Still alive

I'm making this post mainly so you don't think this project is dead, since I haven't posted any updates in a long time.

Why the silence?

When you develop a video game on your own, you face many challenges, and things can get even more complicated depending on your personal situation, since you don't have a team to delegate to or rely on.

That's what happened to me. I've been (and still I am) going through a difficult personal situation that has made it hard to focus my efforts on the project. So, although Thumps & Blows was initially scheduled for release at the end of 2025, it has had to be delayed.

Precisely because of this uncertainty, it was difficult for me to share updates and news regularly, as I was worried about creating expectations and making promises I might not be able to keep.

Now I can confirm that I'm getting the development back on track, so little by little the situation will stabilize, and I'll be able to share updates and make announcements with confidence and certainty.

If this situation has caused you any inconvenience, disappointment, or anything like that, I apologize. If you'd like to stay up-to-date on the project's progress, I suggest you follow me on social media or join the official Discord server, as I'm able to be fairly consistent there. You'll find the links on the game's page.

How's Thumps & Blows going?

Good, although slower than I'd like.

Thanks to the in-person events I've attended and the people who have joined the playtest to find bugs and areas for improvement, we've managed to solidify some things and upgrade others.

I've also been focusing on quality-of-life improvements and basic functionalities, so there haven't been many new content updates, which might give the impression that we haven't made much progress, when that's not the case.

These are the main new features:

• Of the 10 available characters, some have received substantial changes, and those that haven't have had their different areas for improvement identified.

• Added basic changes, such as a simpler grab for each character, and changes to the bounce that allow for different combos and gameplay styles.

• Sound improvements, new musical arrangements.

• UI changes.

• Visual adjustments to the environments.

• Restructuring and redesign of the menus, although a couple of adjustments are still pending.

• Added multilingual support, currently with translations into English, Spanish, and Galician.

• Online mode enabled (it's a bit cumbersome, but it works).

• Basic structuring for the arcade mode.

• Creation of the amazing and overwhelming minigame of keeping the ball in the air.

• Steamworks adjustments.

• Bug fixes and general adjustments.

• Bug fixes within bug fixes.

• Communication issues (yes, besides developing the game, you have to promote it).

• etc.

As you can see, a lot has been done, but most of it isn't immediately apparent, and if it's not communicated, it can easily go unnoticed. Now that so many fundamental issues have been resolved, it's likely that future updates will increasingly focus on game content.

Even so, if you'd like to participate in the game's playtest and experience it firsthand, all you have to do is join the Discord server, and I'll send you a Steam key as soon as I can. You can find the link on the store page.

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What are the future plans?

This section contains some spoilers.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, development is now much more on track, so there will be more and more frequent updates soon. You'll likely see several things in April.

The goal now is