Hi all. My apologies for the lack of updates in the last while. After starting the Discord Server (https://discord.gg/Rrhy2Xkstt) I kind of forgot about the newsletter, and it just dawned on me that only about half of you are on Discord, so I should probably send out an official newsletter to update you on the goings-on in regards to the game. Also, in case you're wondering at the change of format to the newsletter; my website host wants to charge a fee now that I've crossed the 500 subscribers mark, so rather than do that, I decided to switch over to tinyletter as they allow 10x more subscribers for free. I'll worry about what to do when we cross 5k subscribers when the time comes :P

On May 25th I posted an update to the discord channel explaining that I pulled out of the June Next Fest as the alpha wasn't near ready. Mostly I had just signed up for the Next Fest as a motivator for myself, and I didn't expect to be ready in time, but I was hopeful. In the interest of keeping this short, I won't go into full details on the different announcements from the Discord channel. Instead, I'll invite you all to join us over there if you want more moment-to-moment updates. The one major update I did want to brief you all on is the current status of the project. The TLDR is that I'm trying to figure out the best way to bring in some money so I can hire a programmer to work with me and bring co-op to the game, as well as shifting focus to a modern re-interpretation of the Precinct Assault game mode since everyone who joined the Discord Server told me that's the part they loved the most from Future Cop. If you want the nitty-gritty details, read on.

Silhouette - New gameplay teaser

Prior to starting L.A.P.D. 2195, I was working on a Story Based Mystery Adventure Game called Silhouette, but I put it on the back burner around September of 2020 after realizing that I had bit off more than I could chew in regards to its design and completing the game as a solo dev was going to take a really long time. Mostly due to all of the secondary characters in the game and the vast library of animations I was going to have to complete - especially all of the lip-syncing for the dialogue. The game was sitting around the 75% complete mark at the time, but that extra 25% was likely to take another 3 years, so I thought maybe it would make more sense to work on a smaller project; which is where L.A.P.D. 2195 was born. After working on L.A.P.D. for around 8 months though, I suddenly had an idea on how I could re-work Silhouette to be a lot easier for me to finish on my own. Cut out all of the secondary characters, and introduce a drone companion that would essentially replace all of those characters without needing all of the extra animations, and I could use a text-to-speech program for his voice. Around January of this year, I made the hard choice to put L.A.P.D. on hold right now so I could see about getting Silhouette finished by the end of the year, and then I'd have another game to sell, and with it, hopefully, a way to bring in some more money that I could put into L.A.P.D.

A few months after switching to working on Silhouette, I got an invitation from Steam to participate in the Halloween Fest this October with my first game Beast Mode: Night of the Werewolf. I released the game back in 2017, but I'm not going to complain if it takes Valve six years to try to help me promote the game. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth right? So, I spent the next few days working my butt off non-stop to release the 2.5 patch for Beast Mode which addressed some of the long-standing issues with the game, like the fact that one of the Steam Achievements was literally unachievable for some people. It was almost physically painful to dive back into the game's code as I made it when I had only been programming with Unreal for a short while, and it was essentially like walking into a house that was in the process of collapsing under its own weight because it was built by someone who didn't understand the first thing about support structures and, you know, physics. So, I decided if I'm going to join the Halloween Fest, I want the game to be the best that it can be, so about 2 months ago I decided to completely re-work the game by mid-October!

Beast Mode: Night of the Werewolf 3.0 Update WIP

So that's where I'm at right now. Cranking my butt off to try to get Beast Mode ready for Halloween, at which point I'll dive back into Silhouette in November with the goal of getting it finished by Spring next year so I can move back to L.A.P.D.! I'm hoping with two games it'll be enough to generate a modicum of a revenue stream to enable me to make L.A.P.D. even better. We'll see if it ends up being worth the effort, but I really want to make sure L.A.P.D. is the best damn game it can be, and sometimes that means making some hard choices like focusing on other projects for a short while. So L.A.P.D. is NOT canceled by any means. Just on hold to prioritize helping my other games across the finish line. I'm really excited with the ideas I have for the game and looking forward to getting back to working on it full-time next spring!

Thanks so much for your support, patience, and understanding. Be sure to check out both of my other projects Beast Mode: Night of the Werewolf and Silhouette and if they interest you, buy a copy or add it to your wishlist. Those of you who join us on Discord will get an invite to join the Beast Mode 3.0 beta in early October.

Looking forward to seeing you all on Discord!