Sharpshooter Carnival has been "in production" since late 2024. Holy shit.

By this point, the game should realistically be almost complete, so what happened? It's all due to a slew of issues (actually just 2)

ONE: i am a lazy bum lmao

I don't have as good of a work ethic as some of my more well-known friends, and lose motivation to work on things consistently pretty quickly (like what happened with _TERMINAL, which is unfortunately far more complete than Carnival despite not having any real gameplay at this time and only containing the prototype for the CLI).

TWO: for the longest time i wasn't really confident that i could pull off the level of quality i expected from myself and still suffer from it today

This one is a larger issue that has affected not just Carnival, but all of my other games as well. Admitting this feels like biting a bullet, but I should've been honest about this way, way sooner. This is the reason that Alex the Sharpshooter 2 will be rebooted. After a certain point in that game's development I realized it was going nowhere and "cancelled" it (Legacy ATS 2 is more in a state of limbo, I really dislike the first 2 games and want to remake them both eventually).

Afterwards, I wanted to keep on improving my gamedev skills and for the most part I seem to have succeeded... thankfully. If I put my best into this game I might also be able to satisfy my overambitious desires, which would be sick!

Now, where is this game going?

The content of Sharpshooter Carnival (the assets present in the various builds dated December '24 to January '25) is all being remade. Currently I'm on the new disclaimer screen. When I show it off here you might be able to get an idea of the game's quality going forward.

Carnival has grown in scope (again, due to my overambition) and now every night has a Post-Night segment afterwards (definitely not something you'd usually expect though). The game will be almost entirely pixel art, like before. I was thinking of going 3D and getting other people to model my shitty circle-headed characters and everything else in a way that resembled the 2025 artstyle but ultimately decided against it (bcuz I'd probably have to pay someone which I'm literally not allowed to do for reasons and also since I'm lazy and anyone else's patience would've run out with me).

The cast of characters (Alex-matronic, Ani-May-tronic, AGONY and another 2 secret characters I won't spoil) is staying the same (with the addition of a guest :)) and the redesigns shown a few months ago may be tweaked slightly (they will also be given color and were always supposed to be colored properly, I just don't like drawing WITH colors since I'm primarily traditional and digital scares me shitless) but are otherwise final.

Again, ask me any questions about this game in the comments, whatever. (sensitive information will not be revealed outright but only be hinted at vaguely. do with that what you will.)

soldy OUT