We've finally had a chance to breathe, sit down, and write this. If you read our post about our wild ride to Ynovate Fest, you know we had exactly 10 days to finish our app, set up our onboarding emails, and push the launch button.
To put it mildly: it was absolute hardcore mode.
About 14 days before the event, we sat down and had to make some brutal decisions about our scope. We had to slash features left, right, and center.
Pushing this version to the app stores felt exactly like having this ultra-cool, high-fashion outfit, perfect makeup, styled hair, and expensive shoes fully planned out in your head... and then walking out into the street in just your underwear.
From the deeply complex, multi-layered world-building and character memory systems we initially designed, the app currently can't even recognize which custom persona the player is playing, because there isn't anything like a persona yet.
Instead, you have to pick from a pre-made character that we built the story around. There is no dynamic world evolution yet. The app basically does one thing: it lets you open a chat in a specific world and chat.
We are technical perfectionists, so yes, we are incredibly embarrassed. But as Michael Seibel, the former CEO of Y Combinator, said:
If you aren't embarrassed by the first version of your product, you waited too long to launch.
So by that logic, our timing was absolutely perfect. We are cringing, which means we launched right on time.
Narratica Early Access Is Officially Live
Despite the chaos, the panic, and the stripped-down features, we crossed the finish line. We are officially out there.
And hilarious plot twist: Apple actually approved us before Google did, which usually never happens. But we have great news: the Google Play approval came through right after, so both Android and iOS users can play now!
What's Inside This Very Early Version?
Right now, we have 10 handcrafted worlds created entirely by us. We've got fantasy, sci-fi, historical, urban fiction, and more.
Since creating your own custom worlds is a massive feature, we are saving that for the next stage of development.
We Need You to Break Things
Right now, our main goal is to test the core chat experience. We want to see what works, what breaks, and trust us, a lot of things are breaking right now, and how we can improve everything based on your raw, honest feedback.
If you find bugs, weird AI responses, or have cool ideas, you can write them on our Discord.
We've already spotted a bunch of glitches ourselves, and the first wave of fixes is already on the way.
Getting the app out there is a terrifying but beautiful step for us.
We'll be dropping continuous updates, adding features back in piece by piece, and we hope that by the end of the year, Narratica will be in a super polished, incredibly fun, and usable state.
Thank you so much for stepping into our worlds, even if we are currently just wearing our underwear. Your support means everything to us!
Download Narratica from the stores:
— KeyQlin