Alpha 3 Release Update

Hello!

Alpha 3 is chugging along.  According to gitlab, we are 93%.  Alpha 3 is our biggest and most major update yet, featuring a bunch of fixes, redesigns and new features, such as items and equipment!

Attached are new screenshots taken.

I predict Alpha 3 will be finished by the end of the month, if not sooner.  So keep an eye on it!

In the mean time, here are some functional updates:

• created a twitter account, which you can find here: https://twitter.com/runeseekergame.  The twitter will be updated on a constant basis, at least more constant than this log.
• Hired a marketing team to help create a community.
• Got the ball rolling on a steam page.  
• Hired Hay, a musician extraordinaire to create music!  **This next release won't have music, but it will be implemented in the next update!**

So exciting things.

And now for something not so exciting, and possibly controversial.  A lot of indie game devs are doing development for success.  We want to be the next Undertale, or the next Factorio, or some other cult-hit darling.  I'm taking a different approach - I'm creating this to tell a story.  Yes, I want it to be popular, and yes, I'm doing my best to polish it!

I took a look at one of the game development subreddits, and...it got me down.  I started to get frantic.  "Is Runeseeker going to be successful?  Is it going to find an audience?  Am I just wasting my time?"  I did not market research when I started this project.  I did not seek out my ideal customer.

And I got into my head about it.  And I almost considered giving up.

And I'm not.  And here's why.

Video games are an art.  Or at least, ideally they are an art.  Art is a controversial thing - you have successful corporate art, you have underground art, and you have art that appeals to no one (like sad clown paintings!).  But the key to art is that it's there!  It's out there.  It doesn't even have to find an audience.

I say this, because I grew up with artists.  My mother is an artist, and my brother was an artist.  They do completely styles of art - my mom does idealistic, impressionistic paintings that are remarked by large brush strokes and slabs of paint.  My brother, when he was alive, did screen printing and drawings involving rough lines and thin intricate lines, and often gothic and disturbing imagery.

Two completely art styles, and two completely different audiences.  And both audiences are valuable, no matter how big or small they are.  But what's the key difference is that my mom and my brother did not make art for the purposes for sell.  They did it because it was hobby, because they wanted to tell a story, because they wanted to dump what it was in their mind on paper.

So, yes, I did not do market research.   Yes, this game is very text-heavy, and it's only going to be on PC.  And yes, you can even argue that the gameplay is not innovative.

But at the end of the day, it's not shovelware.  I put a lot of passion into this project.  And you know what, that's worth something.  Even if it flops, even if no one finds anything they'd like, I'll use what I learn for the next project.  And the next project.  And who knows, maybe after I die, maybe it'll find an audience, like so many retro games have done recently.

Because at the end of the day, video games are art, and art is eternal.

Watch this space, dear reader - amazing things are ahead.