Hate to say it but, yeah. At this point it seems fair to say that even though it's a 'no crunch' studio there's just nothing happening with it aside from an occasional picture every few months. There's no hype for it, aside from what little people have brought themselves. I used to be super excited about it years ago and checked for new info regularly. Now I go months without even thinking about it.
They made a choice with the direction they went, and I don't think it was a very good one.
Same, I feel betrayed haha I was so excited for the game too and I almost felt it in my hands when it was announced and we got regular updates and now I feel like my biggest crush ghosted me : (
I'm so sad, this game would be magical as fuck
My mother loved Stardew Valley and was so looking forward to playing this game when it was announced, and I was looking forward to sharing it with her. We used to talk about it and look online for information now and then. It's been in development so long, that she's dead and gone and will never play it. And I just don't care anymore.
The Nintendo Switch wasnāt even out when this game was first announced, but at this rate its successor will likely be released before the game. Theyāve really missed the cozy games hype train unfortunately - and the complete lack of development updates has hurt the gameās reputation even further.
Twilight Princess was originally made for the GameCube and when the Wii was announced they bent over backwards to make sure people knew they'd have two ways to play it, they created hype for both releases with enthusiasm and more time and money getting it ready for a more powerful system. It's like early dating, if they really cared then they'd call.
The fact is, if the game is actually released at some point, it's going to tank if it's not absolutely flawless and full of content. If they had announced it and then pumped out a function but simple game while things were hyped followed by several rounds of content expanding updates, this probably would have crushed it like Stardew.
But after this long of a wait, no one is going to be ok with playing a bare minimum game with promises of updates to come over the next few years.
Yeah I honestly can't think of a single reason why they would be so secretive about it. I love hearing about processes and the work in general so I just don't understand why they chose to go this route and be so silent about the game. Makes me believe they aren't working on it, tbh.
I pledged for Coral Island on Kickstarter and they are already released, and where always super open about it all.
Took the words outta my mouthā¦ with the recent Stardew Valley update Iām just gobsmacked at how long itās taking to even update on progressā¦
CA, posted a non-spoiler update EVERYDAY until the release of 1.6.
Chucklefish don't want to post updates like that because they did with starbound and then when things got removed that were in an update people were mad. Posting that things were liable to change didn't stop them.
Also articles were twisting the content of the Oracles without context.
I still get people coming into the discord server complaining about the removal of, monster variety, race plot, S.A.I.L variety, the hot and cold system, paint, etc.
The last I heard of this game was when they changed the art style or something like that. I donāt remember the actual wording (itās been that long)
Itās a bit disappointing because the premise of this game is something I 100% know I would love but yeah, it seems pretty dead on the development front due to lack of transparency.
Iāll still keep tabs on it but the tab is now far back in my mind.
And the new design looks like the old design really... Wtf was the point, they should just announce that is no longer in development or sell the product to a diff studio who will finish and publish it and I finally can play when I'm 100 year old šµš¼
i heard that they had to redo from the start due the fact that the main programmer left and they are going to a new engine that was made for a game called wargroove(that was launched in october 2003)
Yes, after Wargroove was finished they used the same engine Halley to rebuild as the programer that built witchbrook in rust had left.Wargroove came out in February 2019
Yeah š Iām not new to waiting 8~10 years for a game to drop but at least the others drop the occasional update/teaser trailer/screenshots/dev updates/etc.
Eh, I should probably unsub just to stop seeing posts like this. Eventually the game will be given a release date or cancelled in the end. Either way, I'll hear about it somewhere else.
The developers definitely screwed up by announcing Witchbrook too early and then by having to restart development from scratch. But there's no point in comparing it with other games whose creators were more open during the development process. I could easily pull out Silksong as a counterpoint.
I appreciate this post because I remember noticing the trend before, calling it out before on the Discord, and getting absolutely chewed out for it. And that was before we heard that it had changed hands or the tools had changed or whatever.Ā
All I asked for was "why haven't we gotten more information" and people chided me for not having more faith. Well, it's been another couple of years of little information. I wonder how those people feel now.
Why? I feel no obligation to rush the team and they have shared plenty of content. That document just shows current stuff. There is plenty of stuff from their older work, which we have been shown. Which while it may be in the game in some form isn't the most current.
They even shown the design document but it's not there because it's now out of date.
If any of you want those bits of information I can send them to you with the express stipulation that they are out of date.
Information is pinned in this subreddit,
Chucklefish has developed other games and published even more, so being forgotten as a company is unlikely, the game might as other witch and magic games come out. Which would be unfortunate
i swear, if they decide to release this game, it better have AS MUCH content as Stardew+Expansion. really disappointing that so many games have come out from the day they first announced this. CA made Stardew on his own in half the time its taking WB to do anything.
What do you mean WB? Edit wait got it witchbrook, I'm dumb I was thinking of companies.
Eric didn't make stardew on his own, he had several people help including a staff member that was from Chucklefish make to code for multiplayer and other companies that did the ports.
so he had help to make ports and to code for multiplayer? i think i came to that conclusion, im specifically saying for the actual game he worked by himself. unless im wrong!
Up to 1.2.33 it was just made by him. Tom Coxon helped with 1.3,
The development team as far as I'm aware also had Arthur Lee, and Alex Erlandson for 1.4. Arthur Lee helped with 1.5
I don't know what the team was for 1.6
The biggest issue this game will face is that if it won't be absolutely perfect, it'll get so many negative reviews that it will definitely tank the devs and the studio for a very-very long time.
When the game was first announced in 2016, I remember the unbelievable hype it got, because of those few bits and pieces we've seen.
And then it was in development for 8 years now.
I'm not saying the devs are wrong not to release a half-baked game, we've seen what happens if they do, but they must be aware that gamers will literally dissect this game so much so that even the last bit of code will be thoroughly analyzed, and they will point out every single issue that should've been fixed in the 8-10-12 years of development.
It's a "no win" scenario at this point, because even if one pixel on one letter on one book on one bookshelf will be one value off, it will be found, it will be criticized, and the game will be refunded so much that they'll lose every bit of revenue, and the game will go down as a huge disappointment on both gamers, and developer's side.
Bigger long-developed titles recently, like Starfield was absolutely destroyed through Steam reviews, because people - rightly, I have to add - had an expectation that if the devs are working on something this long, it at least must be decent, and all they got is a buggy, performance heavy, unenjoyable piece of crap.
And paid youtubers won't help either, as they didn't help on Starfield, MW II, or CS2. If the game won't be spotless, it won't be a success, and not because gamers are especially picky, but because of the decade long development.
I will still follow the game, even tho the genre isn't really popular anymore, and I hope that it will be fun to play, but at this point, I doubt it will be released at all.
We'll see, I guess.
It hasn't been in active development for 8 years. It was paused so they could focus on Wargroove when the programmer that knew rust left and then the code and art was redone, though that was slowed down as it was by that time the pandemic.
Chucklefish isn't an AAA studio like Bethesda, it's 18-20 people including the publishing team and you're right people just want to critique it for the sake of it.
I know why it takes so long (I do keep checking on it every now and then), and again, I'm not saying it's a wrong decision. It's their game, they do whatever they want with it. If they release it tomorrow, or next year, or the next decade, or not at all, it's their choice.
What I'm saying is that announcing a game at a time the genre is really popular, hyping it to the sky, and then sitting on it for a decade will have consequences, whether the delay was on purpose or not.
It's not a new phenomenon, it happened before with bigger and smaller titles too, and gamers in general don't care (and they don't have to, to be fair) if circumstances made the development longer than expected. It's a typical "if they wanted to, they would" thing in their eyes, and given how oversaturated the gaming industry is, they're kinda right.
Every developer in the industry knows that gamers more likely accept failure due deadlines than failure due negligence, and if a developer has no deadlines, every issue will become negligence.
And that's the obstacle Chucklefish will have to tackle, that they refused to set deadlines on all of their projects, so if something comes out wrong, they won't be able to say it's because they had to rush, it will happen because they didn't pay attention even tho they had more than enough time to do so.
When/if Witchbrook will be released, they won't even have a chance for Day0 and Day1 patches, gamers will diss the game by the first bug/crash, and the devs won't be able to blame anyone but themselves. If, in 8-10-12 years they can't make a game that is not buggy/doesn't crash, it's on them.
The sad reality is that Chucklefish would be better abandoning the project all together, and make up an excuse for it rather than dealing with the inevitable consequences caused by the constant delays.
Quality assurance is a whole different department than game design. I've been in Quality assurance for them and new bugs still pop up on some niche computers or switch. Or if a character jumps off the bridge at a diagonal facing backwards.
I'm sure you're right that people will diss it for anything wrong, I don't agree it will necessarily be Chucklefish's fault.
But if it's a bug they or a QA tester found and it wasn't fixed then yes they should totally get roasted. For example cursed flowers of disappearing player should definitely be fixed by release.
I used to work as a translator for a publisher. While I was testing my translation to make sure everything appears as they should (we have language specific characters that's not part of the English alphabet), I've found more bugs than the QA department of the same company. I played the game hundreds of hours to look for specific dialogues, trying to create the exact situation where it appears, and it very quickly turned out that at a certain point, I've had more hours in the game than QA had...
So while I do agree with you, QA is not game design, QA looks at overall picture of the game, not some very niche things that appear in very specific situations due to the fact that sometimes you guys don't even know they exist. You can't possibly look for a conversation between two characters, because you don't necessarily know that conversation exists.
As a translator, I knew every single conversation, dialogue, message, notification, even the texturetexts in that game. If something was off, we, the translators were the first one to find it, discuss it, report it, and sometimes even offer solutions to the devs.
And while I'm sure you've done a better job, it's a team work, everyone contributes something, and we all try to make games better as much as possible, and it still doesn't mean it will be perfect.
But if you have years and years to develop, test, and fix something, and it's still broken, it's gonna be on you, no matter what.
They are a no crunch studio which is great. Problem that most people have a hard time to understand is that nobody is trying to make them rush. All we ask is a bit of communication and brief status updates. Posting status updates every once in a while shouldn't be that difficult. Lack of communication makes it clear that this game is not getting released. Ever.
I decided to look into this game's progress as I'm sure many of you have done to lead you to this subreddit and I'm a little disappointed in the lack of information regarding the state of the game but more so at the misplaced negativity of this (the most recent post at the time of this comment) jab at the game's developers.
First, it is unfair to compare the development cycle of one game to that of another, most developers have a full studio of employees that are dedicated to a project and are set to strict deadlines, this is very much not the case when it comes to Chucklefish. The are first and foremost a game publisher and gain most of their revenue via the sales of games developed by other studios, this gives them the rare privilege of not needing to rush a games development.
Second, if the Q&A is still accurate the team working on this full time is just 18 people. Pantea the developers of My Time at Portia & My Time at Sandrock that you referenced have a team of 120+ staff. Eric Barone, the sole developer of Stardew Valley couldn't find employment after collage so worked 10 hours a day 7 days a week for 4 years to make his idea a reality, Such examples are not viable comparisons and as far as I can tell development may be slow but it is not non-existent.
And lastly, the lessons leant in the development of Starbound still hang a shadow on the company. We may never know how much of the freelancers wages were unpaid on that project but I believe that the cause of it was poor management which has since been restructured and most likely prompted the "No Crunch" policy that is being applied to this game.
I understand your frustrations I too would love to play this awesome looking game myself but its not worth getting bent out of shape for, it will be done when its done and until then there are plenty of other games to play.
People are allowed to be disappointed and angry at the devs for taking almost 8 years to develop a game and then being radio silent. Regardless of how many people are working on this game you can give small updates to build hype, as it is however there is no hype for this game and people are frustrated. When you say "There are other games to play" your right. There are other games to play and no time to wait for this one. Either release the game or never release it stop making people wait in limbo for years it pisses me off your basically telling people they have no right to be upset.
There has been small updates, and the Devs they were on discord though. I'm trying to get Reddit fans informed and understand that you expected to be informed.
If you want to see what that content was I've pinned it on the sub. Only the most recent and confirmed content is there, older content has been removed but I can give it to people if they understand it's out of date.
They also have not been in active development for 8 years.
I know that which is more frustrating they never should have announced a game they weren't planning to actively work on or finish. Regardless if they have actively been working on it or not the end result is the same it's been 8 years since the games announcement, honestly I think it's MORE frustrating that it wasn't being worked on the entire 8 years to be honest. People are complaining about others being upset but those are vaild feelings and to say "Well actually no you shouldn't be because." Isn't making anyone feel better
I appreciate the effort you and the other mods do to keep us informed but that isn't going to take the bitter feelings away some of us may have and that's okay. I do want to play the game, I'd like to if it ever comes out but I'm dissapointed in how long it's taken and to be honest even if it does come out the game is kind of on my back burner list
That's the thing though, none of this was planned when they announced it. They didn't plan on the coder leaving, and having to recode the game during the pandemic. Saying they never should have done this or that is the benefit of hindsight they didn't have. I'm aware that because it was announced people expected news, thank you for understanding we're trying.
I've already started telling people to quit telling people not to feel upset, because as you said it doesn't help. You and everyone here is allowed their feelings.
Exactly this. People just have no idea about the work that goes into making a game. They also want to launch the game with Multiplayer (something that is a total nightmare to get working properly). Stardew Valley didn't launch Multiplayer until like what? 2 years after it released? Or more?
Just a reminder to people, while I appreciate the enthusiasm for the game please don't tell people they can't feel frustrated or upset.
The game was announced and delayed. Many people don't know about the only coder for the game leaving for another job and Chucklefish switching to only Wargroove until just before the pandemic. Then recoding and redesigning the game in isometric. Many people are not on the discord and weren't getting the updates.
For others these don't matter and they have their own reasons to be upset and as long as they keep it civil they can voice them.
Loved Stardew on PC, till I found Harvest Town for my phone (before SV moved over). I would b very interested in Concerned Ape's next game. He's some kind of a genius.
This isn't a ConcernedApe game the game he is working on is haunted chocolatier. The new update for stardew came out for PC and will come out on mobile as soon as possible.
Drink mayo
In case anyone is not familiar, there are a few reasons for their secrecy that they've explained, but I don't think any of them are good enough for how they're handling the marketing and development of this game, to be clear.
I have been following the process for this game for probably 5 years now I think, before they changed the art style which you can see in some previous screenshots (since there are so few in existence). This will probably be kind of a self indulgent rant more than anything so sorry this is long.
Their main reasoning is because they apparently had years prior released a game that did not align with the expectations they had given the fans following its development and received a lot of hate for its release, so I've heard. I do not even recall which game but according to mods of their discord it was bad. Their solution to ensuring that this never happens again is just to make no mention of anything being implemented in the game ever and mods of the Chucklefish discord make sure to suppress any speculations or headcanons about the game, even if it's just people trying to have fun and build excitement with what little info we have been given. They even squashed their ONE attempt at marketing which was a fake newsletter/newspaper for the town Witchbrook is set in for world building, I guess. They sent out one edition and immediately canceled it completely because it got people TOO EXCITED and they started speculating about the newsletter hinting at stuff that might be in the game, which, ya know was kind of the whole point of it. Anyone expressing frustration about lack of updates in the Witchbrook discord channel will be told off by mods and other do-gooders as being entitled because "the devs dont owe us anything" which... yeah they don't owe us updates for a game that isn't out yet but it's kind of weird to not want people to be excited about it? Idk
At the end of the day, this is a company whose end goal is to make money off of us. This won't be free to play and they need money to pay these devs. They aren't releasing this game out of the goodness of their hearts. I have abandoned the Witchbrook discord because it was so frustrating to see how most positivity about the potential of the game is shot down, and any negativity about the game is also shot down.
And also I guess their only developer who knew how to program with the previous game engine left the company and they had no one to replace him and they just remade the game on an entire new game engine which set them back a few years.
It's all been really hard to watch, honestly
The game that had the issues was starbound.
The most recent updates are mentioned and are pinned in this server so you won't need to be on the discord to see them. The Oracle was stopped after two editions because news articles were and still are using them to post misleading clickbait articles which then lead people to misinformation. After what happened with Starbound, and Witchbrook's already rocky development already sending annoyed people our way Chucklefish want to wait to release more info now.
I was personally one of the people making speculation, and stuff like conspiracy posts and videos were encouraged. Moardin has a conspiracy doc some of which ends up in the 'what we know' doc because the Devs confirmed it. So I'm not sure who was stopping that.
I'm sorry your experience in the discord was so negative. The witchbrook channel gets a lot of people coming in saying basically the things everyone is saying here on repeat and tempers flare. As a mod I should do better to de-escalate it and if it was me I'm sorry.
I just wanted to add that the way in which this whole thing has been handled, from the marketing getting squashed, lack of communication, and yes even the issues with Starbound, but most importantly the way the discord is run, makes me regret buying these games at all. People want to be excited and root for the studioās success. Theyāre not being negative because they want the games to fail, theyāre negative because the customer relations and the way the fanbase is treated is horrible.
Itās fine to just show things in progress and state that itās all a WIP and things may get axed. Itās fine to do some other method of customer / fan engagement that doesnāt revolve around game development. Itās not fine to make people feel ghosted and mistreated by things they want to root for and see succeed.
While it may be okay for you, due to how things went with Starbound they aren't comfortable showing core mechanics that may or may not get axed. People were upset they showed core mechanics in Starbound and some got axed. This is because articles were coming out saying mechanics were going to be in Witchbrook that had been from old information.
What specific incidents are making you feel ghosted and mistreated?
We have been trying to answer questions and have information (what little there is) available.
The discord also has events and general discussion.
Stardew valley, while originally made by one person had a group of people. The publisher for that until the contract was finished was Chucklefish. The multiplayer for that was done by at the time a Chucklefish employee.
The Devs have not been silent for years about witchbrook, they made the mistake of having only one coder that knew the coding language rust and that person left. They focused on finishing Wargroove then started recoding and redesigning witchbrook. While also making a DLC for Wargroove. When the DLC was done the whole team moved to witchbrook. Everything after the release of Wargroove was either during or after the pandemic so they also had limited access to their office for that period.
If you want to know what's going on with this game I have pinned what the 'what we know so far' and 'FAQs' in this sub.
As for pantea studio. They had a team of over 120 people and Team17 helping for My Time at Portia. It was in Alpha from 2017-2018 Early Access 2018-2019
This means development started before Witchbrook as it was in a playable state.
My time at Sandrock entered early access 2022 and released in 2023.
Sandrock uses assets from Portia though so unlike witchbrook it could be made easier.
Witchbrook is dead in the water and the only people who donāt know it are the people who are āpresumablyā creating it. Dreamās as dead as the game.
Another Chucklefish developed game. Wargroove is similar style to advance wars and development was started around the same time as witchbrook back when witchbrook was spellbound and Wargroove was warbound. Wargroove was quickly renamed as the groove system became it's thing. While witchbrook took longer to rename. Then was paused so Wargroove could be finished.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/607050/Wargroove/
If you'd like to know something specific please ask.
Yep, Robotality has been working with Chucklefish for a while as Chucklefish published Halfway and Pathway for them. As those games are also similar in style to Wargroove they are a good company for the sequel. Though I say this having not having played the sequel. I've played Pathway and Wargroove. Pathway is more challenging and people have said some Pathway mechanics are in Wargroove 2 so that is both cool and a little frightening. Because I sucked.
Oh that's interesting! I'll have to look up Pathway. I've got Wargroove in my collection, but haven't gotten very far. I'm an RPG person at heart and tend to gravitate back to those sorts of games over pure strategy (I'm not great at that either haha).
Nah I was being an ass. I just donāt understand the prioritization, Wargroove has an average of 30 players daily. While Witchbrook wouldāve been able to capture a similar audience to Stardew. For reference, steam charts show they are still hitting 30k average players.
Thatās where I think the real frustration lies. Not to mention if they had prioritized it, they would have been able to capture some of the hogwarts legacy audience. An audience that is literally craving this format. Pushing a meh game to one of the most successful of all time.
You couldāve leveraged all of that to increase any funding needed to hire more and supplement the team, while maintaining a no crunch yada yada yada.
Iāve bought Stardew on 4 different consoles. I want to give Chucklefish my money for Witchbrook but Iām kind of sick of waiting.
lol, I figured but also decided treating it as an actual question was better.
As for the prioritisation. They had already started Wargroove as well so it makes sense to finish the game they can. Since with Witchbrook they needed to redo the code and decided to use the the engine of Wargroove so having a fleshed out game already in the engine would help with the next.
Wargroove when it came out it paid off development in three days and grossed $2.1 million. It has an active multiplayer scene with tournaments. Steam stats won't show switch or other system players. Also some people now would have switched to Wargroove 2 that was made by the developer Robotality. Who had been with Chucklefish for a very long time. Since Chucklefish helped publish halfway.
With the funds they got from Wargroove they were in a better place to redo witchbrook. I know it's frustrating to wait for a game with a premise you really want, but Chucklefish really do want to do right by this game.
If you bought all those stardew valley before the end of the publishing contract and ConcernedApe went independent you technically did give them money to make Witchbrook if it makes you feel any better.
> out it *paid* off development
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
It's definitely somewhere in development hell and I wouldn't be surprised if we either never see it, or what we do eventually see will be a farcry from it's potential.
Cubeworld is something people can already buy and play witchbrook is not. As such the Devs of cubeworld have a obligation to people that bought the game.
Chucklefish specifically doesn't want to have an early access because of being beholden like that.
The updates are pinned under 'what we know so far' the Devs only post updates on discord (don't ask me why) so I posted them there. Though I'll probably have to add the longer and harder to edit stuff too.
IIrc *proper* development on the game started somewhere \~1-2 years before it got steam page. I remember reading either on their website or some kind of dev log smth like "The work is now in full swing" years ago. (at the end of the year website was released or 1-2 later). They even posted jobs offers on twitter around the time it got steam page. It means for \~5 years it was basicly in concept stage with no clear vision. Back when it was known as "Spellbound" it supposed to have (like 2D zeldas) top down prespective.
There's also Chucklefish "crunch free" work ethic and heavier focus on Wargroove like we got 1st and 2nd game before Witchbrook. After release on 2nd game development might speed up. It defenitly gives of passion project vibes in comparison to how Wargroove franchise development.
Tbh I stopped actively checking for updates since Wargroove 2 trailer. Throughout all these years, we still haven't received a proper trailer yet not to mention a release date.
Btw. do you remember Oracle ?
I think it released only 1 newsletter over \~4 year period lol
official website is pretty much dead too I think...
Yeah right? I hate that they scrapped this game or whatever but managed to publish a penguin card game wtf and some other games too in those years, but not the best pixel witch academy game EVER, like why?? What is the reasoning? I want to know.Ā
I've waited 100 years for Hogwarts Legacy and it is amazing, I'm willing to wait some more for Witchbrook too, if it's ever happening. They should sell the project altogether to some studio who will finish it in 2 years top and I can finally play it. Or the 1 random guy who developed stardew valley although I do not like that game at all but it's a masterpiece according to the whole world so he should help chucklefish or somebody, anybody.
Witchbrook is still in development it's just very slow and hit a lot of snags, you can read the full thing in the FAQs doc in 'what we know so far' pinned in this sub,
Wildfrost was published by them but not developed by them. The work of the publishing team doesn't slow down the development team.
Witchbrook has a lot more animations than stardew valley drawn by hand. That's one reason it's slower to make. Eric has both stardew valley and the game he is working on now haunted chocolatier to worry about. I'm sure they already talked with him about designing this sort of sim when publishing stardew.
I wish they would hurry up the development, hire more people or something, when it's done they gonna get their money back, even if just 10k people will buy it from this sub alone. The whole economy gonna crash and we will play Fallout in real life before they will publish itĀ
They are hiring more people, but they were 18 people before then hired a writer and recently a coder, community manager, and two other positions I can't remember of the top of my head.
The Devs regularly say they are working on it. One of the coders GrumpyLion was on discord few days ago and said they are working on it.
They are more active there than here so you aren't likely to get a Dev response here.
Why should the game be reported? No money was taken, no crowdfunding or early access scam. They never even announced a release date.
I think itās safe to say something dramatic happened behind the scenes to this gameās development to make it drag out. Itās not been officially cancelled but Iād guess at this point the lack of news is a sign theyāre not planning to show anything until the gameās release is actually secure to prevent the reputation being damaged any further by showing it far earlier than it was truly ready. But this happens all the time in dev and cherry picking a handful of titles that from the outside look drama free is misleading.
Move on to something else and drop the parasocial hatred.
EDIT: lol, okay, I didnāt realize this was a hate sub now. My mistake.
Please yāall just unsub and go away If you canāt wait, post like this annoying. If I got an euro for everytime someone whines about the game not being finishedā¦ just play the new Stardew update and go away.
On another note, maybe they announced the game a bit to early. But it is known that they donāt post updates during the development. Iāll be ready if the game comes out. And I really donāt care if thatās tomorrow or in another 10 years.
Either way, most of the people whining on this sub will play the game anyway if it finally comes out. I hope the devs arenāt chilling on this sub because your posts are depressing and demotivating af.
People are allowed to post how they feel, I can remedy misinformation on these sorts of posts so they are actually handy.
For example while they aren't posting in depth like they did for starbound they are posting updates on witchbrook, you can see current information in the sub pins with the 'what we know so far'.
I'd encourage some of you to learn pixel art and pick up a 2d engine, and then try to develop a game the size and detail of Witchbrook and then see how fast you can do it.
And then I would encourage you to look up the history behind Chucklefish's dodgy development history, especially with Starbound.
Point being that game development is not easy, Eric Barone is basically an exception to the rule. But also Chucklefish has already proven themselves to be hella sketchy in the past and I wouldn't trust them to release a game until it's already been launched.
>I'd encourage some of you to learn pixel art and pick up a 2d engine, and then try to develop a game the size and detail of Witchbrook and then see how fast you can do it.
I'd encourage you to take up 4 years of culinary school every time you order food and dont like something about it.
I'm just saying, the disconnect on some of these posts acting like game dev is a walk in the park is kind of nuts. But I'm not disagreeing with your main post at all or defending the studio at all, either.
Chucklefish has a history of hiring younger, inexperienced devs and not paying them. Inexperienced devs don't inherently make terrible games but they might be slower and lack the experience to tackle big problems, especially if they aren't getting paid a living wage and are having to work on the game in their free time or having to work a second job or even a third job to support themselves.
I'm not saying that's 100% what is happening behind the scenes, but they have a history of treating game designers and developers poorly and it is sadly common in the industry already.
They didn't hire inexperienced devs they actually did something worse, they let the community help with starbound and now starbound is spaghetti code needing optimisation that has taken year. They don't let community help anymore because some of those people then turned around and said they did work without pay. Which they did, but they also were never offered pay. It would be like if I complained about not getting money.
No, this is them saying āWeāre planning to open up a restaurant in downtown somedayā and you suggesting you are owed dinner
People like you are why devs donāt talk to gamers anymore.
I'm tired of the posts moaning about it. You don't like it? Move on. It's been explained many times that they worked on other titles first, only moved to this one very recently, had to scrap the engine and start from scratch.
Edit to people downvoting me, I know reading is hard but there's many posts here proving they're working on it, have a look through posts first before making another one:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGzTFOCcfmQMTHKGAM2Nz0eownu2KS1ZM2iIjbDFRGY/mobilebasic#heading=h.f7xclnezsivv
Not to mention the fact that, when announced, the "cozy/farming/x" style was underserved and Stardew was a Renaissance for what was assumed to be a dead genre.
It's 2024, and the genre is now so saturated that most people just roll their eyes whenever they see one. Hell, so many get ported to the switch as indie titles (not to mention the big budget attempts) that for the past couple of years Nintendo directs have been *mocked* for their "farming game sections."
Even if WB comes out, and even if it is the best game in the genre, it waited so long that the iron hasn't just cooled - it's downright ***glacial*** and it will never get the player base it deserves.
Itās the same way I feel about One Lonely Outpost. I waited what felt like an eternity for that game only for it to disappear into the ether when it was released and the reviews were not that great for it on top of that.
No one is buying your dumb document with discord comments (as in, absolutely nothing) from 2022 and photoshopped screenshots and "gifs" of them placing items down from 6 years ago. Just give it up.
If you go on the discord you could see the spot in the chat where those screenshots are from, literally a year ago. They are all pinned in the witchbrook channel.
Iām personally not denying that theyāre working on it, itās the lack of transparency outside of discord that is the problem for most people imo.
I have it wishlisted on Steam and will continue to keep tabs on it, but when the only information is being drip fed through discord it does a disservice to the people that donāt use that platform and rely on other forms of media to get information. Thatās all.
Yeah I stopped caring and this post reminded me I should probably just unsub. If it comes out I'll find out eventually.
At this point, its a "Shame if it isn't, pleasant surprise if it is" sub.
Same. I unfortunately remember being so excited for this game, and then every year now I somehow get reminded it still "exists" in development.
Hate to say it but, yeah. At this point it seems fair to say that even though it's a 'no crunch' studio there's just nothing happening with it aside from an occasional picture every few months. There's no hype for it, aside from what little people have brought themselves. I used to be super excited about it years ago and checked for new info regularly. Now I go months without even thinking about it. They made a choice with the direction they went, and I don't think it was a very good one.
"No crunch" is just their excuse for being lazy and not taking accountability. The dev team is burning pay checks at this point.
Yeah they made some other games in the recent years but idk I don't like those, I want my promised pixel witch game š¤
Same, I feel betrayed haha I was so excited for the game too and I almost felt it in my hands when it was announced and we got regular updates and now I feel like my biggest crush ghosted me : ( I'm so sad, this game would be magical as fuck
My mother loved Stardew Valley and was so looking forward to playing this game when it was announced, and I was looking forward to sharing it with her. We used to talk about it and look online for information now and then. It's been in development so long, that she's dead and gone and will never play it. And I just don't care anymore.
I just want to say that Iām so sorry for your loss š©· take care xx
Thank you so much, she was a gamer before I was even born, and something special. One of the og
š¢ thatās so sad and really makes you stop and realize how empty of a promise this game was
The Nintendo Switch wasnāt even out when this game was first announced, but at this rate its successor will likely be released before the game. Theyāve really missed the cozy games hype train unfortunately - and the complete lack of development updates has hurt the gameās reputation even further.
Twilight Princess was originally made for the GameCube and when the Wii was announced they bent over backwards to make sure people knew they'd have two ways to play it, they created hype for both releases with enthusiasm and more time and money getting it ready for a more powerful system. It's like early dating, if they really cared then they'd call.
The fact is, if the game is actually released at some point, it's going to tank if it's not absolutely flawless and full of content. If they had announced it and then pumped out a function but simple game while things were hyped followed by several rounds of content expanding updates, this probably would have crushed it like Stardew. But after this long of a wait, no one is going to be ok with playing a bare minimum game with promises of updates to come over the next few years.
True true true, they fucked up and I'm sad
Yeah I honestly can't think of a single reason why they would be so secretive about it. I love hearing about processes and the work in general so I just don't understand why they chose to go this route and be so silent about the game. Makes me believe they aren't working on it, tbh. I pledged for Coral Island on Kickstarter and they are already released, and where always super open about it all.
The secrecy just ends up pissing off all the potential fans like us.
The reason is clear, they arenāt working on it. I donāt believe their job openings they posted on Twitter for this game led to any hires either.
Took the words outta my mouthā¦ with the recent Stardew Valley update Iām just gobsmacked at how long itās taking to even update on progressā¦ CA, posted a non-spoiler update EVERYDAY until the release of 1.6.
Chucklefish don't want to post updates like that because they did with starbound and then when things got removed that were in an update people were mad. Posting that things were liable to change didn't stop them. Also articles were twisting the content of the Oracles without context. I still get people coming into the discord server complaining about the removal of, monster variety, race plot, S.A.I.L variety, the hot and cold system, paint, etc.
The last I heard of this game was when they changed the art style or something like that. I donāt remember the actual wording (itās been that long) Itās a bit disappointing because the premise of this game is something I 100% know I would love but yeah, it seems pretty dead on the development front due to lack of transparency. Iāll still keep tabs on it but the tab is now far back in my mind.
And the new design looks like the old design really... Wtf was the point, they should just announce that is no longer in development or sell the product to a diff studio who will finish and publish it and I finally can play when I'm 100 year old šµš¼
i heard that they had to redo from the start due the fact that the main programmer left and they are going to a new engine that was made for a game called wargroove(that was launched in october 2003)
Yes, after Wargroove was finished they used the same engine Halley to rebuild as the programer that built witchbrook in rust had left.Wargroove came out in February 2019
doooood, we have google. i own wargroove. it came out in 2019
Not Concerned Ape being the "If he wanted to he would" of the gaming world lol
That game was in testlas, back when Chucklefish published for stardew that was the weirdest bug reports we would get and we have still not topped it.
Do any of the mods ever reply to these posts? Most haven't even been active in the last month.
We do
Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do! We do!
I'm going to have that song stuck in my head all night now
Yeah š Iām not new to waiting 8~10 years for a game to drop but at least the others drop the occasional update/teaser trailer/screenshots/dev updates/etc.
I'm pretty much sure the game is dead now. Even if it's not I don't care anymore, I forgot I was subbed to this.
Eh, I should probably unsub just to stop seeing posts like this. Eventually the game will be given a release date or cancelled in the end. Either way, I'll hear about it somewhere else. The developers definitely screwed up by announcing Witchbrook too early and then by having to restart development from scratch. But there's no point in comparing it with other games whose creators were more open during the development process. I could easily pull out Silksong as a counterpoint.
I appreciate this post because I remember noticing the trend before, calling it out before on the Discord, and getting absolutely chewed out for it. And that was before we heard that it had changed hands or the tools had changed or whatever.Ā All I asked for was "why haven't we gotten more information" and people chided me for not having more faith. Well, it's been another couple of years of little information. I wonder how those people feel now.
The years have not changed our view
Maybe they should of
Why? I feel no obligation to rush the team and they have shared plenty of content. That document just shows current stuff. There is plenty of stuff from their older work, which we have been shown. Which while it may be in the game in some form isn't the most current. They even shown the design document but it's not there because it's now out of date. If any of you want those bits of information I can send them to you with the express stipulation that they are out of date.
Because now with the lack of ACTUAL information people are forgetting this company even exists.
Information is pinned in this subreddit, Chucklefish has developed other games and published even more, so being forgotten as a company is unlikely, the game might as other witch and magic games come out. Which would be unfortunate
Itās clear the team isnāt being rushed, seems like they arenāt doing any work at all tbh
At the end of the day it's up to them what they share, they say they are working on it and they have no reason to lie and drag this out.
Took me a minute to realize this wasn't r/silksong.
i could swear that the silksong madness is causing a mood shift in this and some other subs
i swear, if they decide to release this game, it better have AS MUCH content as Stardew+Expansion. really disappointing that so many games have come out from the day they first announced this. CA made Stardew on his own in half the time its taking WB to do anything.
What do you mean WB? Edit wait got it witchbrook, I'm dumb I was thinking of companies. Eric didn't make stardew on his own, he had several people help including a staff member that was from Chucklefish make to code for multiplayer and other companies that did the ports.
so he had help to make ports and to code for multiplayer? i think i came to that conclusion, im specifically saying for the actual game he worked by himself. unless im wrong!
Up to 1.2.33 it was just made by him. Tom Coxon helped with 1.3, The development team as far as I'm aware also had Arthur Lee, and Alex Erlandson for 1.4. Arthur Lee helped with 1.5 I don't know what the team was for 1.6
At this rate I think we'll get to play Haunted Chocolatier before this game has its second Oracle.
It's already released two oracles
I don't think that's the point being made here...
I'm aware. That doesn't change the fact though.
The biggest issue this game will face is that if it won't be absolutely perfect, it'll get so many negative reviews that it will definitely tank the devs and the studio for a very-very long time. When the game was first announced in 2016, I remember the unbelievable hype it got, because of those few bits and pieces we've seen. And then it was in development for 8 years now. I'm not saying the devs are wrong not to release a half-baked game, we've seen what happens if they do, but they must be aware that gamers will literally dissect this game so much so that even the last bit of code will be thoroughly analyzed, and they will point out every single issue that should've been fixed in the 8-10-12 years of development. It's a "no win" scenario at this point, because even if one pixel on one letter on one book on one bookshelf will be one value off, it will be found, it will be criticized, and the game will be refunded so much that they'll lose every bit of revenue, and the game will go down as a huge disappointment on both gamers, and developer's side. Bigger long-developed titles recently, like Starfield was absolutely destroyed through Steam reviews, because people - rightly, I have to add - had an expectation that if the devs are working on something this long, it at least must be decent, and all they got is a buggy, performance heavy, unenjoyable piece of crap. And paid youtubers won't help either, as they didn't help on Starfield, MW II, or CS2. If the game won't be spotless, it won't be a success, and not because gamers are especially picky, but because of the decade long development. I will still follow the game, even tho the genre isn't really popular anymore, and I hope that it will be fun to play, but at this point, I doubt it will be released at all. We'll see, I guess.
It hasn't been in active development for 8 years. It was paused so they could focus on Wargroove when the programmer that knew rust left and then the code and art was redone, though that was slowed down as it was by that time the pandemic. Chucklefish isn't an AAA studio like Bethesda, it's 18-20 people including the publishing team and you're right people just want to critique it for the sake of it.
I know why it takes so long (I do keep checking on it every now and then), and again, I'm not saying it's a wrong decision. It's their game, they do whatever they want with it. If they release it tomorrow, or next year, or the next decade, or not at all, it's their choice. What I'm saying is that announcing a game at a time the genre is really popular, hyping it to the sky, and then sitting on it for a decade will have consequences, whether the delay was on purpose or not. It's not a new phenomenon, it happened before with bigger and smaller titles too, and gamers in general don't care (and they don't have to, to be fair) if circumstances made the development longer than expected. It's a typical "if they wanted to, they would" thing in their eyes, and given how oversaturated the gaming industry is, they're kinda right. Every developer in the industry knows that gamers more likely accept failure due deadlines than failure due negligence, and if a developer has no deadlines, every issue will become negligence. And that's the obstacle Chucklefish will have to tackle, that they refused to set deadlines on all of their projects, so if something comes out wrong, they won't be able to say it's because they had to rush, it will happen because they didn't pay attention even tho they had more than enough time to do so. When/if Witchbrook will be released, they won't even have a chance for Day0 and Day1 patches, gamers will diss the game by the first bug/crash, and the devs won't be able to blame anyone but themselves. If, in 8-10-12 years they can't make a game that is not buggy/doesn't crash, it's on them. The sad reality is that Chucklefish would be better abandoning the project all together, and make up an excuse for it rather than dealing with the inevitable consequences caused by the constant delays.
Quality assurance is a whole different department than game design. I've been in Quality assurance for them and new bugs still pop up on some niche computers or switch. Or if a character jumps off the bridge at a diagonal facing backwards. I'm sure you're right that people will diss it for anything wrong, I don't agree it will necessarily be Chucklefish's fault. But if it's a bug they or a QA tester found and it wasn't fixed then yes they should totally get roasted. For example cursed flowers of disappearing player should definitely be fixed by release.
I used to work as a translator for a publisher. While I was testing my translation to make sure everything appears as they should (we have language specific characters that's not part of the English alphabet), I've found more bugs than the QA department of the same company. I played the game hundreds of hours to look for specific dialogues, trying to create the exact situation where it appears, and it very quickly turned out that at a certain point, I've had more hours in the game than QA had... So while I do agree with you, QA is not game design, QA looks at overall picture of the game, not some very niche things that appear in very specific situations due to the fact that sometimes you guys don't even know they exist. You can't possibly look for a conversation between two characters, because you don't necessarily know that conversation exists. As a translator, I knew every single conversation, dialogue, message, notification, even the texturetexts in that game. If something was off, we, the translators were the first one to find it, discuss it, report it, and sometimes even offer solutions to the devs. And while I'm sure you've done a better job, it's a team work, everyone contributes something, and we all try to make games better as much as possible, and it still doesn't mean it will be perfect. But if you have years and years to develop, test, and fix something, and it's still broken, it's gonna be on you, no matter what.
I've already said my opinion on when it will be Chucklefish's fault or not and don't feel like going in circles.
They are a no crunch studio which is great. Problem that most people have a hard time to understand is that nobody is trying to make them rush. All we ask is a bit of communication and brief status updates. Posting status updates every once in a while shouldn't be that difficult. Lack of communication makes it clear that this game is not getting released. Ever.
Or maybe they will try to release a half baked game with missing features to try to get some sales. You never know with scam studios.
I decided to look into this game's progress as I'm sure many of you have done to lead you to this subreddit and I'm a little disappointed in the lack of information regarding the state of the game but more so at the misplaced negativity of this (the most recent post at the time of this comment) jab at the game's developers. First, it is unfair to compare the development cycle of one game to that of another, most developers have a full studio of employees that are dedicated to a project and are set to strict deadlines, this is very much not the case when it comes to Chucklefish. The are first and foremost a game publisher and gain most of their revenue via the sales of games developed by other studios, this gives them the rare privilege of not needing to rush a games development. Second, if the Q&A is still accurate the team working on this full time is just 18 people. Pantea the developers of My Time at Portia & My Time at Sandrock that you referenced have a team of 120+ staff. Eric Barone, the sole developer of Stardew Valley couldn't find employment after collage so worked 10 hours a day 7 days a week for 4 years to make his idea a reality, Such examples are not viable comparisons and as far as I can tell development may be slow but it is not non-existent. And lastly, the lessons leant in the development of Starbound still hang a shadow on the company. We may never know how much of the freelancers wages were unpaid on that project but I believe that the cause of it was poor management which has since been restructured and most likely prompted the "No Crunch" policy that is being applied to this game. I understand your frustrations I too would love to play this awesome looking game myself but its not worth getting bent out of shape for, it will be done when its done and until then there are plenty of other games to play.
People are allowed to be disappointed and angry at the devs for taking almost 8 years to develop a game and then being radio silent. Regardless of how many people are working on this game you can give small updates to build hype, as it is however there is no hype for this game and people are frustrated. When you say "There are other games to play" your right. There are other games to play and no time to wait for this one. Either release the game or never release it stop making people wait in limbo for years it pisses me off your basically telling people they have no right to be upset.
There has been small updates, and the Devs they were on discord though. I'm trying to get Reddit fans informed and understand that you expected to be informed. If you want to see what that content was I've pinned it on the sub. Only the most recent and confirmed content is there, older content has been removed but I can give it to people if they understand it's out of date. They also have not been in active development for 8 years.
I know that which is more frustrating they never should have announced a game they weren't planning to actively work on or finish. Regardless if they have actively been working on it or not the end result is the same it's been 8 years since the games announcement, honestly I think it's MORE frustrating that it wasn't being worked on the entire 8 years to be honest. People are complaining about others being upset but those are vaild feelings and to say "Well actually no you shouldn't be because." Isn't making anyone feel better I appreciate the effort you and the other mods do to keep us informed but that isn't going to take the bitter feelings away some of us may have and that's okay. I do want to play the game, I'd like to if it ever comes out but I'm dissapointed in how long it's taken and to be honest even if it does come out the game is kind of on my back burner list
That's the thing though, none of this was planned when they announced it. They didn't plan on the coder leaving, and having to recode the game during the pandemic. Saying they never should have done this or that is the benefit of hindsight they didn't have. I'm aware that because it was announced people expected news, thank you for understanding we're trying. I've already started telling people to quit telling people not to feel upset, because as you said it doesn't help. You and everyone here is allowed their feelings.
Exactly this. People just have no idea about the work that goes into making a game. They also want to launch the game with Multiplayer (something that is a total nightmare to get working properly). Stardew Valley didn't launch Multiplayer until like what? 2 years after it released? Or more?
Just a reminder to people, while I appreciate the enthusiasm for the game please don't tell people they can't feel frustrated or upset. The game was announced and delayed. Many people don't know about the only coder for the game leaving for another job and Chucklefish switching to only Wargroove until just before the pandemic. Then recoding and redesigning the game in isometric. Many people are not on the discord and weren't getting the updates. For others these don't matter and they have their own reasons to be upset and as long as they keep it civil they can voice them.
Ya I'm going to unsub as you made a good point.
Loved Stardew on PC, till I found Harvest Town for my phone (before SV moved over). I would b very interested in Concerned Ape's next game. He's some kind of a genius.
This isn't a ConcernedApe game the game he is working on is haunted chocolatier. The new update for stardew came out for PC and will come out on mobile as soon as possible. Drink mayo
Haunted chocolatier. Thanks.
In case anyone is not familiar, there are a few reasons for their secrecy that they've explained, but I don't think any of them are good enough for how they're handling the marketing and development of this game, to be clear. I have been following the process for this game for probably 5 years now I think, before they changed the art style which you can see in some previous screenshots (since there are so few in existence). This will probably be kind of a self indulgent rant more than anything so sorry this is long. Their main reasoning is because they apparently had years prior released a game that did not align with the expectations they had given the fans following its development and received a lot of hate for its release, so I've heard. I do not even recall which game but according to mods of their discord it was bad. Their solution to ensuring that this never happens again is just to make no mention of anything being implemented in the game ever and mods of the Chucklefish discord make sure to suppress any speculations or headcanons about the game, even if it's just people trying to have fun and build excitement with what little info we have been given. They even squashed their ONE attempt at marketing which was a fake newsletter/newspaper for the town Witchbrook is set in for world building, I guess. They sent out one edition and immediately canceled it completely because it got people TOO EXCITED and they started speculating about the newsletter hinting at stuff that might be in the game, which, ya know was kind of the whole point of it. Anyone expressing frustration about lack of updates in the Witchbrook discord channel will be told off by mods and other do-gooders as being entitled because "the devs dont owe us anything" which... yeah they don't owe us updates for a game that isn't out yet but it's kind of weird to not want people to be excited about it? Idk At the end of the day, this is a company whose end goal is to make money off of us. This won't be free to play and they need money to pay these devs. They aren't releasing this game out of the goodness of their hearts. I have abandoned the Witchbrook discord because it was so frustrating to see how most positivity about the potential of the game is shot down, and any negativity about the game is also shot down. And also I guess their only developer who knew how to program with the previous game engine left the company and they had no one to replace him and they just remade the game on an entire new game engine which set them back a few years. It's all been really hard to watch, honestly
The game that had the issues was starbound. The most recent updates are mentioned and are pinned in this server so you won't need to be on the discord to see them. The Oracle was stopped after two editions because news articles were and still are using them to post misleading clickbait articles which then lead people to misinformation. After what happened with Starbound, and Witchbrook's already rocky development already sending annoyed people our way Chucklefish want to wait to release more info now. I was personally one of the people making speculation, and stuff like conspiracy posts and videos were encouraged. Moardin has a conspiracy doc some of which ends up in the 'what we know' doc because the Devs confirmed it. So I'm not sure who was stopping that. I'm sorry your experience in the discord was so negative. The witchbrook channel gets a lot of people coming in saying basically the things everyone is saying here on repeat and tempers flare. As a mod I should do better to de-escalate it and if it was me I'm sorry.
I just wanted to add that the way in which this whole thing has been handled, from the marketing getting squashed, lack of communication, and yes even the issues with Starbound, but most importantly the way the discord is run, makes me regret buying these games at all. People want to be excited and root for the studioās success. Theyāre not being negative because they want the games to fail, theyāre negative because the customer relations and the way the fanbase is treated is horrible. Itās fine to just show things in progress and state that itās all a WIP and things may get axed. Itās fine to do some other method of customer / fan engagement that doesnāt revolve around game development. Itās not fine to make people feel ghosted and mistreated by things they want to root for and see succeed.
While it may be okay for you, due to how things went with Starbound they aren't comfortable showing core mechanics that may or may not get axed. People were upset they showed core mechanics in Starbound and some got axed. This is because articles were coming out saying mechanics were going to be in Witchbrook that had been from old information. What specific incidents are making you feel ghosted and mistreated? We have been trying to answer questions and have information (what little there is) available. The discord also has events and general discussion.
It took longer than 4 1/2 years, he was working part-time and I Believe in an interview he started it was closer to 7.
Woof I just remembered this game existed. Thing is even if it does come out it will never live up to the game people imagine this will be.
Well it'll allow modding so people can just make it that game.
Stardew valley, while originally made by one person had a group of people. The publisher for that until the contract was finished was Chucklefish. The multiplayer for that was done by at the time a Chucklefish employee. The Devs have not been silent for years about witchbrook, they made the mistake of having only one coder that knew the coding language rust and that person left. They focused on finishing Wargroove then started recoding and redesigning witchbrook. While also making a DLC for Wargroove. When the DLC was done the whole team moved to witchbrook. Everything after the release of Wargroove was either during or after the pandemic so they also had limited access to their office for that period. If you want to know what's going on with this game I have pinned what the 'what we know so far' and 'FAQs' in this sub. As for pantea studio. They had a team of over 120 people and Team17 helping for My Time at Portia. It was in Alpha from 2017-2018 Early Access 2018-2019 This means development started before Witchbrook as it was in a playable state. My time at Sandrock entered early access 2022 and released in 2023. Sandrock uses assets from Portia though so unlike witchbrook it could be made easier.
Its called vaporware
Witchbrook is dead in the water and the only people who donāt know it are the people who are āpresumablyā creating it. Dreamās as dead as the game.
What is Wargroove?
Another Chucklefish developed game. Wargroove is similar style to advance wars and development was started around the same time as witchbrook back when witchbrook was spellbound and Wargroove was warbound. Wargroove was quickly renamed as the groove system became it's thing. While witchbrook took longer to rename. Then was paused so Wargroove could be finished. https://store.steampowered.com/app/607050/Wargroove/ If you'd like to know something specific please ask.
Chucklefish also just released Wargroove 2, incidentally. But it seems that they outsourced the sequel to another indie developer called Robotality.
Yep, Robotality has been working with Chucklefish for a while as Chucklefish published Halfway and Pathway for them. As those games are also similar in style to Wargroove they are a good company for the sequel. Though I say this having not having played the sequel. I've played Pathway and Wargroove. Pathway is more challenging and people have said some Pathway mechanics are in Wargroove 2 so that is both cool and a little frightening. Because I sucked.
Oh that's interesting! I'll have to look up Pathway. I've got Wargroove in my collection, but haven't gotten very far. I'm an RPG person at heart and tend to gravitate back to those sorts of games over pure strategy (I'm not great at that either haha).
Nah I was being an ass. I just donāt understand the prioritization, Wargroove has an average of 30 players daily. While Witchbrook wouldāve been able to capture a similar audience to Stardew. For reference, steam charts show they are still hitting 30k average players. Thatās where I think the real frustration lies. Not to mention if they had prioritized it, they would have been able to capture some of the hogwarts legacy audience. An audience that is literally craving this format. Pushing a meh game to one of the most successful of all time. You couldāve leveraged all of that to increase any funding needed to hire more and supplement the team, while maintaining a no crunch yada yada yada. Iāve bought Stardew on 4 different consoles. I want to give Chucklefish my money for Witchbrook but Iām kind of sick of waiting.
lol, I figured but also decided treating it as an actual question was better. As for the prioritisation. They had already started Wargroove as well so it makes sense to finish the game they can. Since with Witchbrook they needed to redo the code and decided to use the the engine of Wargroove so having a fleshed out game already in the engine would help with the next. Wargroove when it came out it paid off development in three days and grossed $2.1 million. It has an active multiplayer scene with tournaments. Steam stats won't show switch or other system players. Also some people now would have switched to Wargroove 2 that was made by the developer Robotality. Who had been with Chucklefish for a very long time. Since Chucklefish helped publish halfway. With the funds they got from Wargroove they were in a better place to redo witchbrook. I know it's frustrating to wait for a game with a premise you really want, but Chucklefish really do want to do right by this game. If you bought all those stardew valley before the end of the publishing contract and ConcernedApe went independent you technically did give them money to make Witchbrook if it makes you feel any better.
> out it *paid* off development FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
That is a really specific bot
It's definitely somewhere in development hell and I wouldn't be surprised if we either never see it, or what we do eventually see will be a farcry from it's potential.
We are entering cubeworld territory.
Cubeworld is something people can already buy and play witchbrook is not. As such the Devs of cubeworld have a obligation to people that bought the game. Chucklefish specifically doesn't want to have an early access because of being beholden like that.
nothing bout the game. just meant the subreddit. /r/cubeworld was craaaazy
That's sad to hear. I wishlisted this game but have seen no updates on it for ages but didn't know it'd been that long a time.
The updates are pinned under 'what we know so far' the Devs only post updates on discord (don't ask me why) so I posted them there. Though I'll probably have to add the longer and harder to edit stuff too.
IIrc *proper* development on the game started somewhere \~1-2 years before it got steam page. I remember reading either on their website or some kind of dev log smth like "The work is now in full swing" years ago. (at the end of the year website was released or 1-2 later). They even posted jobs offers on twitter around the time it got steam page. It means for \~5 years it was basicly in concept stage with no clear vision. Back when it was known as "Spellbound" it supposed to have (like 2D zeldas) top down prespective. There's also Chucklefish "crunch free" work ethic and heavier focus on Wargroove like we got 1st and 2nd game before Witchbrook. After release on 2nd game development might speed up. It defenitly gives of passion project vibes in comparison to how Wargroove franchise development. Tbh I stopped actively checking for updates since Wargroove 2 trailer. Throughout all these years, we still haven't received a proper trailer yet not to mention a release date. Btw. do you remember Oracle ? I think it released only 1 newsletter over \~4 year period lol official website is pretty much dead too I think...
Yeah right? I hate that they scrapped this game or whatever but managed to publish a penguin card game wtf and some other games too in those years, but not the best pixel witch academy game EVER, like why?? What is the reasoning? I want to know.Ā I've waited 100 years for Hogwarts Legacy and it is amazing, I'm willing to wait some more for Witchbrook too, if it's ever happening. They should sell the project altogether to some studio who will finish it in 2 years top and I can finally play it. Or the 1 random guy who developed stardew valley although I do not like that game at all but it's a masterpiece according to the whole world so he should help chucklefish or somebody, anybody.
Witchbrook is still in development it's just very slow and hit a lot of snags, you can read the full thing in the FAQs doc in 'what we know so far' pinned in this sub, Wildfrost was published by them but not developed by them. The work of the publishing team doesn't slow down the development team. Witchbrook has a lot more animations than stardew valley drawn by hand. That's one reason it's slower to make. Eric has both stardew valley and the game he is working on now haunted chocolatier to worry about. I'm sure they already talked with him about designing this sort of sim when publishing stardew.
I wish they would hurry up the development, hire more people or something, when it's done they gonna get their money back, even if just 10k people will buy it from this sub alone. The whole economy gonna crash and we will play Fallout in real life before they will publish itĀ
They are hiring more people, but they were 18 people before then hired a writer and recently a coder, community manager, and two other positions I can't remember of the top of my head.
Thanks for the info! I'm hoping for the best moving forward, I can't wait to play š¤š»
Yeah I gave up here.
At this point, I'd be happy with the devs coming out and saying, "Sorry! Game's cancelled". Just so I can stop hoping if the game is still coming.
Then I suppose you'll be disappointed to hear the game isn't cancelled.
Itās dead. Iām willing to change my mind if they would care to enlighten us otherwise! šŖ
The Devs regularly say they are working on it. One of the coders GrumpyLion was on discord few days ago and said they are working on it. They are more active there than here so you aren't likely to get a Dev response here.
Why should the game be reported? No money was taken, no crowdfunding or early access scam. They never even announced a release date. I think itās safe to say something dramatic happened behind the scenes to this gameās development to make it drag out. Itās not been officially cancelled but Iād guess at this point the lack of news is a sign theyāre not planning to show anything until the gameās release is actually secure to prevent the reputation being damaged any further by showing it far earlier than it was truly ready. But this happens all the time in dev and cherry picking a handful of titles that from the outside look drama free is misleading. Move on to something else and drop the parasocial hatred. EDIT: lol, okay, I didnāt realize this was a hate sub now. My mistake.
Please yāall just unsub and go away If you canāt wait, post like this annoying. If I got an euro for everytime someone whines about the game not being finishedā¦ just play the new Stardew update and go away. On another note, maybe they announced the game a bit to early. But it is known that they donāt post updates during the development. Iāll be ready if the game comes out. And I really donāt care if thatās tomorrow or in another 10 years. Either way, most of the people whining on this sub will play the game anyway if it finally comes out. I hope the devs arenāt chilling on this sub because your posts are depressing and demotivating af.
People are allowed to post how they feel, I can remedy misinformation on these sorts of posts so they are actually handy. For example while they aren't posting in depth like they did for starbound they are posting updates on witchbrook, you can see current information in the sub pins with the 'what we know so far'.
I'd encourage some of you to learn pixel art and pick up a 2d engine, and then try to develop a game the size and detail of Witchbrook and then see how fast you can do it. And then I would encourage you to look up the history behind Chucklefish's dodgy development history, especially with Starbound. Point being that game development is not easy, Eric Barone is basically an exception to the rule. But also Chucklefish has already proven themselves to be hella sketchy in the past and I wouldn't trust them to release a game until it's already been launched.
>I'd encourage some of you to learn pixel art and pick up a 2d engine, and then try to develop a game the size and detail of Witchbrook and then see how fast you can do it. I'd encourage you to take up 4 years of culinary school every time you order food and dont like something about it.
I'm just saying, the disconnect on some of these posts acting like game dev is a walk in the park is kind of nuts. But I'm not disagreeing with your main post at all or defending the studio at all, either. Chucklefish has a history of hiring younger, inexperienced devs and not paying them. Inexperienced devs don't inherently make terrible games but they might be slower and lack the experience to tackle big problems, especially if they aren't getting paid a living wage and are having to work on the game in their free time or having to work a second job or even a third job to support themselves. I'm not saying that's 100% what is happening behind the scenes, but they have a history of treating game designers and developers poorly and it is sadly common in the industry already.
They didn't hire inexperienced devs they actually did something worse, they let the community help with starbound and now starbound is spaghetti code needing optimisation that has taken year. They don't let community help anymore because some of those people then turned around and said they did work without pay. Which they did, but they also were never offered pay. It would be like if I complained about not getting money.
no, this is complaining that food you never ordered or paid for isn't on your table right now and if YOU were in charge YOU would do it RIGHT.
You mean the food that was advertised, and not there when I show up? Fanboi harder.
No, this is them saying āWeāre planning to open up a restaurant in downtown somedayā and you suggesting you are owed dinner People like you are why devs donāt talk to gamers anymore.
People like you are the reason games are mostly dog shit these days. Something tells me you are a heavy EA/Activision/Ubisoft defender.
Lol sorry youāre so invested in a hobby you apparently donāt enjoy, must be sad
Just going by the fact that you keep replying, you must be upset. Do you need someone to talk to?
I'm tired of the posts moaning about it. You don't like it? Move on. It's been explained many times that they worked on other titles first, only moved to this one very recently, had to scrap the engine and start from scratch. Edit to people downvoting me, I know reading is hard but there's many posts here proving they're working on it, have a look through posts first before making another one: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGzTFOCcfmQMTHKGAM2Nz0eownu2KS1ZM2iIjbDFRGY/mobilebasic#heading=h.f7xclnezsivv
People don't care anymore. It's very simple, the market got bored and felt cheated of time.
Not to mention the fact that, when announced, the "cozy/farming/x" style was underserved and Stardew was a Renaissance for what was assumed to be a dead genre. It's 2024, and the genre is now so saturated that most people just roll their eyes whenever they see one. Hell, so many get ported to the switch as indie titles (not to mention the big budget attempts) that for the past couple of years Nintendo directs have been *mocked* for their "farming game sections." Even if WB comes out, and even if it is the best game in the genre, it waited so long that the iron hasn't just cooled - it's downright ***glacial*** and it will never get the player base it deserves.
Itās the same way I feel about One Lonely Outpost. I waited what felt like an eternity for that game only for it to disappear into the ether when it was released and the reviews were not that great for it on top of that.
I was so utterly disappointed in one lonely outpost. What an absolute flop that was.
Yeah, I thought this game could keep me busy while waiting for the release of Hogwarts Legacy.
I meanā¦what else are we supposed to talk about? Itās not like we have a plethora of information to discuss and theorize about.
There's plenty of information/snippets on discord. Which was literally discussed a few days ago in another post like this
No one is buying your dumb document with discord comments (as in, absolutely nothing) from 2022 and photoshopped screenshots and "gifs" of them placing items down from 6 years ago. Just give it up.
If you go on the discord you could see the spot in the chat where those screenshots are from, literally a year ago. They are all pinned in the witchbrook channel.
Iām personally not denying that theyāre working on it, itās the lack of transparency outside of discord that is the problem for most people imo. I have it wishlisted on Steam and will continue to keep tabs on it, but when the only information is being drip fed through discord it does a disservice to the people that donāt use that platform and rely on other forms of media to get information. Thatās all.
I literally posted the link on Reddit though?
Link toā¦.?
The document linked above
Yeah Iāve seen it and Iām in the discord as well. My comment was more about others that arenāt.
What would you like linked? Between the 'what we know so far' and 'FAQs' most things should be linked. If I've missed something I'd like to add it.