Underworld Ascendent 2015 Development Outlook Update

We haven’t heard anything about Underworld Ascendant since the end of the Kickstarter campaign, but this shouldn’t come as surprise when one factors in how much work and commitment a crowdfunding campaign requires (something plenty teams that have worked on a Kickstarter will attest to and have in fact attested to). That saidr, today OtherSide Games has broken the silence with a new update that gives us the rundown of what the team has been up to since then and, more importantly, the kind of timetable it’s now working on.

In short, for now OtherSide Games is aiming for a Q4 2015 release for Underworld Ascendant’s prototype build, and a Q1 2016 release for a proper pre-alpha build of the title:

We made it! What a strange and wonderful ride the past few months have been. What an amazing community we have. It is so refreshing to see a community full of positive energy and genuine excitement about what we are embarking on over the next couple of years.

As producer guy, I now have to step up to the plate. My job, well my primary job, is to keep the whole thing on track. I know people have already been asking for release dates for the game and alpha builds. There is no set in stone dates yet. Let me explain why.

We will use agile principles for development. Everyone on the team is familiar with them already, so we should be able to jump in pretty quickly. Also with the size of our team we should be able to stay really lean when it comes to some of agile’s busy work.i.e. I’ll be doing the paperwork.

Now according to agile principles, the worst day to make a decision is the first day. Why? Think about it; This is the day we have the least amount of information. We know what the project is, but we don’t know much else. We don’t know peoples workload, we don’t know all the systems we need to build, etc. etc. The more you know, the more concrete a decision you can make.

Makes sense right? That is not to say a line in the sand is a bad idea. Of course it’s not. If you don’t have one you end up in the dreaded endless development cycle. That is no fun for anyone.

So, I’ll put two lines in the sand:

Prototype build sometime during Q4 2015.

Pre-Alpha build sometime during Q1 2016.

Now, I can hear a couple of my developers going ‘˜pfft, we can be ready before that’ but my job is to plan for every eventuality, including the unexpected and unknown. The prototype is at the end of this year because I want the team to not feel any stress while in pre-production. This is one of the most important phases of development. What are we building? What are we trying to achieve? What is the backstory of our races and how does that effect development? 1000 exciting questions we have to answer in the next few months before we put pixel to program.

And going forward we’ll try to keep you in the loop as much as possible about just what those answers are.