River City Ransom: Underground

Anniversary Update
over 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 11:29:07 PM

Hello Backers,

Today marks the three year anniversary of receiving the funding from Kickstarter and when development began in earnest.

If you haven't been keeping up with us on Facebook and Twitter, the backer forums or our Steam Greenlight page, rest assured we are moving ever closer to the finish line.

Here are the final areas of development, and our status in each.

Localization

While we will support as many languages as possible, we have committed to a Day One release in English and Japanese. The Japanese translation is completed and integrated into the game, and while we will continue to fine tune it and make small additions based on feedback, we are ready to go there.

Steam Integration

Our steam integration is progressing well. We have all achievements and cloud saves operational, while integration of Steam matchmaking with our existing LAN and Internet play has been designed and is waiting on implementation. We are distributing internal developer builds directly in Steam now, so we can polish the experience as much as possible before launch. We are not sure yet if we can run the final beta backer preview through Steam, but as soon as we find out we'll let you know.

Gameplay

We continue to polish, balance, fix bugs, and work to ensure the game's AI can proficiently do all of the (approximately 500 unique) moves and actions that human players can do. We added CPU players into Arena mode so you can play against the computer, and we added team selection so you can play deathmatch, 2v2, and so on. Our primary goal now is getting to a final backer preview level of quality and getting that into your hands. Once that is out the door, we will fix as many bugs that beta backers find as we can, before issuing a "stream-friendly" version for beta backers at the same time as we set a release date.

So, to summarize, we are are in the final phase of development, we have potentially three releases incoming ("RC1", for beta backers, "RC2" for beta backers that they can stream ahead of the full release, hopefully on Steam, and launch).

We'll be working to get the Steam Store Page up in the near future and will let you know when we do.

Best,

Team RCRU

P.S. If you are interested in technical details and haven't checked out Andrew's developer videos, they are linked below. The next sequence of videos will be discussing our AI systems. 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPMWQb41awm62M5YE3zzAKyw5Odka6JR

Next steps for a release
almost 8 years ago – Fri, Jul 01, 2016 at 11:09:43 PM

Hello backers,

As you know, Q2 has ended, and we have not pressed the launch button yet. We worked very hard to finish up as planned, but fell a bit short.

The good news is that RCRU is now content complete! 

Our remaining tasks to get to launch are about fixing bugs, adding polish and balance, and making sure the game plays well with Steam. 

For a team as small as ours, working as we have, getting to content complete feels great and lets us focus on quality from here on out.

We want to get the game out to you as soon as possible, but we also don't want to rush it out the door just before it's ready. So we'll continue to work on getting the game ready to launch, and providing a release date as soon as possible. 

When the game is feature complete (works with Steam), we will release a final preview to backers as planned, which will closely match the final product. We'll use that preview to iron out any remaining issues, and then we'll join you all at the finish line.

Q1 Update
about 8 years ago – Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 07:57:01 PM

Greeting backers,

Thank you all, again, for your patience, while we make that final, last, for-real-this-time crawl towards the finish line on River City Ransom: Underground.

Back in September 2013, we were one of the “Big Four” games successfully backed on Kickstarter. One of our little motivations has been to try to be the first team in that group to hit release. Sadly, we aren’t. But, a huge congratulations is due to Hyper Light Drifter for releasing tomorrow! It’s not easy, and we definitely know it! 

We recently sent out backer Preview 3, and your feedback has been tremendously helpful in identifying bugs and usability issues in the game. What we did not tell you at the time is that Preview 3 was the end result of a big push to finish and release the game. We made a great deal of progress, but not quite enough to be able to call the game “done”. (Plus, we introduced a lot of bugs.)

What we are working on now is Preview 4, which will hopefully be very close to release – both in terms of quality and in actual release date. While we will slip into Q2, we continue to work steadily, and hope you are looking forward to it! 

Team RCRU

P.S. Go play Hyper Light Drifter, it looks fantastic!

Preview 3 is on the way!
about 8 years ago – Thu, Mar 03, 2016 at 10:17:55 PM

Hello Backers,  

As you know we've released 3 previews to date, with the last preview 2.5 being a roll-up release of various combat gameplay bugs in versus mode. 

And then, we went quiet... 

Today, we're happy to to say that we've emerged from an intense crunch period and reached a major milestone in development. All major story content has been completed, and we're working now to close the gap in secondary content, bug fixes, and polish, to be release ready. 

So with that news we'll be dropping Preview 3 shortly, which will be playable through Act 1 of the game's story. Preview 3 will automatically show up in your available downloads on the previews page in your Beta Program email. We'll drop a note on Twitter and Facebook when you can expect to see it in your download list.

If you have any issues getting set up please email support. 

Now with that said, this is still a preview, which means there are bugs, both known and unexpected, and missing content, so if you want to have the "full experience", we recommend you hold off on Preview 3, but if you like to report bugs and tinker, then you'll have fun with this one. 

The team is now preparing to go the distance and complete the game. We're excited that we're so close to the finish line, and looking forward to seeing you on the other side.

Combo Video and Backer Preview 2.5
over 8 years ago – Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 11:38:11 PM

Hello everyone,