#as rambles

So the overall response for the game has been fantastic so far!  The game has been getting some lovely comments, and there hasn't been many issues with folks playing the game.

(There also have been many positive reactions to Clove returning for this game as well, haha.  Which, by the way, was always a planned thing.  There is a reason why her palette is green, and that she doesn't appear at the end of Door 2.)

I will say this though, it seems that Door 3 didn't get as much traffic as Door 2 did.  I can think of a number of reasons (like being a Flash game in 2020, Kongregate no longer accepting game submissions, etc).  Honestly though I'm just glad I was able to put the game out, and people are enjoying it.  That's enough for me.

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Speaking of Flash, what's going to happen the BackDoor games the end of the year?  In case you didn't know, Adobe plans to end-of-life Flash at the end of the year, meaning that most browsers will stop supporting Flash.  Luckily there are some alternative ways to play the games. For example, Newgrounds has released a nice pop-out player for running flash games on their site.  There's also the Flashpoint project, which is a preservation project to run all sorts of webgames- the BackDoor games are already in the archive.  So I'm not too worried about folks being unable to play the games come January 2021.

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A few thoughts on the development of Door 3- it ended up being a heck of a game to develop.  I think part of the problem was that it started as the awkward middle child of the series.  I've mentioned a few times that the BackDoor series is going to be five games.  When originally figuring out what I wanted to do with the series, Door 3 had the least amount planned.  Partially this was because I needed to resolve how to fit everything together; Doors 1/2 set up the beginning and Doors 4/5 deal with the end of the series.  There were a lot of unknowns around how Door 3 would start transitioning to the the endgame that I had basically just pushed off, thinking I would get around to it eventually.

Well 'eventually' finally came.  When beginning to start development on Door 3, I thought to myself, "crap, I finally have to deal with this now, huh".  So it took a while to finally work out the remaining unknowns.   (I have so many drafts of how Door 3 could have played out.  For example, in one draft the key item didn't exist yet, and the player had to help repair a flying machine to re-board the train at the end of the game.)

So yeah, that's part of the reason why Door 3 took so long to release.  That and the usual interruptions that come with every day life.  Plus the year of 2020 in general.

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So, what's next?  I stated this once before, but Door 3 is going to be the last Flash game in the series (what with the end-of-life stuff and all).  Which means I need to rebuild the BackDoor game engine with something that will support other formats besides Flash.  I mentioned possibly looking into HTML5, but I'm also considering just making the games standalone as well.  If possible, I'd like to also consider porting the current three games to the new engine as well, although that depends on the work involved.

That being said, I think I'd like to take a break from the BackDoor games.  Not because I'm not enjoying making the games, mostly because they tend to turn into multi-year projects.  Seriously I just want to make a few games that just take a few months to make.

If you've been following me long enough, this conversation should sound familiar.  I said something similar for Door 2 (and failed to do so, ha).  This time though, I have to commit to this plan, primarily because I need to rewrite the engine for BackDoor.  I figure working on a few short games in different game engines will give me the experience for when I want to do the BackDoor engine rewrite.

It'll probably be a long while before Door 4 comes out.  It kind of works out that I'm taking a break with Door 3; Doors 1-3 sort of act as a mini-trilogy for the BackDoor series.  They set up a functioning status quo for the series up to this point. Door 4 will change that status quo rather drastically, without getting into spoilers.

And let me just say that there WILL be a Door 4.  I really want to make it!  It tells a story that I'm really excited about and is kind of personal.  Most likely I'll be thinking about and writing notes for the game leading up to when I actually start development.  And unlike Door 3, I have a strong idea of how it's going to play out; the path to the endgame is fairly clear!

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Anyways, that all I wanted to say.  This post has become enough of a text wall as it is, hah.

Oh yeah, one more thing- I'm going to try and post more on tumblr now that Door 3 development is done.  I'm not sure how often I'll be posting, but I'd like to be a bit more active than I have been.  In the very least I'd like to post some of the concept art for Door 3 in the next few days.