Progress

Mercury Rising is still in development. Early maps have been published as playable SnapMap experiences while lore, visuals, and memory budgets are refined. A map can be out in the wild long before it is considered truly finished.

Building started around January 2024 (after years of story notes). A complex SnapMap typically needs 2–2.5 months — and more and more of that time is spent on memory optimisation, then spending the freed budget on better visuals and storytelling. Between published milestones, large stretches of calendar time go to reworking older maps, researching new SnapMap tricks, lore review, and wiki writing.

There is also a real gap between playable and tested and truly finished: final layout, characters, messages, dialogue, map-specific lore, and a proper wiki page. That finishing pass adds months beyond core construction.

The campaign's three-part split is not only a story choice — it is also a practical answer to how long truly finished SnapMap work takes (map build times, memory optimisation, staged releases). Those pressures led to three explicit decisions:

• Split the full campaign into three chapters that match narrative beats.
• Keep quality high for Part One — even if that means at least another year to finish the chapter properly.
• Ship Part One in three stages of 3×3 map packages (plus the secret map at the end), so the first truly finished trio can reach players sooner.

Current development still happens primarily through NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming — vanilla SnapMap plus community asset maps from the SnapMap Discord. SnapHak / idStudio-class tools are not available in that environment today; they remain a possible later expansion once Part One is complete.