Hey all! This is going to be a bit of a more serious devlog than my usual ones. Been a while since I've made a lengthy devlog, hasn't it?

As I am writing this, for the first time, my testing team is officially playing through some of the early builds of the full game. (also no, before you ask, we're not adding more members to test the game. We already have quite a few - sorry!)

You could probably tell from the trophies and scores (which you should totally check out on the game page!) that testers have been unlocking & submitting.

I'd say the game is 85% done as of right now and things are coming VERY close to completion.

It's a very, very exciting time for all of us involved, and the game is closer to being ready than it ever has before. The feedback I've been getting from testers has been very positive so far as well! Regardless, though - I feel the need to set some expectations.

This might be due to the amount of time it has been between the demo release and now, 9 months now in-fact, but I've seen way too many people expect that the full version of this game is going to attempt to be a super huge fangame with tons of extra content filled to the brim - which obviously just isn't going to be the case.

Yes, there will be some things to collect & unlock. There will be a few cutscenes to watch, with plot twists to uncover. There will be a small selection of different environments to go through, & new characters and mechanics to shake the gameplay loop up. And yes, there will be a bit of re-playability to it, considering each 'night' now has a hard-mode variant (and best times are kept for each hour, to encourage beating your friend's / your own times.)

The main gameplay, similarly to the demo, will be a gameplay loop, somewhat akin to how FNaF 1-4 have their own gameplay loops. Post night 3, new characters and mechanics get added to shake things up,. The 'final' night changes things completely by putting you in a new environment, with a new threat to deal with. I imagine most people assumed this would be the case, but I feel the need to clarify this anyway.

However, if you are setting unrealistic expectations for yourself that this game will be massively groundbreaking for the fangame scene or something, consider this;

At the end of the day, this game started as a project developed purely for fun. It was never my goal to have this game 'compete' with other, bigger fangames, or try to one-up them or something. It was never my goal to have it be the longest, biggest experience a fangame can offer. My end goal is to ultimately just be unique from the rest, fun, and that people have a good time with it. (Which, I feel with the full game, including feedback I've gotten, has definitely been accomplished.)

After all, I'm basically doing 90% of the work for this game. Rendering, modelling, programming, animating, story... you get the idea. It's a LOT of work.

Sure, I could easily make this game super ambitious if I wanted to. Add in a ton of random post-night segments or whatever, add an unreasonable amount of different types of unlockables if I felt it was needed. But when I started developing this game all those many months ago, I ultimately decided to make this game not ambitious enough to risk being cancelled.

There were a lot of cancelled Tealer's projects & prototypes. Fully free roam ones, ones with weird concepts and mechanics. Said projects were ultimately canned because the main draft for all of them were so ambitious to the point where I could just not motivate myself to work on it further. That problem, thankfully, hasn't taken TEALERLAND with it as well.

The reason development on full game has been taking a while is just simply letting myself take breaks and not overwork myself, which is honestly needed for a project like this. I have been pushing extremely hard for this game to see the light of day.

Regardless, I do really think people will very happy with the final product. None of this is implying that I think most people will be disappointed, or unhappy with what I end up putting out. Not at all. There's a lot of stuff to do in it, the nights get hectic and fast, and there's a lot of lore to uncover. It'll be a great time.

For most people, who enjoyed what the demo had to offer but are looking forward to some extra cutscenes, lore, mechanics and a few tidbits on top, the full game should absolutely satisfy.

I am super proud of how the game is finally turning out to be, and I feel confident with the decisions I've made for it. It's gonna be very exciting when it finally comes out, for you guys and myself.

But if you're going to go in expecting there to be endless different gameplay styles, countless different scenes to go through, and expecting there to be huge aspects in it that will blow your mind, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

And really, if you think that way, there's not really anything I can do about it - without having started this project with way too much ambition to begin with.

TL;DR: The full game is coming very, very soon. Feedback has been great, and I think most of you guys will be really happy and satisfied with what you end up playing.

But before you jump in when it comes out, try to look at TEALERLAND as its own thing. My only request for you guys is that you don't compare this game to some of the other massive fangames that are in development or have been released. It was never my intention for TEALERLAND to 'beat' these other fangames.

This is quite literally my first fangame that is going to be released in over 6 YEARS. Think about how huge that is, especially for me. Obviously after coming back to this community after so long, don't expect anything insanely groundbreaking or fangame-scene changing from this game.

But do expect a lot of fun, a cool story to go through, and a lot of nice little extras that accommodate the main gameplay.

Thank you guys so much for sticking with me through all of this time. It's almost ready for everyone to finally jump in and play.

This fangame's community is amazing and I can't wait to finally show what I've been working on.

The fanart this game has been getting, the gameplay videos, the Discord server. It's all what has been pushing me to finally make it this far.

See you guys again with a final trailer in like, a month or two?
For now enjoy this snippet of random gameplay. Adios for now!