I've been working with a team now for long enough that I can comfortably say the game is no longer a one-man project.  I knew this at a cerebral level but this week Ref asked the dreaded question "what's next" (now that the demo is complete) and I realized that past the next week my roadmap is a mystery...  I knew I wanted to polish the game, which we've been working on so the vertical slice is as clean as possible, but after that, all I knew was that we needed to make more? Probably.

The question caught me off guard because up until now I was set on making the game to the scale that I wanted, but in reality, now that I'm paying folks for steady work I don't know if that completely makes sense.  I spent a great deal of time researching marketing tactics this week and I think I came up with a solid plan that should keep everybody happy, and will test the game's merits.  

Importance of the Demo

My research, as all game research, lead me back to Chris Zukowski's blog: https://howtomarketagame.com/ which is a great source of marketing material for video games releasing on steam.  The man has been doing a lot of podcasts recently, and I listened to them all to form a plan.  

My main takeaway is that these days games live-or-die by their demo.  The reason for this is that it represents the game as a whole and is a great way to soft-test the value of your game to customers.  "If they won't play it for free, then they won't pay to play it" was the line that really stuck with me so as such it seems like the trick is to give your game a good test in the market, and if it truly doesn't work then just move on to the next title.  This was encouraging advice to me because honestly, I don't think I could make Bloodmoon Survivors to the scope that I wanted without some positive reinforcement.  If it's not good, drop it, if it's quality, then invest more.  Quality games market themselves to an extent.

After listening to the podcasts I decided on the following:

• Sharpen the demo to a razor's edge. This includes:
  • Setting up a playtesting stream outside of my friends.  Looking into playertester.gg and using the playtest feature on Steam
  • Identify Key characters and lore to make the premise more inherently appealing
  • Rebuild the capsule art around the a main character (as character-based games boost engagement)
  • Clean up VFX and SFX
  • Pixelate the main menu screen to give it an in-game high level of polish that completes the package
  • Create an Achievement carry over system to make it easier for players to move from demo build to final release
• Do a marketing campaign blast when I announce the title This includes:
  • Reaching out to 300 youtubers and streamers
  • Looking for cross promotional bundles with other creators working on similar titles)
  • Invest in an editor to create a professional trailer
  • Capture great screenshots from 3 or more biomes with 30 seconds + of gameplay
• Gauge market reaction to the demo
• If it is successful, then consider 3-level early access and build out to the full scale of 5 levels I was planning
• If it's a dud, then do a 3-level full release and discount to get as many players that do have interest in the game to buy. 

It was a tough week in game development for me because part of the work was bracing myself for a game that underperforms.  It was a tough reality to swallow but I had to accept it as a possibility.  I asked Chris Zukowski if there's a way to guage player interest before continuing and he said that Itch.io is a great place to get these metrics.  For example, the content engagement for this page is absolutely astronomical compared to mine: https://walternaterealities.itch.io/cosmoteer. I have to prepare for the possibility that the Survivor title burnout is real and continue development based on what the market decides.

In the case that my game fails, then in the words of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "at least I tried" time to move on :)

Art

On a more positive note, Ref and I have been cleaning up the icons for the game which has been a blast! One of the key complaints I received when I was play testing the title is that the artwork for the icons still doesn't match the pixel art of the game, since they've been all placeholder.  Ref and I have been creating new icons all week and it's been fun to see what he cooks up with my powerup descriptions.  Check it out!

They all look really badass in my opinion, and I'm excited to share them in my next playtest.

Music

This week has also been a big week for music in the title.  Juan has been doing killer work on the level 2 track and made one that I loved right out of the gate.  It was one of those "no changes necessary" type of deliverables and I stuck it into the level right away.  It makes it 100 times better listening to the track as the fight commences.

On top of this, we started updating the game's SFX since there are a lot of ugly placeholder sounds.  This part has been rather difficult since I have no musical talent and it's been challenging to explain exactly what I want from all of these sounds.  I've set up a system, and hopefully this works, there will definitely be revisions necessary until we nail down the general sound spectrum of the game.  (I really need to learn more about music!)

Programming

On my side, I've just been cleaning up bugs.  It might be a bit boring, but I love tackling the small game design issues.  It's been very satisfying to come back to my core skillset finally and just clean out the backlog of bugs.

Next Week

The plan for next week is to work on VFX and SFX.  I'm going to probably stay out of the code for the week and make sure that we nail down the art and music side as best we can.  These are the 2 ingredients that add spice to game feel of the game so I want to make sure we're making it feel as good as possible.