6 years since I've last posted here, takes me back ʕ ·ᴥ·ʔ
Who am I and life recap
I'm Tuskat, a web-developer who has a passion for games and use to talk about (his) games and (his) mental health around here.
I've been made redundant a few months ago, and decided it was the perfect opportunity to do my own things.
I've always wanted to be a game dev that focus on small scope games and experiment. First step to accomplish that was to...make a commercial game
＼ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ／
Enter Teddy's Horde
Before I start experimenting, I wanted to have solid bases.
6 years ago, I made Teddy's Crew, and its structure was the perfect base. The first part was to port the game to Godot. It had its challenge, but from Phaser 3 to Godot there's surprisingly a lot of overlap, and the project heavily relied on signals already, which is something Godot seems to excel at ʕ ㅇ ᴥ ㅇʔ
So now that it went smoothly, I was thinking "What if I just made Teddy's Crew that first commercial game?" and went crazy with it.
Local Coop, 3 playable characters, 2 new enemy archetypes, 1 Boss, and a bunch passives you get over the run.
Honestly it brought me so much joy to bring Ors to life, it was a character I cancelled last time because I lacked time...and talent...an-and energy you get the idea ʕ； •`ᴥ•´ʔ
The eternal game dev challenge and me
They'll all tell you the same thing, and they're right: share early. I don't know which % of completion I've reached before sharing about my game, but my god it's rough out there.
Without any attempt at marketing, you'll get 0 (Zero) eyes on your game, and it'll be such an uphill battle from that point on.
On a technical level, I think the game did everything I wanted it to do.
Hell I'll say it, I'm proud of my little top down arena game with combos and bears and fishes and...
On the marketing level, I can't help but think I've already failed it, there's still weeks to make more content, and I will make said content, but lord you need a strong backbone cause the silence is loud and it'll weigh you down while you work.
I've pretty much always knew my first commercial game would be like that, it wouldn't get a bearzillion copies and become a bearhold name, but as I get older, I can't help but think it's too late for me to understand the intricacies of good marketing, and uggghhhhh I should, it's so important you guys ʕノ)ᴥ(ヾʔ
Game Status
I think I'm between 90% and done.
No I'm serious, I know it's game dev lingo for "This guy is 50% done" but the game has everything I wanted it to have. And if it doesn't cultivate an audience, it'll be the end of it for that specific project.
If anything I was too ambitious during development and had to cut off some of the fat: I was planning a statistic page, steam online lobbies with chat, 2 other characters, even more...I had a lot planned, and now is a good stopping point, I like now.
I'll support it post-launch of course and debug/fix/balance when necessary, but I'm pretty hands off on "broken fun", it's how I like it ʕᴥ· ʔ
What's next
My next project is not yet decided, I'm toying around with what I can do with Godot. And I'll set up some pitch presentation and show them around to my friends before deciding ʕ ﹷ ᴥ ﹷʔ
One thing I've noticed with Teddy's Horde is that...I did not find the audience that crave that fantasy. Retro top down arena with moving bear heads slapping moving primitive shapes with bandanas?
I feel like somewhere in the internet it could rule with an iron fist, but alas I do not know where that is.
So now I'll try to make a second project with more of an obvious premise/context, so it's easier to draw people in.
In any case if you're still here and thought to yourself "I kind of wanna play that game, stop dissing it D:<" Please tell me to shut it in the comments.
Also here's the Steam page
I'd hug you for reading that far, random stranger, but the internet technology isn't advanced enough for that, so just thank you and bye for now~ ＼ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ／
Top comments (0)