Barren Planet: Out Into the World

Tuesday, 8th August 2023

I'd been posting often about Barren Planet since its first inception. This is not my usual practice. I tend to keep projects secret until they're at least ready for beta testing. This keeps off the pressure on what's supposed to be a hobby: if nobody knows a project exists, delays don't matter, and I can take a break or even cancel a project entirely. But because I've been posting about the game, it's gathered a lot of interest before release.

When the game was ready. I uploaded and announced it in various places. Firstly of course was the Cyningstan web site. Once live there, it was uploaded to Itch, and announced with blog posts on both these platforms. Then came the DOS upload sites, to which I sent messages announcing the game. And after that social media, linking to the download on the Cyningstan site.

While beta testing, I prepared a series of blog and social media posts about the game to maintain interest after its release date. These are going out over a period of several months after release, and include things like these dev logs, and posts about game play.

Development of Barren Planet hasn't finished. The game supports DLC in the form of new campaigns that can be saved in the game's directory. If there's sufficient interest in the game then DLC campaigns will follow. Such DLC campaigns can have different terrain and units, so a change of scenery can be expected.

Beyond that, I'm moving on to new projects. I will probably return in future to the CWG wargame engine that powers Barren Planet. It can be adapted to any era of warfare, so historical and fantasy wargames might follow in future. But for now, I'm taking a break from CWG and working on something else entirely.