Ooblets developers Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser published a development roadmap for the game today, looking ahead to the first major content update, scheduled to arrive in September, and beyond into a full release expected to happy in mid-to-late 2021. They also announced some even bigger news: They're having a baby.
"Rebecca (the lead programmer and artist of Ooblets) is pregnant and expecting very soon with our very first baby. We’re super excited, hopeful, nervous, and all the other emotions people can have," Wasser wrote in today's update.
"The pandemic has thrown a bit of a wrench in our plans to have our families around to help us in person, so we’re going to be taking everything on ourselves, but I think we’re up to the task."
He also touched on what this means for the future of Ooblets, saying that they've been "planning around it for awhile" and working to ensure that progress isn't disrupted too badly. That's also why they've been relatively quiet over the last week or so, he said—they're trying to get as much work done on the September content update as possible before the big day.
Wasser acknowledged that they can't foresee how much of an impact having a baby will have on their lives, but "we’re pretty confident we can keep a decent pace of bugfixes and updates before and sometime after delivery," which based on what I know about the whole child-having business seems really optimistic. Whatever happens, they're not going to push themselves past their limits, he said—"Our family and wellbeing come first and we hope you’ll all be understanding about any effects this might have"—and they're looking into bringing on some help to keep up the pace.
A due date wasn't announced (maybe that's a little too personal) but I get the feeling it's close:
As for the development roadmap, you can see the whole thing down below.
September 2020
- Our first major content update, the v0.4 Nullwhere Update!
- Nullwhere will finally be a visitable region with associated ooblets, new crops, and new recipes.
- The ooblets in Nullwhere will be ones you’ve already been able to get through winning Dance Barn tournaments, but now you’ll be able to find uncommon and gleamy versions, too! We’ll also hopefully have new custom movesets for them, as well.
- We might put some new clothes in here as well, but might also push that to October as part of a Halloween event.
October 2020
- Not sure what it will be yet, but we’ll hopefully have some sort of small Halloween event, like a scavenger hunt!
December 2020
- The Wildlands Update, v0.5 with an accessible Wildlands where you can retrieve ooblets you’ve rehomed there previously.
- It might also be cool to have some snowy weather features added!
- We have a bunch of small lore items written out but not implemented that we’ll try to include in this update, too.
Early 2021
- The Port Forward Update, v0.6 with Port Forward as a visitable region and new clothes, furniture, and decor
Early/mid 2021
- Secret major update v0.7 with an unannounced new region and continuation of the meta story
Mid/late 2021
- 1.0 Full launch! With a new unannounced visitable region and continuation/conclusion of the meta story
