The Road to Launch

There’s an old management saying: the first 90 percent of a project takes 90 percent of the work. The last 10 percent of the project also takes 90 percent of the work.

We’re in that last 10 percent of Ctrl Alt Deal, and our team is feeling it. When we first came up with the idea for the game, back at the end of 2021, the finished product seemed so clear in our minds. As we set into prototyping, we realized some of those initial ideas—a relationship network instead of a traditional room layout, the ability to blackmail and impersonate Paperclip’s employees—were tweaked or discarded. (Others, like the bees, stayed constant.) We had to pivot, adjust, try, fail, and try again.

Now, nearing the end of development, the game’s content is all but finalized. That still leaves a hundred things to do, though, from testing to localization, and from intro sequences to voiceover recording. Though some days the list of tasks seems endless, our super team is pulling together hard to reach the finish line!

We’ll be releasing specific details as we can over the next few months. Until then, here’s a roadmap of how we expect the launch to go.

• Game content development (including text, art, gameplay mechanics, sound effects, and music) will continue – top priority!
• Playtesting, reviewing, and bug fixing will happen parallel to development, and ramp up once content is complete.
• We’ll also be looking at what we can provide for voiceover and text localization for launch (can’t wait to share more details on that!)
• In March we plan to attend GDC in San Francisco, and potentially another convention as well.
• We’ve been accepted into at least one Steam festival leading up to launch, with details coming soon! (Oh, those embargos.)

As information is confirmed and given the green light to share, we’ll be doing so on our Discord first. Hop over and join us if you want to be among the first to know. Or sign up for our newsletter to get the info sent straight to your inbox!

And now… time to get back to work!