Retrospective

Well, I did. My game Chess Survivors is now in early access. This is my first game and as such my goal was to learn how to design, develop, and release a game. I wasn’t worried about sales or marketing, but I did have a small goal of selling around 100 copies, which I blew past on day 1, but that doesn’t really matter to me. I’m proud of the game I created and learned way more than I expected.

One of my takeaways from the release is to make the core game easier and then have optional difficulty modes which allow players to push challenge/progression. I ended up doing 4-5 balance patches during the 1st week which made the game easier for new players, but too easy for experienced ones. To fix that I had to rush out a challenge level system (like Slay the Spire’s ascension levels). That system was fairly easy to add, and in retrospect I would get that added for the release.

Anyways, focusing on input goals allowed me to be mentally prepared for this release. I’ve seen plenty of horror stories where devs have unrealistic expectations for their games, only to be devastated when it doesn’t meet those expectations.

Cheers, Aarimous

DAY24

Yesterday I got to the mythical 10 reviews (in fact I’m at 14 right now). That is huge for small games like mine as 10 is the threshold Steam puts on adding games to their discovery queue. I went into the release with no output goals (per Day9’s advice) and have already been blown away by the number of sales. I’m already proud of the game, but it’s really validating to see others also enjoy the game. I’ll do a deeper retrospective next week.

DAY22

We’ll I did it. I made a game and actually release it on Steam. It feels a little bitter sweet and I feel both relived and lost. I’m going to try and enjoy this experience for what it is and then dive back into working on my early access roadmap.

DAY19

The closed beta was a smashing success (even though it was a lot of work). I ended up working all weekend squashing bugs and adjusting the UI/UX based on the testers feedback. It was a small thing, but it’s going to pay soo many dividends as my main goal it to release a game that is actually stable!!

DAY17

Today’s update is a little reflection.

My game Chess Survivors is launching into early access this Thursday on Nov 10th.

That is four days away. And surprisingly, I feel pretty ready for it.

I think this is mostly due to the closed beta test I’m doing this weekend. For a solo indie dev like me, having a few other people test out the game prior to launch is invaluable. I just simply can’t find all the bugs, and more than anything I know exactly how the UI/UX is designed. So having a few other players go though and tell me what felt odd or didn’t work really helped a ton. I’m not going to lie, all the feedback was a little overwhelming, but ultimately very helpful.

I’ve also been compiling a list of various streamers and YouTube creators to send keys to… And surprisingly this step made me incredibly nervous. Some of the people I found have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of followers. And realistically speaking their video history seems like it might align nicely with Chess Survivors. Now, I’m not kidding myself, I fully expect nobody to play the game, and I’d be pretty happy with 100 sales.

Butttt, what if?

I’ve kept telling that little voice, the voice saying “what if it blows up”, to be quiet. That we are not focusing on things we can’t control. The public reception of Chess Survivors is certainly something I can’t control. But still, that has been a black box. My game is both a hit and a dud. But looking down the barrel of the release…I’m almost more afraid of it being a success.

It’s far easier if the game goes out and just the Aarimous community who play it. I am ready for that result and it won’t feel like a defeat. I’ve already succeeded by committing to this journey and actually making a game.

I just don’t know how to make a game “properly”. And I don’t think that is imposter syndrome. I’ve just been figuring it all out as I go. Some of the systems are coded and architected pretty well, but so many of them are also flaming piles of spaghetti. I’m sure there are so many random bugs, and it feels like the game is so fragile. I’m not sure if this is normal, I’ve never released a game (or even an app) people are going to pay to use. So right now my big goal is to just publish something that is stable and has UI/UX that works how you would expect.

So… I am excited. I’ve learned so much over the past few months and I’m fairly excited to start dreaming about the next game. There is so much to making games, and I feel like Chess Survivors has shown me a bunch of the things I should consider as I design and build my games. Which was ultimately my goal for the project.

DAY16

Beta test has kicked off and already my few testers have found some bugs that I missed. There are also a few edge case bugs that are hard to track down. I’ve update my debug logs so I can more easily see what is going on. Turns out my old print statements were mostly useless.

DAY15

Found a ton of bugs and I seem to have also fixed them. Balancing the game is proving to be hard, but thankfully I have a small beta happening this weekend. Right now my goal is to balance the game so I can win most rounds I play. After all I’ve played the game a ton and literally knows how it works inside and out. So if I can beat most games then the average player should win somewhere around half the time. Eventually I plan to have ascension levels so the player can add challenge into the game as they progress through the levels (like Slay the Spire).

DAY13

My game now has 13 achievements, cloud saving, and is in review by valve. This feels like wild step and I’m actually feeling pretty good about the state of my game. I thought I would be stressed out, but having a feature freeze 10 days before release has given me a huge cushion to play-test and get the game ready for release.

I also have the play test page getting reviewed so I can have my beta testers hope in and do some balance & difficulty checking and also find any game breaking bugs.

DAY12

I am about 98.2% of the way to feature complete for the early access release. I still have to setup the gameplay stats and achievements. Which “should” only take me a few hours tomorrow morning. Because of dev stuff taking longer, and maybe a little scope creep, I’ve push the beta test out until Wednesday. I also want to do some research on using the cloud save service via steam. Finally, I need to do some research for how to enable beta testers on Steam. All in all things are going pretty well.

DAY8

Took a break from serious game dev to work on a YouTube video about why this isn’t my dream game. This is a solid video and I think it really shows my growth as a story teller. Even more it’s wild to look back at the old vids I released during the last DK30. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the grind working on the release version.

DAY7

I’ve just publish the what is likely the final version of the demo which contains some key features I’m going to test. Namely the stats and achievements functionality. I’m hoping to prove that both work and get some early insight into the balance of various abilities and characters. From here it is again going to be more character, relics, and abilities. I also am going to try and figure our cloud saving on Steam as I think that is fairly easy and mostly covered by Steam.

DAY6

Today was spent reworking the tutorial and controls screens. Each have become one screen a piece instead of multiple small screens. I think this is just an easier for the player to consume and navigate. I also added buttons in the pause screen so the player can go back to those screens in the future. I’ve also updated the build so I can push out the final version of the demo. This is mainly going to be to test the new achievements and stats functions I added yesterday. My next steps will be to add more relics, character, and abilities to the game. I’ve got feature freeze on on Nov 1st, but I think I have plenty of time to keep adding before then.

DAY5

No progress was made over the weekend as I was out of town. I find breaks from game dev allow me to think though upcoming features and design. This means I was able to come back today and tackle the steam integration features. I can now send Steam achievements and basic gameplay stats. This was surprisingly easy using a Godot addon for steam (https://github.com/samsface/godot-steam-api). The next step will be to get a new demo build ready so I can fully test these out with end users.

DAY 1

Today I focused on the UI and rewards from player progression. Right now the characters correctly show up. The next step will be to do a light refactor of the relic system so I can gate certain relics behind progression level. Oh, I also added a quick a dirty tooltip system which works nicely.

DAY 0

I got a basic progression system added that will grant the player XP based on how many levels and how many Acts they completed during their run. I’ve also hooked the progression XP up to the my save handler so these values persist as they play the game more. I’ve also added some UI the the game over screen which will show how XP gained. Next step will be to add in UI elements to show the unlocks if they player levels up their progression. All in all a solid day of progress. Now off to go for a nice little walk.

Day -1

One of the first things I wanted to rework was the starting screen for a game. The old system had the player picking a random character, ability, and relic. My goal here was for the game to be a true roguelike with pure RNG starting conditions. As a solo dev, I found this system very hard to balance. So instead I’m going to take inspiration from Vampire Survivors and use their character select system where the character has a specific ability and bonus stats. This will allow me to make each character feel unique and then I can balance their bonus stats around the ability it always starts with. The new UI is also a lot cleaner and gives the player all the stats they need.