Color Combat Alpha

Hello everyone, it has been an exciting week!

Last time I introduced my original game idea to the world and started developing it. A few days ago I also decided that this game is going to be my first commercial game release. Whether this is a commercial success or a complete flop, I will get that experience that will start taking me beyond being a hobby game developer. The game is starting to develop a life of its own as well; what started as a fairly basic idea has quickly been growing into a detailed list of goals, mechanics, designs, and themes that I will need to make a reality through the year. So far I’ve been blessed with finding the people, answers, or assets that I need to take the next step with the game right as I realized that I needed it (or even an hour before I realized it in one case).

I am planning to have daily or near-daily mini-updates on what I’m working on through twitter @renauddmarshall. There will be an update blog/patch note post on the IndieDB game page for Color Combat every week or two, probably on Saturdays to line up with Reddit/Twitter screenshot Saturdays. I will also keep this weekly blog going; since the patch note post will be more of the technical side of things, this blog will cover the rest of the stuff going on in life. Soon a page similar to the IndieDB one will end up on Desura and there I can start setting up alpha and beta testers.

On another note, I am moving into my last week of language class which means I’ll have more time to work on game development and marketing soon. Next week I’ll talk some about my plans for handling the business side of development.

See you all next Saturday!

On The Social Aspect

Happy Saturday everyone and Happy New Year!

I wanted to have this ready to go first thing in the morning like I have been for previous posts but it didn’t work out that way. Today’s blog will be on the shorter side. I just want to talk a bit about what I have been doing to interact with the community a bit.

With the release of two games, I’ve been able to experience customer feedback first hand now. The first lesson I can learn from that I need to work more on improving the user interface and user experience as it approaches time to release future games. The second is that I can spend more time testing before making games public. The games don’t need to be perfect but they also shouldn’t have major issues or be missing visual cues that indicate the rules of the world. A new general rule for me is the game isn’t finished until the customers are satisfied. Along with that, my goal is to respond to all feedback and address any game issues brought to my attention if I can. I want to keep the conversations with the community open and honest.

Snake Clone has been played almost 1000 times in just four days and Pong Clone has gotten 127 in five days, which makes sense due to it being a less exciting game. For someone like me with only a very small following, I wouldn’t have been able to see numbers anywhere near this without actively doing some marketing. Looking over some of the stats from different sites that I have been spreading the word on, Reddit has come in as my best source of views by far, primarily because I don’t have a large number of followers up front. For this blog, the Reddit marketing has been responsible for 60% of the views, and for the games, Reddit accounts for at least 80%.

I am very thankful the attention that my game development process has been getting so far and I hope that things continue to grow. To all of my friends and family that have been supporting me, thank you again for being there and for your words of encouragement. 2015 is looking like it will be an amazing year, and hopefully, I will be able to keep this going for years to come!

I will see you next Saturday!