1.000 Official Released (Not Yet Launch Day, But You Can Play It Early)

[x4000]

Full release notes: http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Tidalis_-_1.000_Official_Release

And at last... here we are! The 1.0 version is now complete for the game. This is several days in advance of our official "launch day," which will be the 16th, but you can play with this early if you are so inclined.

Our various distribution partners all need advance time to make sure that they can do their final testing of the game and/or so that they can get it onto their platforms properly. So that's why the game is done so well in advance of when it is actually released. Did you know that with retail releases, it's often a month or two of lead time? Think about it -- that's needed so that the game can go through manufacturing, etc. That's why often there is a 1.001 patch for games right on the release day, because the development team had an extra spare couple of months on their hands and found some issues after it went to manufacturing.

In our case, we'll still be keeping an eye out for any issues over the next few days, but we have no outstanding bugs that we know of at the moment. If something comes up, we'll do a 1.001 patch ourselves, but this has been through a ton of testing this week and hopefully nothing serious has slipped through.

I'll post something more celebratory on Friday when we're making our "launch day" news posts, but for now this is a major milestone we've reached! It still hasn't fully sunk in for us yet. Still a very busy time, though, with distributors, press, and so forth all needing various things now. But it's a good sort of busy.

[dumpsterKEEPER]

Grats!  I had a little bit of time to play it today and everything seemed to be working well.  I hope the official launch goes smoothly

[x4000]

Thanks!  Yeah, I have my fingers crossed on that, too.  We did a heck of a lot of beta testing and polish on this game, but we had a comparably small number of people (maybe a dozen) actually hitting it hard.  I'm used to having hundreds of people beating on a beta version, so that's made me a little nervous because I know not every feature has been hit as hard as AI War ones tend to get by folks.  But, that said, it's looking really good at the moment, so that's something.

[rubikscube]

yah, 1 or 2 month delay time no big deal, 2 or 3 years? you could say they are refining it but this is awesome!

[quickstix]

Congratulations!

I've been holding off until launch day to really get stuck into Tidalis. I just watched the launch trailer and was blown away by how much more awesome it looks since I last checked things out.

Looks like you've got another winner on your hands.

[x4000]

Many thanks!  Yeah, it's really been two hugely transformative periods: between 0.400 (first beta) and the 0.854 (the PAX 10 version) was a huge change, and then between 0.854 and 1.000 has been just as huge of a difference.  Pretty crazy to see, all around.  Lots of long days and late nights for the whole team, but we're all really happy how it's turned out.  We found out we didn't win a PAX 10 slot, but that hardly dampened spirits, which is saying something about the game.  Early reviewer commentary has been exceedingly positive, so we'll see what happens with that.

[getter77]

Congrats from me as well, as this is the first proper puzzle game I've bought in a great while....those months back!   

Here's hoping it finds the audience it should have out there, as it is a quality product in my estimation.

Besides, if Arcen ever decides to take a crack at the Puzzle-RPG niche some years down the line as you are already looking to do with Tower Defense, well, this should have some stuff rather nicely in place.   

[x4000]

Many thanks once again, and glad you're enjoying it!  Check out the adventure mode if you haven't, lately -- it's got a cool little lighthearted story in it, though it's certainly not an RPG proper.  But we're really pleased with how the adventure turned out in general; Lars kept things varied and interesting literally the whole way through 115 levels, and the story builds and is really fun the entire time, too.  Lots has changed lately!

Anyway, thanks again for all the support to everyone, it really means a ton to us. 

[strangelight]

Congratulations on getting another game out the door! Unfortunately I just don't do puzzle games, so I doubt I'll pick this up.

I want to support you though, so please keep giving me more AI War to buy

[eRe4s3r]

Its on steam and already top seller in the casual and indy section and i am proud owner of it! ;P for 7€ what a steal - you should really raise the price to 14.99€ ;P  

Its immensely fun so far - and oh my god.. so many modes and things to explore - you weren't kidding when you said this is going to be a game with depth...

Though am waiting for the German translation since with that much depth my family won't be able to understand 90% of the elements without native language

Edit:

By the way - i am hoping some modders will make some nice graphic sets for the buttons blocks - the AI War theme for them is nice but i want something a bit more fancy (more sci-fi!) and same for sounds (stream sounds and combo sounds only).. so dear modders if you read this ... do make! ;P

[x4000]

Many thanks, strangelight!  And no worries, the CoN expansion is coming soon!  Of course, that goes to the kids, not us, but that's beside the point.

At any rate, no one should feel guilty for not getting into every game we make.  Even the authors/directors/actors/etc that I am most a fan of, I almost never buy or even like everything by them.  So that's to be expected!

eRe4s3r, thanks for your support!  And thanks for the note about where we are in the top sellers on Steam, I had not realized we were there.  We're also a top seller in the family games section, too.  Pretty cool to be #1 in casual games for yesterday on Steam!

Hopefully we can do a lot of localized versions of Tidalis for digital distribution.  We are looking at talking to some partners for things of that sort, so we'll see what happens with that over the next few months.  Definitely would be a hard game to play in another language!

Glad you're enjoying all the modes and such, there is really an incredible ton in there.  Way more than we'd set out to create, but we kept having great ideas (and getting suggestions from friends and fans, too).  I'm looking forward to seeing what modders and level creators / adventure authors might come up with in the coming months!