preparing it really early, to make sure it was all pretty well set up. And in order to get the most out of each one, we decided to first release the demo exclusively here. That’s because if we launched on both platforms at once, we’d be possibly splitting our followers into two. And then both platforms wouldn’t get the most attention. Not only from our followers, but from us as well, as we’d have to be handling both launches at the same time while directing people to two different places. So expect the Steam page to be released once the full demo (with chapters I and II) comes out in a few months! And, of course, it will be available here on Itch.io as well!

Like I said, this is our first time for most of this stuff, so we’re still trying to learn. We’ve read lots of articles, seen lots of videos, and there’s always more to learn, but maybe we’re doing good for now! We’re just overall really excited to finally share our work with the world and we hope people keep finding our game and enjoying it, as it’s what motivates us to keep going. If you played the demo (or intend on playing it), thank you so much! And I hope we can all keep growing and learning together! 💗🧡💛💚💙💜