Weird af intro

It’s almost midnight and I’m listening to That 2 A.M. Fresh Air lofi mix on youtube. I’ve done my work, chores, had some fun in Final Fantasy XIV and now I figured it’s a good time to write a blog post. I’m still wondering if I should keep it as a personal diary of a solo game developer or turn it into Panzerlife’s professional website. Let’s keep it a diary for now.

Monthly updates

First of all, some news. From now on I will try (really hard!) to post here at least ONCE every month. I would like to record progress on my project and make everyone sure that I am indeed working on it. Besides, it motivates me to work harder because I will try to show something good every month. I also promised myself to build a community around it – not just for marketing reasons but mainly because if you are interested in tanks then we have the same damn hobbies. I genuinely want to make some friends as I’m working on the game!

Panzerchanges

Important news: part two. A lot has changed regarding to what Panzerlife is going to be. Let’s break it down then:

• Panzerlife is no longer a VR project. I know this sounds disappointing. I know it was supposed to be something fresh on the VR market. As I was prototyping the VR tank game, it turned out that my vision of gameplay is just giving me nausea (just like playing Pavlov VR for too long or War Thunder air arcade battles). I found a way around it but then I encountered even more problems which would force the game to become something different than I at first intended. From now on, Panzerlife is being developed as a single player desktop PC game (Switch port – hell yes, multiplayer modo – I would love to but it’d be hard to mantain as a solo dev with little backend experience).
• I am going to focus on the story and FANTASY ELEMENTS even more. At first I just wanted to make it a basic WW2 game with alternative names of the countries. Now it is still based on 1930s technology, events and even specific 1939 battles but I would like to explore ways to make it an original setting. Tl;dr – foxgirls and alternative history.
• Because of my limited possibilities to test the game on all kinds of PCs and after asking you guys on twitter, I’ve decided to release the game in early access first. I still intend to have a closed circle of alpha testers but that just won’t be enough.

Roadmap to early access

Keep in mind that all those dates could change but they are my goals for now.

1. Panzerlife video teaser + Steam store page: 8th May 2021 (yes, the Victory Day)
2. Early access: Q2 2022
3. Full launch: 3-6 months after the early access, depending on your feedback and technical issues. After getting the game to the best shape I would love to focus on a Switch port
4. Unknown time after the full release: if I could get literally any interest in Panzerlife, I would like to work on additional features: maybe a simple multiplayer modo and a DLC focused on the war from the losers’ side, as a commander of a cute TKS 20mm tankette who turned to guerilla tactics

Bonus for getting this far

Since you’ve got this far, here is something special. Two lo-fi gifs of what the prototype of the game looks like right now (spoilers: it’s damn ugly 😀 What you see below is more like a playground for testing game mechanics). I am still using placeholders for every tank in the game and I’m more focused on the terrain, trees and grass than anything else but hey, here it is.

Until next time! ❤