Update to v1.0.1

- fixed: trigger for the "Survivor" achievement was not logging playtime correctly in some cases

The game is now available! I hope you enjoy it.
There is not much else to say right now so I will keep this announcement quite short.

If you encounter any problems or have any other feedback let me know in the Steam discussions or on the discord server.

That's all for now, I wish you a wonderful day and I will see you next time.

AstroTechnician

At the time I'm writing this post it's about 48 hours until the moment of release. I'm starting to feel the slowly but steadily growing excitement and anticipation. It's a good and a bad feeling at the same time. Is everything going to work? Is the game going to have a good launch? Will the months of work finally pay off? Burning questions that rise in your head but asking them is mostly useless as the answers will inevitably reveal themselves when the time has come. So my best course of action is trying to stay calm and do the things that actually lie in my power. Like writing this post, send game keys to content creators, make a proper release trailer. There is still a bit left to do but the heavy lifting is mostly done - I think. We will see how everything turns out.

As the game got polished over the last few weeks, it's now time to add these improvements to the demo so it stays in line with the actual gameplay to expect when buying the full version. For anyone who already played the demo or is just generally interested here are the most important changes we made:

• Endless mode got removed - It was not really fun and more a frustration since getting the satisfaction of a clean desk is impossible when you get shoveled more stuff in your face constantly. We changed the endless levels for just normal ones that neatly fit into the theme of their respective department.
  
• A little story got added - To lighten up the gameplay a bit and maybe give the players something to smile about. It guides the player through their journey in the company and sheds a bit of light into the secret workings of Sorting Inc ːsteammockingː
  
• Overall improvements to user experience - We looked at feedback from the demo players, some creators that played the game and shared it on content platforms as well as a lot of internal testing and tried to make the UI and the tutorials better to understand and use. There are possibly still things to improve on. We'll probably see as soon as more players get their hand on the game and share their experiences.

We added achievements so that's something the achievement hunters can look forward to.
We also went through quite a few iterations on some of the levels, their quotas and the distribution of them. Balance the game modes and keep it interesting while the player is sorting hundreds of items. Not always easy but we hopefully arrived at a good point now.


That's all for today. I hope you have a wonderful time and I see you again on release day

AstroTechnician

Hello there,

This is my first announcement on this whole endeavour. I will tell you a little bit about me further down but the more important stuff comes on top:

After about ten months of development it is finally time to show it to the public. Sorting Inc was meant to be a quick little project to get the indie dev routine going but of course it's never that easy and a big learning curve to be climbed. Even though I am a solo dev at principal this game would not look as good as it does now without the help of two good friends of mine and I'm extremly grateful for their support! I think it turned out nice but we will see what happens in the next weeks and months.


What are the next steps? The planned release of the full game is early April. I'm aiming for the 04/02/2025. The demo also got scheduled for the Next Fest coming up soon. The gameplay and level design are mostly complete and all that is left is finishing up the final graphics of the later levels.
Other points would be: Steam achievements and possibly more translation for the full release. I will look into the options I have at the moment. Community driven translations would obviously help tremendously while keeping the budget manageable but I will see what I can do.


A little bit about me: when I grew up I was always interesested in technical things and when I got introduced to PC games I was immedetly hooked so it was no surprise that I became a programmer later. I worked at a smaller game studio for about nine years but I parted ways with them and now persue my own indie journey. Which means I have to learn a whole lot of new stuff about game design, graphics, sound, music, publishing, finances etc. etc. It's a lot to manage but it's exciting nevertheless.


I hope you have a good day, until next time
AstroTechnician