Hello! A lot to cover here so I’ll get right to it!

Me and Trent just released Contract Rush: Mission Sin, a short prologue where you can demo the character “Sin” and try out his moveset. 

We tossed around the idea of making a web version of the previous demo, but I think it’s more interesting to have this as a totally standalone game! Keeps the full DX game more of a surprise too for those that didn’t play the Next Fest demo. 

Go give the game a try and come back when you beat it! I’ll wait here.

Wow good job, welcome back. 

Now for the Contract Rush DX update…

We’re still working on it! What a dang shock. The past few months have been a grind to make all the endgame content. I said before on twitter that the game was playable start to finish, but that was only the normal ending.. We still had to create additional content afterwards for the TRUE ending. I’ve learned from Undertale Yellow that the best way to overscope and take too long is by having multiple endings, so of course we decided to do that.

Developing this final stretch does remind me of Undertale Yellow a lot, though I have a lot more categories of work to do this time. I sometimes go to Master Sword for advice and help since he’s been in these shoes before, scrambling to get everything together as director in the last months of a games development. 

We’re just about done with the true ending, we’ve got all perks and key items in, and nearly every sub contract. I’d place us at 93% complete with the game. There’s a very small amount of extra content to be made, and then just polish for the remaining months. 

For the release date… Pretend to be shocked when I say we’ll slip from the “spring” date ever so slightly. Why? Well, I was always planning to be cheeky with the spring date, and release it around the literal last day of spring. Upon hearing some advice to be wary of June release dates for indie games, we reconsidered and thought about it a bit more. 

Long story short, it will be more so Q3 than Q2. A lot of this time will be dedicated to polish. We likely COULD make an earlier date, even May if we really aimed for it, but it’d be a mess. This additional time also allowed us to make Mission Sin, so hopefully that’s an okay apology! I can’t give a solid date right now, but it won’t be long until we can. 

In other news… I can now introduce Team Ficus! This is our studio name we’re working under now, and the team we will be releasing future games under. Nothing has really changed, it’s currently still just us two, but think of this as a commitment to still creating games in a similar style for (hopefully) many years to come.

We have a website, and a Steam developer page (do give it a follow, that helps a ton! It’s like wishlisting, but for developers.)

The plan for Contract Rush DX is the same. No publisher, just us. We hope that if it’s successful, we can continue being totally independent and maybe bring in others to work with us! Who knows what the future holds, but it is exciting to be at the beginning.

That’s all, maybe my longest devlog I wrote yet. Thank you for reading!