On Target For Release

Great news... all Steam approval processes are now complete for Shoot Pro Wrestling 2, so the game can be released whenever I feel it is ready.

Planned Release Date

As a solo indie developer, it can sometimes be hard to judge exactly how long a particular game mechanic will take to get working the way I want it to work, but I confident that the game should release into early access in the first half of February. I'd initially hoped for a release before the end of January, but certain parts of the game, such as the contract mechanic shown below, took a little longer to get right than I'd planned.

Steam post image The wrestler contract negotiation screen (work in progress)

About Early Access

On the subject of Early Access, I'm planning for the game to only remain in EA for a month or so, with a full Version 1.0 release coming before the end of March. While it would have been nice to go straight for a V1.0 release and avoid EA altogether, the nature of the game meant that I really wanted to get wider community feedback before putting some mechanics in place.

I've been playing text-based sports sims for several decades (and been making my own for over a decade), so I know from experience how UI and data presentation can be the difference between a fun experience and a stress. Therefore, I really want to use this early access period to gather feedback from players on the game's official Steam forum about what data they want to see presented on each screen. The game runs off an SQL database, so extracting the data isn't too much of a problem, but I really want to know what players want to see, rather than just filling every gap on every screen with random stats.

Thank You for the Wishlists

Anyway, that's all for now. Thank you to everybody who's wishlisted Shoot Pro Wrestling 2 so far, I really appreciate your support.