Dear backers,

Thank you so much for your patience and encouragement while we're working on the beta. It has been an exciting, challenging, fun, and frustrating process for us. City of Epic is a lot like the proverbial iceberg: only halfway through did we realize that the part we'd finished was only what was above water.

Today we pushed the beta live, but I hesitate to call it "beta." What's up now represents only a tiny fraction of the functionality we have planned for the game, and an even smaller percent of the content. A game of this style and scale is quite unlike anything we've ever done before. We spent a lot of time writing and re-writing core components of it, and we're still not happy with how all the pieces fit together. But we can't add all the good stuff until we get the basics down pat. It's been both enlightening and frustrating.

So we did what any self-respecting programmer does with software they're not happy with: we pushed it live.

What? Why would you release the game if it's only a tiny bit done?

Well, there are some pretty compelling reasons.

First, few things light a fire under your bum quite as effectively as having real live users interact with your site and then tell you all about it.
Second, it helps you focus on the parts that most desperately need attention. When you're stuck on a tricky problem, it's easy to get sucked in while other more important issues languish.

The last, and most important reason, is that we need to know more about you, the players. We need to know what your current fitness level is like. We need to know what exercises you do, and how often. We need to know whether you like points, and whether you think we're funny.

We know there's a lot missing from what's live now, we know we have a long way to go. While we work on getting there, we'd love for you to log in, try out some of the  battles, and log the workouts you're already doing. And of course let us know when things explode, so we can fix them before anyone else notices!

If you've already got your beta code you can log in now at http://beta.cityofepic.com/ . If you're still waiting for yours, it should be in your inbox by this evening.

Thanks!

As many of you have noticed, the beta has yet to open up. And I'm sure some of you are wondering just what these chumps are doing instead of giving you an awesome game. We're very close! I promise no one is more anxious to get this thing out into the world than Katherine and I, but we've run into some slow spots and administrative tasks that have slowed us down.

One thing we were blindsided by is all the paperwork necessary to operate like a Real Grown-Up Entity, aka being able to take the Kickstarter money and put it towards the game in an official capacity. We thought we had all of this taken care of, but after a trip to the bank that was so ridiculous I think we're going to write it into the game, it turned out we needed about twice as much paperwork. Sorting that out has been a huge time suck.

The other thing we underestimated was simple data-entry: how long it would take us to cram all of our clever scenarios into the database that drives the game. That proved to be much more tedious than we thought, even after I made Katherine learn enough ruby to help me load the data.  

Thanks to an 18 hour marathon coding session on Saturday we're just about ready. What we have left to do is a little more data loading and some basic testing. I'm so excited to have people start playing that it's tempting just to let people in as-is, but it needs a little more fixing up before I throw people at it. The beta will be an iterative one; we'll be adding new content, getting feedback and changing the game on a weekly, if not daily, basis. The beta will be open as long as it takes to get the game where it needs to be. It's nerve wracking to let people see your game before it's finished, but I think it will help us make it great.

Hey everyone! We've got just six hours to go in the campaign, so if you were considering becoming a backer, now's the time! I'm excited to say that we reached our goal!

We've been coding and drawing like madmen, and will start releasing real game content on the beta server next week. Since this is very much a beta test, we'll be making tons of changes as we get feedback. Your input will be incredibly valuable to us as we try to design the best game possible.

The rest of the beta invite goes will be going out to the 25+ backers this evening, and for those of you who got other rewards we'll be in touch for things like t-shirt sizes and custom avatars.

Thanks everyone, we couldn't do this without you!

-Kelly

Well hello everyone!

We have just 9 days left in our campaign, and this morning we crossed the $4000 mark, so things are looking promising! The last few days have slowed down quite a bit though, so please continue spreading the word so we can make sure to hit our goal and make this happen!

Katherine has been hard at work on new illustrations for the avatar creator, including some of the most requested items like buzz cuts and glasses. A few things, like additional clothing options and accessories, will be in-game items to earn, but we're adding in the core items and styles we were missing.

I've been working on the logic side of things, to make sure that the challenges scale regardless of your fitness level. In theory, the game will be equally challenging to both couch potatoes and marathon runners, but in practice it will probably take a lot of balancing. That's where the beta comes in! We're bracing ourselves for the torrent of feedback that will help take our game from a "nice idea" to a rock solid exercise platform.

We're in the home stretch now, thanks for all the support!

Good Morning!

Those of you in the US are undoubtedly waking up from a post Memorial Day food coma, the holiday where one shows their reverence for our armed forces by stuffing as many hot dogs into their face as possible. 

Eagle-eyed backers will notice we have two new reward levels, at $65 and $125. The $65 and up levels now include a super awesome Zombie Apocalypse t-shirt, at the $125 level we'll go beyond simply naming a character after you - we'll design it after your likeness as well. So if you want to see your favorite Christmas sweater immortalized in digital ink, the $125 backer reward is the way to go.

We're halfway through our campaign, and halfway to our goal, but we're in a bit of a slump so please remember to share our project with your friends! And thank you so much, there really is no way we could be doing this without you.