To misquote Charlie Brown: “AAAAARG!”
This is killing me.
For very good strategic reasons, we have not yet announced our next update or its major features, but I did not become a writer to NOT tell people about all the cool stuff I find out.
Okay. Okay. I can stay calm.
I got invited to be a flower on the wall of one of the big development meetings this week, as I do every week. This time the topic of discussion was…a THING…that I cannot talk about.
Well…no, that’s not entirely true. I cannot talk about WHO…but I can talk about…WHAT.
Anyone who has seen our cover art and looked at our marketing materials knows that while Vironica, charming and beautiful as she is, remains our “leading lady,” the first fully-realized dance partner in the game and the one to walk new players through learning the steps, we have always planned to bring other dancers and partners into the roster.
That was the subject of this week’s development meeting. It is time to bring in some help to give Vironica a little relief. I am so tempted to make a joke about a “backup dancer,” but the other dancers will be so much more than that. In time, they will do everything she does: teach, lead challenges, freedance…the whole deal.
We are not there yet. As our founder, Patrick, likes to say, “We have to go slow to go fast.” We are taking our time implementing the second dancer to create the workflows and develop the best practices that will help smooth the process so we can later bring in the third and fourth all the more easily.
In the meeting, our developers discussed how to make the inputs more dynamic and responsive to the differences in body shape and height between the characters. Height, it turns out, is a big deal when it comes to matching up choreography (go figure.) Plus, we want to make sure that some of Vironica’s more bespoke tricks, like her mid-dance-floor costume change in freestyle mode, will also be available to the other dancers as we bring them in.
With a little luck, by next week, we will have made an announcement or two, and I can finally spill some beans. In the meantime, all I can do is encourage you to listen for the music, keep your body moving, and dance with us!