Hi everyone!

I’m Luis Diaz, one of the guys behind “Missing Translation”. Over the last few months we haven’t updated our devlog, the greenlight page or made any kind of statement about the game. I even said that it would be ready during Christmas, which clearly didn’t happen at all; and that’s all on me, as I (among other things) am in charge of production and PR.

So here I am today trying to be as transparent and communicative about the project as possible.

Why haven’t you updated your devlog or the greenlight campaign?
I could say it’s because personal reasons or the fact that I’m completely overwhelmed, truth is, even if I’m busy, I should get some time to update everything and keep in touch with you.

So… have you finished the game already?
I get asked that question at least twice a day, a huge part of the game is already finished, but we’re not done yet.

That’s not a date, when is it coming out?
We’re just a bunch of people working on our free time, talking about dates is hard and the one time I said a launch day in public I was completely wrong about it. Instead of talking about when it’s coming out I’ll just explain what our current plans are.

We are going to do a “soft launch” in March, meaning that we’ll publish the game on some minor online platform (I can’t say which one yet but it won’t be Steam or GameJolt); I’m not sure if the game will be 100% complete but it’ll have menus, an initial intro, all the maps, the vast majority of puzzles and an ending.

After the soft launch we might need a week or two to finish everything, we still need to prepare our collector’s edition(with soundtrack, concept art, etc) and finish our steam paperwork.

“Dead Synchronicity”[www.deadsynchronicity.com] (an awesome spanish game) is coming out on April 10th, and we want to leave, at least, a week between their launch date and ours.

So I’d really like to do the official launch in April, but there’s no way to be sure.

Steam paperwork? You already got Greenlighted, what else do you need?
Turns out that before publishing the game (apart from implementing the SDK) there’s some paperwork that needs to be done. It’s not that much, but it get’s worse if you’re (a) from Spain and (b) an individual (not a company), and guess what, I’m an individual from Spain, jackpot!

Registering as a company is not an option since it’s way too expensive here.

We might have found a solution to all this with the help of someone else, but we’re still working on it.

So if you’re still working on the game what have you done? I think you are trying to make it bigger, or maybe you no longer want to publish it for free.
The game isn’t getting any bigger, this is what we’ve been doing lately:

1) Polishing the game and trying to finish it, and also throwing a lot of content away when we weren’t happy with the result.

2) Paperwork…….

3) Answering e-mails and preparing events.

Regarding the price of the game, our plan has always been to release it for free digitally on Windows, Mac and Linux; right now we can’t find a single reason to change that. I can’t speak for other distribution methods as those haven’t been discussed yet.

Events? I heard you guys went to hoPLAY, anything after that?
We’ve been in a couple of small national events, a few weeks ago we showcased the game in “Madrid Japan Weekend” where “Missing Translation” won the award of best game in the show(voted by the public).

We’ll also be at “Comic Con Spain” showcasing the game soon.

Going to more international festivals to showcase the game would rock, but that depends a lot on calendars, expenses, etc; we’ll keep trying in case we get lucky.

The guys from “Made in Spain Games” will be at GDC with a demo of “Missing Translation”, so if you see them ask about the game :D

Closing thoughts…
I’m the kind of guy who loves making jams and lots of games to gain experience and get better, I’m excited about finishing “Missing Translation” and moving on to a new project, so yeah, I can’t wait to finish it and share this with everyone, but I need to be comfortable with the final product.

So far we got great feedback from the players in every event, sure, the game might not be for everyone but people are enjoying it a lot and “Missing Translation” has quietly become something that, flaws included, makes us proud.

We’ll try to publish the game soon but you know how it works, it’ll be finished when it’s finished.

Best Regards from the dev team (Luis, Gustavo, Albert and Tice)
You can find our portfolio and contact info at AlPixel Games[www.alpixelgames.com]