Game Update
This week I finally released my game on Steam. I did it on the 22nd again, which I rather liked. The launch wasn’t without it’s hiccups though. I thought I had everything ready to go but it turns out that some of the items like the price, and a system match for the specifications became a problem at the last minute. Luckily I had a friend that was trying to buy the game who messaged me. I managed to fix it and launch on the 22nd but it was later than I had originally planned.
It was exciting to finally see a button to buy the game below it. I was a little afraid about what might happen next. I did a lot of tweeting on Saturday and had a lot of responses which felt nice, but it didn’t really translate to a lot of action. I feel like I need to figure out how to promote properly.
On Saturday my game was on a list of new “Turn Based Games” with a small blurb about it that I didn’t write. This made me feel good, like someone was taking notice even without me directly engaging them.
Then something weird happened. I had 3 form submissions on my website by random people claiming that they would “review” my game if I gave them 3-5 keys for the game. I had heard of this before. Basically they claim that they will review the game, but what they really want is to take the keys and re-sell them on some websites. G2A is the largest website that sells keys like this. It’s important to know where your keys are going when you give them away. I feel like it’s a little crazy to give more than 2 keys to a reviewer as well.
I suppose I just need to buckle down and finish the levels and keep moving forward. There are some other features that I’d like to get in as well, but I can’t do that until I have the main meat of the game together. I also need to get these achievements working. My oldest son is looking forward to that a lot and so I can’t let him down.
We did manage to fix 2 bugs right before the game released. We fixed a problem in which the escape button wasn’t exiting the stages. We also fixed the pop up title for the game which had a grey box instead of a graphic to show the game. I expect we will move back to figuring out achievements now.
Personal Update
I’m not sure if I was sick this past weekend or just exhausted. It’s possible I had some mild depression symptoms from releasing the game. It was hard for me to enjoy things or want to get out of bed. I kind of expected this to happen so at least I was aware of what might be happening to me. Still I managed to do my normal things like board game night and pizza on Friday, some lawn work on Saturday, and church on Sunday. I would like to have been more productive but had a hard time.
I say it again and again to people, but I needed to take my own advice this time. You will never win the comparison game. There will always be someone bigger and better. I did some comparing of my game to people in a similar boat. I don’t know their full situation but it was a bit frustrating to see that they had more reviews for their game and a successful Kickstarter around the time I started on my project. Their game hasn’t been released yet which made me feel good until I realized that they are already far ahead of me due to the publicity they have compared to me.
It’s hard not to care about people noticing the things you do. It’s hard to keep working when you feel like you should be further along than you are. You start to think that you will never get there no matter how hard you work. It’s difficult to be free from outcomes in that way, which causes problems.
I can’t give up though, I have a handful of people that believe in me, ones that want to see what’s next. That has to be enough. It is enough for me.