Here's the new Sunless Skies roadmap - thumbs up for using Agile Software Development:

Sunless Skies roadmap

Below you’ll find the roadmap for the production of Sunless Skies. Like many developers, we work in 2-week periods called ‘sprints’. This roadmap will allow you to see which general features we’re working on from now until Early Access (we’ll update it with more sprints once we enter Early Access!).

There are a few important things to note:

• Whilst the tasks and features have been outlined and planned ahead of time by our producer, Lottie, game development is quite a fluid process.
• Some tasks turn out to be more complicated than anticipated.
• It is also very rare, for example, that we would complete a huge component of the game, like all combat, art or writing, within just two weeks. Large features will be developed across multiple sprints.
• Time for polish at the end is also key. Since game development is iterative, production schedules are basically set as a skeleton of what needs to be achieved. Once we start getting player feedback, we can confirm what is working and what isn’t, make adjustments, and then flesh everything out with final art, prose, audio and animation.

Once a sprint is completed, we’ll update the information below to reflect more specifically what was accomplished, and link it to the individual development blog, in case you’re curious to know more!

KICKSTARTER – EARLY ACCESS ROAD MAP

last updated 19 April 2017

Sprint 9 – Traveling Through the Reach: APHELION Part I
ART: initial UI pipeline set up, initial locomotive designs
CONTENT: initial region work on The Reach
GAMEPLAY & DESIGN: beginning mechanics on hunger/death/fuel/time, procedurally generated movement through the game world

Sprint 10 – Traveling Through the Reach: Part II – APHELION Part 2
ART: terrain pipeline
CONTENT: Port: Traitor’s Wood
GAMEPLAY & DESIGN: implementing fuel/hunger, initial work on Terror, beginning character progression

Sprint 11 – Traveling Through the Reach: Part III – BIG BANG
ART: beginning art and animation greyboxing
CONTENT: vessel classifications
GAMEPLAY & DESIGN: combat AI specifications for tactics, error report capturing, hold management

Sprint 12 – Combat in the Reach: CHROMOSPHERE
(Extremely hot red part of planetary atmosphere. Our first heavy combat sprint!)
Terrain, AI combat behavior, player movement prototyping, commissioning first sound effects

Sprint 13 – Combat in the Reach: DARK MATTER  
(The mass that explains all the astrophysics we can’t explain. First part of combat complete and first bits of audio.)
Player combat mechanics, initial work on difficulty settings, adding environmental features in-game

Sprint 14 – Populating the Reach: EXOGENESIS 
(Theory that life originated elsewhere in the universe and was then transported to Earth. People of the Reach!)
Welcoming a new artist and designing denizens of the Reach (crew, vessels, beasties)

Sprint 15 – Populating the Reach: FORTUNE
(Dante’s personified cosmic intelligence responsible for Earth. People/denizens/character sprint.)
People of the Reach continued, character creation and character progression, closed-beta preparation

Sprint 16 – Enriching the Reach: GANYMEDE
(Jupiter’s largest moon, and the ninth largest object in our solar system. A smorgasbord of tasks all aimed at enriching the environment of the Reach.)
Closed-beta begins, audio, legacies, scouts and taking player feedback from the beta

Sprint 17 – Enriching the Reach: HYPERGALAXY
(A usually spiral galaxy surrounded by smaller satellite galaxies, like the Milky Way and Andromeda. Smorgasbord fleshing out the outlines of the Reach.)
Early Access tutorial work, shop functionality and bug fixing

Sprint 18 – Out of the Reach: INVARIANTTHEORIE
(Einstein’s preferred term for special relativity. Fine tuning the Reach!)
Bug fixing, preparation for Early Access and our first look at a new region (Albion)

Sprint 19 – Out of the Reach: JANSKY
(A unit of spectral irradiance; a big bright burst of light. Heading towards Early Access fast!)
Creating a responsive world, galaxy-wide game mechanics, and prioritising tasks to be finalised ahead of Early Access

Sprint 20 – Out of the Reach: KEPLER
(Planetary motion and celestial physics. Now it’s time for Early Access to begin!)
Smuggling implementation and finalising the Reach for Early Access

Thanks Farflame!