So, Gateways launched on the 13th. I mean, yes, it was already available on the website in June but the 13th felt more like a proper launch with it appearing on XBox, Steam and Desura. Feedback about the game has been almost entirely positive, people seem to really like it, which makes me smile. I'm still expecting to see more reviews appear in the next week or so but I'm pretty happy with the coverage it's had so far.
It appears the one thing most people (although not quite everyone) agree on is that the game gets,... how can I say, a little bit tricky towards the end. OK, I may have gotten carried away at the last puzzle but I still quite like the idea that it uses everything and takes people about 4 hours to work out a solution. Sadism does tend to be quite a popular trait among indie developers. And I mean work out "a" solution, the game gets very open-ended by the end so it's really a case of using the tools you have available to you.
I'm planning some changes to the game which will hopefully help some people out. First of all I'm adding in some decent help screens because it seems the tutorials for the time travel gun go by a bit too quickly. I'll be adding help screens explaining all the guns of course, not just the time travel one. I'm also planning on adding two different difficulty modes in the game. The current game will become the 'hard' difficulty and I'll be adding a new 'normal' difficulty in which the puzzles are a bit easier. The layout of the map and everything will be the same but the puzzles will be slightly reshuffled to make them more digestable. You can have a look at my plans for the 'normal' mode here in fact, I'd be interested to know what people think. Be warned, it contains details of the later puzzles if you haven't played the game and don't want to ruin the surprise.
