Over the last week, I’ve technically had to prepare for two releases, and guess what? Both games are out, and I’ve updated the game menu to include links to them! It’s pretty cool how both games were originally made at 48 hour game jams, and both are being updated as we speak. Feel free to read on about my experiences with Global Games Jam this year, and try out these two releases as soon as possible, all feedback is awesome!
We Are SurroundedSo as of today, the first semester of my final year of University is down, two more semesters to go! All exams are finished, and three assignments are done, all that’s left so far are the marks, two assignments due in second semester and a Final Year Project (which I also did a midpoint review yesterday). This is awesome for me as it means more work for the FYP and other game dev stuff, and I can schedule out the other work that I need to do.
So the results are in! So awesome to see the final scores and see what games got in overall, and see where everyone else’s results are on the rankings. Since this is my third successful Ludum Dare, I thought I’d try a little comparing to see how much I did better (or worse) at this point. Then for future Ludum Dare entries I can then add in those results and probably build a chart to see my progress.
So while the ranking don’t appear to have changed, the average score for most categories has improved. The only category to have gone down considerably over the three LDs was Humor, although in fairness since my game wasn’t intended to have humour so I could’ve omitted the category. I’m also one of the people that got 100% coolness which is an awesome surprise, it means I’m (technically) listed on the results page. At the moment I’m balancing University work and turning Glow Drop into an Android and Windows Phone release as Glow Drop DX. So hopefully you might see more from me in the future?
So after rating 100 games for Ludum Dare, I thought I’d talk a bit about a few of my favourites from the jam. They may not be the best out of the competition, but these were the ones that I find have an aspect of good entries that each of these succeed at.
This is the entry done by brilliant flash game developer Jussi Simpanen, aka AdventureIslands. He always does games for jams big and small and his entries usually bring a quirky design and incredible polish to them, and this one is no exception. In Tightrope Theatre you must travel from A to B, all while riding a unicycle avoiding fire, spikes and the ground below. The entire game is 24 levels long, and feels very complete for a game done in two days, although you kind of wish there was more. Knowing that Jussi tends to add new stuff to his entries every now and then, maybe there will be more to this entry.
This is an example of how you should achieve an innovative game in 48 hours, you use one mechanic with a unique spin and give it as much potential as you can. In this case, the mechanic of the game is jumping, and the unique spin is that your jumps are limited, but will increase depending on how you play. Eduardo uses the mechanic in a room where you have to jump to survive and you get this gem.
Most game jams have a theme, and as a developer you are free to interpret that theme to whatever for your game: you can use a literal route (in LD31, that would mean literally running the entire game on one screen), the metaphorical route or the technical route. With Screen Mover, Sh1rogane decided to go beyond literal and technical with the theme to produce something that may look like a simple platform prototype, until you quickly realise you have to move the game window to progress. The only issue with this idea is that keyboard input it locked while the window moves, but the post jam version does fix this.
Sometimes you don’t have to make a game that’s fun to make it a good entry, you can tell a story, show off some great music or in this case, make some really beautiful graphics. The puzzle game elements are clever, but this game is really good at showing off bloom and neon. It just makes it look wonderful, and the music is really soothing as well. As you may tell from my entry, I love neon glow, and this game does a great job at showing it off.
If all else fails, just make a game that is fun to play, and make it addictive for an added bonus. This game’s style reminds me a lot of Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon, and since the developer is planning an Android/iOS release, I recommend him get Chipzel to do music for the game.
Don’t forget to play my entry Glow Drop if you haven’t already.
Release on Desura is almost ready, release on itch.io is almost ready and release on IndieGameStand is almost ready. Bring it on!
I’m happy to announce that Secret of Escape is now at the stage where release is on the horizon, so currently we are getting promotional content ready and getting a release date set so we can let as many content publishers and gamers know that we are coming.
I remember several months back during the #IndieDevHour on Twitter, someone asked about using Patreon to fund their games development.
Back then, Patreon was growing in popularity for independent funding of artists and writers by letting people be regular paying patrons. If you look at the current roll of Patreon Projects, you can see Youtube video producers, bloggers, webcomic creators, podcast producers, musicians and so on, all have a Patreon page. For those content producers, it appears nowadays like it’s a standard form of earning revenue for your work, as I’ve seen some of my favourite online artists and Youtube video creators use the service, both big and small.
But what about game developers and game creators, could they use Patreon to help fund their work? Could they fund a portion of their work using the Patreon system? This is what I want to discuss in this article.
When I mean game developers using Patreon, I mean specifically using it as a platform to fund their work in creating games, while some have used it to produce games development tutorials such as TheCherno, and others have used it for lets plays, this is about using Patreon for games development like how Kickstarter is used for games development.
If you dig deep enough you can find some developers using patreon for developing games. How successful they are is up for interpretation, in the examples I’ve linked some have been moderately successful enough per game/month while others are well below the hundred margins.
Why very few developers are using it however? Well it’s easy to say that unlike Patreon, crowd funding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo is both a better marketing and funding platform because a lot of backers use it and people who are successful earn more money. However, I think it’s because of two clear reasons.
The first reason is that it’s very new, it only started last year and while it’s growing fast, not all of the large mediums have caught onto it. As such, not every medium knows about it as well as Youtubers, bloggers and short video producers. Asking many of my game developer friends, I found that most either didn’t know or get the Patreon system.
Another reason is the ideal scope of projects on the platform, as the majority of creators on Patreon use it for small projects that don’t require a huge budget up front, but a modest budget to sustain the creator to keep what it doing. Mix that with the amount of people actually putting money down on individual creators and you can see that it might not appear to be the most viable option.
But on the other hand, Patreon has solved one major problem that crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter is well known for, trust based delivery. Some people remember earlier this year how even after getting funded, not every project on Kickstarter had fully delivered. It’s seen as an understood risk that whatever project you are backing on Kickstarter may take years to fully complete, even if it completes at all. Patreon’s solution is to fund creators for what they have done, and not what they will do. By only paying the creator per project, or on a regular basis, patrons don’t have to feel like they are throwing money away if a creator doesn’t finish a project, and you have the option to reduce or stop pledging a creator (TBC).
Original Chart from evilasahobby.com
So let’s go hypothetical on this, what if Patreon, or a similar funding system, takes off and does well enough to be popular and known by many people, and those people are wanting to become patrons for talented creators, how would you go about getting people to be your patron?
You could do what’s currently being done, and have patrons pay per game. However that is only viable if you produce regular content, and that requires developing several small games on short development cycles, instead of producing one or two large games over a long period of time.
So why not use that ideal environment to work with Patreon? Some content creators work really well on a monthly basis, while producing content on a varying basis. This could be done with games by having a game being funded by patrons while in beta, where the patrons themselves can have some or full exclusivity towards testing and contributing to the game before release. I can see that model working especially well towards online multiplayer games, where the patrons themselves can act as a small growing fanbase by interacting with each other.
However, what Patreon needs is for time to grow and people to be aware of who they are and what they will do, and maybe we will find more game developers on there and show more creative ways of using a patron system.
Just a quick reminder of what’s happening this weekend (5th-6th July). I will be showing off Secret of Escape in the Indie Zone along with 9 other awesome indie game developers and their awesome indie games! Alongside us indies, there will be Capcom, Ubisoft, Namco Bandai and GAME in the gaming area! There is also lots of anime, music, TV, film and web related events as well, so it’s a weekend worth going to!
Hello everyone! I figured it’d be the best time to announce that on this day, one year ago, I uploaded a game that I worked on for a week long game jam called the Midsummer Jam Week simply named, Secret of Escape. As such, this post is dedicated to showing how much I’ve progressed in a single year, and mention some of the significant changes made over time. A lot has changed from the day I decided to continue work on this game jam entry of mine.
Under Maintenance – LD29 Jam Entry. Select the image to go to the entry page.
Here’s my post mortem for the 29th entry of Ludum Dare, also posted on the Ludum Dare forums. Enjoy!
So for this Ludum Dare, with the theme of “Beneath The Surface”, I decided to make a game where you work as a maintenance engineer who works between the streets and an underground train tunnel, this is Under Maintenance.
I wanted to get back into Ludum Dare because of how much I enjoyed LD27, however I was travelling out to see friends on Saturday so I had very little time to do a compo entry. However it didn’t stop me from working on a simple game, so I decided to put as much energy I can during my free time to bring you this busy micromanagement platformer. As such I appreciate giving your time to reading my post mortem, which includes a timelapse and tweets among other stuff and see how I managed to fit social events and my job into this Ludum Dare.
GAMEPOPPER 