During our new year’s family dinner, my older brother introduced some of us to the concept of Rose, Bud and Thorn - RBT.

Apparently my sister had been practicing this for many years with her children and he really enjoyed learning about it last time he was at their place for a visit.

He wanted us all to reflect on 2023 and have us share our Rose and Thorn for last year but also what excited us the most for the year to come. Don't worry, I shall not bother you with any of the details from our family's stories.

I do think this could be a fun and creative way to reflect on what we have accomplished this past year, shed some light on some of the unexpected thorns that we’ve encountered and tell you all about what we have been cooking at OpenSeason.

The Rose

It is hard to believe that less than a year ago OpenSeason was just a concept inside our heads. Fast forward to today and we have a playable prototype (alpha) which has been accepted in the Epic Games Store.

Since the alpha release we have increased the game main map to include 5 biomes, revamped networking to support live in-game chat, multiplayer lobby and many more smaller, but significant improvements.

Of course that it would have been nearly impossible to do this with a two man team so we increased our dev power to seven in order to make it all happen, from game level designers to network experts and optimization wizards.

We can comfortably say that OpenSeason was the Rose of our 2023. We have learned so much during the game building process and as with anything, we learned a lot about the unknown unknowns that were involved in the development.

The Thorn(s)

As the saying goes, the only certainty in life is uncertainty.

Little did we know that the Epic Store green light was going to take 2 months longer than expected, or that by the end of the year we would learn that the web3 plugin that our prototype relied on for membership verification was going to be discontinued by January 1st 2024.

This meant we needed to re-architect the whole login flow and build a solution in-house. After much deliberation with the team, we were forced to the conclusion that there was no way we would be able to do all we wanted to - especially during the middle of the holidays - and still release the game by the deadline we had ironically imposed on ourselves, January 5th. So while it comes with some buds (see below) the biggest thorn therefore is that we have to delay the game's beta release to late February.

The Bud

The great news though is that with more dev time, you can expect a much more polished, optimized, and smooth gaming experience than before.

Our new in-house web3 solution will not require you to constantly log into Metamask and sign some random transaction to play the game. It will be exactly like a web2 experience but with all the innovative cool new features that web3 enables, like early game access to NFT membership holders and full control of your in-game items. And instead of being limited by someone else’s plugin, and risk being rugged by them, we’ve built our own shit. Which will be used with Open Season and beyond to make it waaayyy easier to login to web3 games and play them on multiple platforms.

We are also in talks with many NFT Communities and DAOs in order to bring their JPEGs to life and enable them to have their own beautifully designed worlds full of lore in JPEG Island.

We have been optimizing each map to get the maximum performance possible while still making sure the intricate details of each biome is not lost.

Wen Game? Soon ™

We can't wait for all of you to get your hands on the latest game build. Until then, we wish you an incredible New Year and we hope you all have had a much needed rest with your families and loved ones.