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i knew this was going to be a banger video when the dev just ploped a pillow to sit on right at the start of the video

Learning a complex strategy game start out with learning the simple stuff first. The arcade and story mode is a great idea and often used. Startcraft still is a competitive strategy game but most people played the story mode gradually introducing units and finding ways to employ them. You might be afraid that people wont end up playing the complex full wizard chess, them being stuck in story mode or quitting before. A truly commercial gamedev would only be interested in the sale of the game. The considerate gamedev would think of having provided enough value for the sale. You seem to want praise for making such a great game. Not a bad goal to have, but if you put ANY creative work into the world it will have a live of it's own. To me creating a community around the game, where you can teach, learn and have fun with people is really what you want. So what if it's a elite niece group of player. You can always increase it's general appeal by changing the art style, setting or story.

Thank you for stating the last part, criticism for the pricing part of indie games is kinda insane, especially when games are going on sale almost all the time.

Thanks for the tips my friend!

As soon as I heard you need constant communication with your community in early access I knew it wouldn't be for me. I barely have enough time to finish the game as it stands.

Peglin is one of example how every update simply nerfing too much, scaling too much to the point winning it is just less than 10% Too much RNG Game is still a demo... The game could have been better. Its just a shame its only ruining itself

It doesn't feel like you are invested. Are you not thrilled about the eventual end product?

Sick

🎉

Early Access eventually put me in a position where I’m making an “evil decision” no matter which I make. I have an early access game that has been shelved for now in favor of a new game, as the effort of continuing the project is just not worth it for the time being. If I leave the game in early access (which is what I have decided for now), I become the next in a long line of games that stay in EA for too long. However, if I remove early access, I break the promises I made and effectively claim the game is “finished” without it actually being complete. Needless to say, I will never use Early Access again for any other game I ever put out

This is a really smart way of going about this problem. Every skill level above the easiest one is accounted for. There isn't really an upper difficulty boundary giving hardcore players the opportunity to reach their limits.

Yeah, I always try to play my game just to play from time to time. It always helps to understand what's the next most important thing, since as "the player" it's a lot more obvious than just starring at a list of tasks.

A gamer will pay you half what they pay their hair stylist / barber for a cut and then get confused why the game isn't completed, polished, and fully optimized after not reading the giant blue warning box above the "add to cart" button, in addition to thinking they are your owner for the next year. At least, this is what I gather from going through steam reviews and discussions.

I just don't review games if i don't like them, unless if the game is actually broken, i feel like it's not worth the time, as it's only going to result in a negative feedback loop, that results in nothing positive coming out of it.

Audio tip: Add a de-esser. It will soften of the sharp S:es. Except for that your audio is good. Subscribed (I got audio issues too.. so that’s that ;-) )

Wizard jizz? Now that's one wierd game.

Thank you for sharing your experience! I find it super interesting, especially your take on marketing VS emotional bandwidth, it's not something most people take into consideration when making games and exposing it to the masses. It sounds like you would have had a much nicer experience doing closed/private alpha tests of the game instead of an Early Access. Also putting out a demo of a somewhat polished section of the game would be great to build wishlists. Like you said, it's so easy to look at early access and think : "Quick way to get feedback and some money", without acknowledging all the extra work, expectations and emotional stress that comes with it. Good luck with your project!

Just ignore them. They are entitled to their opinion and there is no point treating it like ebay scores where you need to keep 100%

Thank you for this video. Well said and informative!

I've worked over a decade in retail positions, and one of the top skills I learned is to always be nice and offer a solution, even if they are wrong because I am an ambassador of my brand and word of mouth makes a big impact towards a brand's value.

Most bad reviews are made for a reason, maybe the price isn't competitive with similarly priced games, maybe the marketing was off, maybe you over-promised and under-delivered, maybe they can see some potential that you didn't capitalize on. Usually an open dialogue is the best policy, not 100% of the business-side details or asking for a pity party but just a "Hey we fell short on this one because of X constraint" Then you can either fix it, try again better later, or pivot to something new entirely and just learn from it. Some reviews aren't going to matter and some people aren't possible to please though. If someone bought your game and didn't like it, at some point responsibility has to be on them for buying games they might not like.

really interesting video

dont do it like Holyday studios thats for sure

I may have commented this on another video, but I'd love to hear you talk more about project management - what tools you use, how your thinking evolved, etc - I love the concept of missions you mentioned - defined destination, some implied scope, but no direct path. Great video all in all.

Six seconds in and the TH-cam subtitles refer to the game as 'Wizard Jess' and for some reason I found it far too amusing.

Excellent video. Looking forward to the next update!

good thoughts king

The exchange of money for a game is a value proposition.both sides expect to get something of value from the exchange.

This is an amzing video. Everything is spot on what happened to me. I have my own game on steam in early access for over a year now. Financially, it is very successful. However, all of that comes at a cost of emotional frustration, the negative reviews from impatient and ignorant people really do make you doubt your project and sometimes you start steering away from your vision just to try and please them.

Interesting video! Yeah, it's super tricky to find direction when your goals aren't clear. If you want to make the game you would want personally, then perhaps you can solve a part of your problem by more intentionally setting expectations? E.g., I think your Steam description sounds fun, but also fairly generic and similar to other games in the genre - I get absolutely no hint that this might be a bit more on the complex / experimental / unique side. (Not sure if these are the right terms to describe it.) Or maybe a short free demo makes sense? Regarding the onboarding experience, something interesting I heard recently: Tutorials should not only teach you the mechanics but also how to have fun in the game. I thought that was a great insight and since you mention that the fun is about figuring out the game itself, maybe you can nudge players into that direction at the beginning? Or, low tech variant: Again, set expectations by literally putting up a note at the beginning saying that figuring out how things work is part of the game? Finally, you might find the GDC talk by the developer of Cultist Simulator interesting.

Sounds like tutorial with an increasing difficulty random mode is a good approach to explaining complex game. And whenever you can tutorialize with text witout being overly wordy you should. Slay the Spire did this when they could (tooltip explains the related terms on the cards). I also like how the base game mode unlocks difficulty levels when beating the last one or even going beyond to stage 4. Also they have a daily challenge which doesn't allow randomisation unlike the other modes. I just clicked this randomly but if the game also uses actual chess mechanics don't shrink your audience by assuming everyone knows the rules already. I dont think there is any chess game with actually increasing complexity tutorial. Part of the reason I never liked chess is having to remember all the rules (it may seem simple to many but its boring tedium my brain hates)

As for the onboarding problem: I don't think providing a slick first experience conflicts with your design principles. When the game has enough depth, you can teach them only the basics to get started and let them figure out the rest for themselves, thereby providing guidance in the beginning, but still leaving room to explore.

At face value I think making an Arcade mode when the Main mode isn't finished is problematic especially if your then promoting it as the next step after the Tutorial, now if your trying to gauge the popularity and get feedback in an attempt to see if you should pivot that would be different.

I do like your mindset

your content is different and I have to say - I enjoyed it a lot. subbed :) when I'll have time I'll try WizardChess. Goodluck on your project!

i also think maximizing appeal means minimizing details

Don't remove the interesting bits and dumb it down, the goal should be to make the complications easier to understand and intuitive. Things like tooltips that explain what's going on. UX should be enabling game design, not the other way around. Easier said than done of course.

I wanna try wizard chess now

Always learning and trying new things! Figuring out monetization is so hard when you're planning to work with other people too. The earlier the better!

Love the authenticity of this! Definitely appreciate the struggle of making something commercial vs just making something unique, fun, and interesting

Love this :) games are a creative process and are art in their own right - it's hard to try and explore that in an environment where games are seen as very much a commercial Product™

Great stuff, rooting for you guys!

interesting, thanks for your openness

Don't put too much pressure on yourself, you're doing great 👍

Cool video! The music was very distracting, maybe you could choose something more chill and less stressful?

Game is looking good.

a game i love, beat blast, i bought when it was in early access i think it stayed about a year in early access before release, and the difference was a bit more polish ig i didnt mind it, there are def games that can pull it off, but not for everyone

I can relate to adding a mechanic, subconsciously avoiding it, and eventually puzzling out that's because it isn't fun for some reason. Any more tips or ideas how to identify things like this or red flags that something isn't working. I really wish I was better at identifying these issues on my own.

so there would e joker character in game?

Will you talk about working with a publisher?(2Lthumbs in your case)