November Launch!

It's been a busy summer for Killer Aces Volleyball development, wanted to give an update on how things are going. First off, my plan is to release this game into Early Access in November, potentially as early as November 2nd if everything goes well!

That's soon which is exciting but also pretty ambitious and carries a little bit of bad news to go along with it. To hit that date I've need to reprioritize things and as a result player customization will not be part of day 1 Early Access. It's still a super high priority for the game, but it won't be ready for that November launch date.

The good news is I've been making steady progress on the game over the last few months. I recently added offspeed & power spikes (and serves soon), which you can see in action here:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0XqtXR0Nfns

I've also started building out the 18 men's and women's teams that will be in the game and done some work on the player models and gear options, including the ability to have different gear on each arm or leg. The women's player model just got updated to match the men's so now I can start working on their facial customization, hair styles, etc. I've also added left handed players, something that was missing in the demo! Additionally the game will launch with 3 available jerseys per team that you can choose from before games.

Something new is the international tournament mode which lets you play a single tournament using 8 to 18 teams with custom options like number of qualifying games, size of final bracket, number of sets, points to win, and more.

You'll be able to play or spectate any game on the schedule

and full player stats are tracked over the course of the tournament (not fully working yet here)

On the court I've added challenges with a little replay and ref cutscene. You'll have the option to choose how many per set you want teams to have

and player substitutions, also with options on how many you want per set

Finally, I've received a ton of great feedback on the demo and some of it has already made its way into the game! One of those areas was the game's tutorial, which I've spent some time streamlining the overall experience to hopefully feel a lot better.

A big change is the lesson menu which opens at the start of the tutorial and is available anytime during a lesson. From here you can see which ones you've already completed and choose to play (or replay) them in any order

Overall the coach's dialog is more direct and he gives clear direction on your timing so you will have a better understanding of what you're doing wrong. I'm hopeful that this and a few other targeted changes will make for a more informative experience and one you can easily return to in the future if you need to brush up on something or learn something new.

So that's a lot of work to get ready for you by November! I'll try and get another update out closer to that time talking about an exact launch date once I have a better idea of what that looks like. Appreciate yall checking out the game, I'm really excited to get this in your hands in just a few months!