Anyway, let’s take a look at this picture already.

What is Bret Airborne?

If you’re looking for the description it’s on the website here. To me Bret Airborne is the “best” game I released so far. It’s the best combination of fun and polishing I’ve come up with so far. It’s not revolutionary or groundbreaking but what it does it does nicely. For once I don’t have any hidden doubts on some efforts I might not have done.

Even if not everyone agree about it I’m very happy about the art and that’s a first for me. I also did a pretty good job at trying to reach out to people to tell them about my games. I did took some notes to do a better job next time but that’s the first time I went that far. Now that I’m thinking about it I’m wondering why I didn’t do that before … Lesson #1: If you don’t fight for your game then nobody will.

How many copies did you sold?

Right to it eh? Alright …

39 days after the release I sold 34 copies so far + whatever sales I might have done from stores without any dev panel.  It might not be impressive but it’s almost 1 copy per day so it still hits some imaginary goal in my mind. Of course I estimate that to make a living I need to sell about 1 copy every hour.

Out of those 34 copies 11 were sold during the ShowMeTheSales promotion that was run last week on ShowMeTheGames so you can say that this sale was a success all things considered even if other indies part of that sale did a lot better than me.

I’m making about $8.50 per copy sold at $10 (it depends where the game was sold) and during the ShowMeTheSales promotion I was making $3.75 per copy (game was sold at 50% its price). So as you can see it’s not a lot of money and some might even say it wasn’t the brightest move to sell the game for $5 during ShowMeTheSales.

Well the goal wasn’t as much to make money as it was to just spread my name around a bit. For a week I was fortunate enough to stand there with known games are recognized indie developers. While it might not create immediate results it’s the kind of marketing move that is worth a lot. Who knows what kind of opportunity this might bring. Maybe none but I had to do it as I can’t be the one shutting doors here. When such opportunity presents itself you jump on it.

Website traffic

Here’s my Google Analytics graph for April 9th to May 18th.

Click for full view

Here’s a game! Spot the day Rock Paper Shotgun posted a review of the game. I also did see sales raise this day so it’s not just traffic to my website. Sadly it’s the only major website that covered the game and RPS post so many stuff in a day now that most sales happened in the morning. A few hours later the review was off from the front page and visits and sales also stopped.

The small curve you see around April 16th to April 21st is when I posted a trimmed version of Bret Airborne on the Chrome store. These are not “visitors” though as I just added my Google Analytics code to the web page in which the game sits so it’s in fact illustrating how many people installed this trimmed version. As far as I can tell none of these installs have converted into sales. I won’t be wasting time on that anymore. Maybe that can help some people but as far as I’m concerned it’s just a gimmick.

You can also see in this graph when ShowMeTheSales started on May 12th. What you see on May 1st is when a review was posted on Rampant Games.

What I get from this is that getting coverage from major website really is important (well I can’t see a scenario in which it would hurt anyway…). It’s not that I didn’t try to get others to post about Bret Airborne. For example it took 4 emails to finally get on RPS. I’ve put the same effort with other websites but sadly didn’t get any result.

The thing that upsets me the most I guess is that the game didn’t even make it on websites covering casual games like JayIsGames. It seems it would have been a natural place to appear and that I would have been able to reach people more “naturally inclined” to enjoy games like Bret Airborne. I’ll keep trying to reach these websites as I have more news to send them but so far I can’t even tell if my emails were caught in the spam filter or not.

Reaching the proper market

If I believe all reviews  so far the game is good so I did good on that part of the job. Where I’m having a hard time though is to reach people who might be more receptive to a game like Bret Airborne.

Not that “typical gamers” can’t enjoy it. All reviews were written by people playing a lot of games every single day. I fear that the sight of “match-3″ might scare some people away though. My best weapon against that are the reviews the game got so far but it’s not that obvious to say to people “yeah I know it’s a match-3 game but you will enjoy this one!”.

So I’m having 2 problems here. Reaching people who might be more inclined to try games like Bret Airborne and convincing others that it’s “not just” a match-3 game with no strategy or depth.

There are times I’m wondering if the game had a different theme (like fantasy for example) if it’d be easier to sell to non-traditional match-3 players. Maybe the cartoony look of the game is pushing some people away before they even check what the game is about. Fighting wizards might be more easy to communicate than steampunk hot air balloons.

Tablets you’re saying? Well it is in my mind. The mobile market is however a weird beast and from what I read it really shouldn’t be seen as an obvious answer to my problem here. To start with I don’t even own a tablet or a cellphone so I’m already quite behind on the topic. So it’s part of the plan but I’m not hugely enthusiast about it. I see enough people struggling on these devices so just because Bret Airborne feels like it would be a good match for tablets I’d rather remain careful about any assumptions.

The game is set to be released on what seems a more appropriate store next week. I won’t say more for now as I’m not sure I can and I really have no idea of how many people it can possibly reach anyway. I’ll see in a few weeks.

Marketing

So I said that I thought I did an okay job trying to reach out to people. Well obviously I could have done better when you look at the stats but it’s the best I have done so far. There’s a point though after sending 3 emails to the same website about your game that you have to give up if you don’t really have anything new to say.

First email was the typical announcement. Second email was a friendly follow-up in case the first email went unnoticed and the third was to show the reviews the game received so far. I was hoping that showing RPS reviewed the game in a positive way would help more than it did to convince people to talk about the game. It did help but not much.

So here are a few things I identified as “need to do better for next game”:

- Do proper press work way before the game is released. That way I do have new stuff to say as the game is being developed so proper motivation to write again and again to the press without just appearing to try to spam them. That means showing alpha gameplay, sending beta review copy, announcing new features and maybe even run a Kickstarter campaign. Not much for the money but since people cover Kickstarter campaigns it might be one more opportunity to talk to people about my game.

- Reach out to youtube reviewers. There are many people doing that so I need to include them in my list of people to contact.

- Create the Greenlight page while the game is still in development. I can’t say that having a Greenlight page helped in any way really. But with so many people suddenly knowing about your game maybe it’s just a matter of having the “proper” game to show. Yes votes for Bret Airborne on Greenlight are terribly low. People really react badly to this game on Greenlight. I’d be curious to know what kind of effect Greenlight had on games before they eventually got released on Steam. So maybe with a different games results could be different. I already paid the fee and it’s not much work to publish there so I can’t see any good reason to not do it anyway.

Final thoughts

While I can appreciate the things I learned and the things I did better with Bret Airborne I’m still scratching my head about how poorly the game has been doing so far.

I mean I get that maybe the game is hard to sell and that overall I don’t have much experience selling PC games but 34 copies really is low. 100 copies would still be low but 34 is … well really low. It’s not a surprise though when you think about the shy coverage of the game. People just don’t know about it really so I can’t be expecting much sales.

The good thing though is that now I have a proper game in my portfolio that people will be able to buy for years to come. The game ain’t dead and I won’t have to pull the plug on it. If I do better with my next game Bret Airborne could even gain in popularity a bit. The more “good” games I release the more they should help to promote each others.

So even if I’m not particularly impressed by the number of copies sold so far I still see things in a positive way … most of the time And honestly it can only means that the best is yet to come so how could I not be happy about that!

So you’re back? So do you think press coverage is overrated and possibly even not needed/required for indies? Well even if the stats posted about Spellirium seem to point to this conclusion I still think press coverage is very important piece of the puzzle when you’re trying to get on the gaming scene. Once you’re there it then becomes a bit less important.

Direct communication with players

In a perfect world that’s what you want and should aim for. It’s never been easier to set up such environment may it be with a blog, Twitter, G+, Facebook, etc. You don’t need the press for that and you don’t want to have too many people between you and players.

What isn’t easy though is to add a crowd to make these tools useful and relevant. And that’s when the press gain it’s importance. You need a starting point and even though press coverage is not all there is to become successful it do provide an opportunity for people to discover you. It provides some form of credibility to what you do. I can post tweets all day long but if people don’t know I have a Twitter account it won’t do much good.

Press coverage is a way to tell people “hey I exist” and then they can start getting news directly from you.

Credibility

So I said it gives you some form of credibility and I recently had a pretty good experience showing this. I submitted Bret Airborne to Indie Royale (provided a review copy and the usual stuff a reviewer might need) and the reply I received was “do you have any reviews from main stream sites” …

So even if they could actually check the game themselves it’s still important to have received some kind of recognition from the press. Maybe they use this fairly easy barrier to set up as a way to eliminate a bunch of games out of possibly hundreds of submission. Maybe there’s another reason, I don’t know. All I know is that I really wish some “main stream” website would review the game. The game received good reviews so far but nothing that appeared on “big websites” sadly.

Again there’s nothing stopping you from contacting directly people who could spread words about your games and it might actually work but if your name sounds somewhat familiar it might helpful.

Getting the ball rolling

This is really why you want press coverage at first. If you’re lucky some people with access to a large crowd will find interest in getting news directly from you and will then share it.

The way I see marketing it’s like a big control panel with way too many buttons on it. At least that’s how it looks like when you start or have yet to find your “breakthrough game”. The more you release games the less buttons there is on the control panel if you’re trying just a bit to reach out to others. The goal is to get to that point where the “press” button disappear from the control panel. You can still put it back but it’s not required.

If you’re really lucky you might even get rid of the control panel and just get some attention by sneezing. Very few get to that point however so it’d be silly to put that as an objective. Just get the control panel to an understandable state and it should be fine.

Other ways

Yes there are other ways but then it depends on who you are, where you come from, what have you done in the past, who you already know. When you have no previous link with games when you start you do want the press.

For example if you’ve been writing about games for some time you probably already know a bunch of people that will help to get the word spread so press coverage is less important. If you’re a french Canadian web developer for example you might know slightly fewer people related to the world of gaming. Just an example

Another example that might show that press coverage is less important is the game RedShirt. They are backed by Positech who already has a track record about releasing successful indie games and is helping to get the game some attention. Last I checked @cliffski had almost 5,000 followers on Twitter so when you immediately get access to this kind of crowd I’m guessing that it’s quite helpful.

Conclusion

So while press coverage doesn’t seem to provide impressive results as seen on the Spellirium post just denying it’s usefulness is just taking a huge shortcut that’s inaccurate.

I’d say the best thing would be to get some help from already successful indie devs but failing that the press is still relevant (and might help to get the attention of these indie devs you seek help from). And keeping in mind my Indie Royale example I can only say I’m about right about this.

I haven’t talked about what kind of game one release here as of course I think we all agree that you first need a “good game” whatever this is. I don’t believe in the “if you build it they will come” thing as it would be like saying that all games that didn’t sell are all bad and again it seems like quite some thinking shortcut.

Top-view character

The first one is a total ripoff from that tutorial. It’s meant that way as I first wanted to learn Inkscape a bit and see how easy/difficult it would be to play with this model to create my own characters.

The static version ain’t saying much so check out this animated test: http://www.machine22.com/squad

Everything is animated by the code as I was curious to see how smooth it could look.

I’m still missing the gun and I’m not 100% satisfied with the turning animation but I fell there’s something that starts to look nice there. Yes there’s obviously a lot to improve but I feel I can handle that kind of graphics. With a few gradients and some texture I think I can come up with nice top-view characters.

Face …

This one hurts. I’ve tried many obvious things I read in very easy to understand tutorials but that’s still the “best” I could come up with.

I know what I should be doing but that’s just not coming out of my hands. I “think” there’s some okay base in there but it seems that it stops there for me. Now I guess you’ll tell me “well just keep practicing!”. Yes, that’s what I should be doing but I really don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t matter how much I didn’t mind putting time on the top-view character I just can’t do it with the face. It’s boring me.

I guess I could go with something even simpler and go with this style but it’s a bit too cartoonish for the game I have in mind. It’d be perfect for that pirate match 3 game my wife wants me to make but that’s not exactly where I want to go next. Maybe for the game after but not right now. About that …

Maybe too cartoonish

Now this was an interesting test to do but even the top-view doesn’t quite fit the tone of what I want to do next. Again like I said when I do that pirate match 3 game I’ll totally go with that style and will force myself to come up with good results on my own. I think I can handle it.

I guess I might be doing some retro tests as it seems it’s all the rage right now and it also might fit quite nicely what I want. I still don’t think I can get the faces right unless I find a highly detailed tutorial. Again I hear you telling me “just keep practicing” but here’s my answer. I’ve learned a lot of crazy things since my first game in 2007 but drawing faces is just something that I doesn’t enjoy to do. How much I’ve tried and tried it still pains me. So maybe I’ll just end up paying a freelancer for the faces if I can afford to.

For example if I go with something a bit retro I’d be happy to have portraits that would look a bit like those in S.P.A.Z.

Heck maybe mixing this style with my top-view style might even work!

Why bother about graphics before coding?

You’re right. The game is pretty clear in my head so I should just go ahead and start coding …  Oh but wait! Right! I promised myself that the next time I’d work on a game that I’d make sure to be able to show some early stuff and make a first press round early in development.

Why? Because I’m done cold-releasing games. When all you have is the final press release to try to get some attention it’s not all that good. Just look at the games you read about this week. I bet the majority of them received coverage before they were released or that you even heard about more game in development than games recently released!

Yes I’m voluntary oversimplifying things about coverage and hype here as you actually first need a game that people might get excited about … But if I do come up with a game with some potential to get some attention I want to maximize this effect.

I want the option to do an alpha trailer. I want the option to send beta build to the press. I want the option to put my project on Greenlight very early in the development cycle and for that I need to find a graphic style to the game. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it looks good as a whole and that it fits what I’m interested to work with for this project.

So that’s why I think about graphics before having coded a single line of code. I often did the opposite in the past so this time I want to try something different. I can’t see how it could hurt!

You don’t clearly know what’s coming up

I have no idea if in 1-2-3 years I’ll say that it was the right thing to do but at the moment I’m starting to have doubts. Sure you can’t get very far by sleeping only 4 hours per night but I was doing that when I didn’t know much about game development. I tried it, didn’t work and stop it when it became unhealthy. Then the whole thing about being unemployed and working full-time on games wasn’t much of a choice. I tried it, didn’t work for many reasons, I stop it before going broke.

When I found a job again I made sure I had some time to work on my own projects. It seemed like a good plan. I can sleep a bit more at night, I have learned a few things so I can focus on maybe less crazy projects and just my past experience should make me for efficient. Well part of it was true. I think I have now a better idea of where I should be going and how I should do things. But making games for a living ain’t an exact science and my whatever choices I make I might always end up making a bad choice.

You can’t order ideas from a vending machine

My dilemma right now is that I’d like to maybe hire artists or even voice actors but … when you said no to 20% of your paycheck it changes things. Sure I got more time to work on my own stuff and make better games but you know, I still have to get the game idea that fits these parameters. Sometimes time isn’t enough. Maybe I can do on my own my next game but maybe to make it really work I need to invest a bit.

Some games were awfully cheap to make and had great success and others still required some kind of investment to get that “special thing” about them (time, money, contacts, etc.). I can’t order my brain to get a “successful and cheap idea” whenever I want. I have plenty of ideas but all require something different.

My investment in game development in the last year

Is working 4 days a week such a really nice deal? Well take your paycheck and remove 20% out of it. Now consider that I still manage to put some money away for my old days (8% + employer benefits) and that here in Quebec about 45% of my salary is gone to government before I get to enjoy it. I don’t spend a lot on luxury stuff but I do enjoy drinking wine and smoking cigars. I almost never go to the movies and even less in bars but at the end of the month there’s not that much left in my account. I could surely cut every single small pleasure I pay myself but then it’d be like when I was almost not getting any sleep.

So I’m thinking … maybe I’m at that point where I could go back to working 5 days a week just to have some kind of money to invest in my games since I feel I became wiser when it comes to the way I work on games. My projects are smaller, I have some experience, maybe I’m now at that point?

Getting comfortable

Oh right. There’s a big BUT! When you started to work 4 days a week it’s a really big burden to go back to 5 days a week. Yes I first did to work on my games but I found that it hugely improved my quality of life. Almost half of my time (I count weekends here) is dedicated to doing something I really enjoy to do. It made me happier, made my wife happier and improved many aspects of my life. So going back to 5 days a week, while it could provide me with financial means to achieve some ideas I have in mind is not to be considered lightly.

And then there’s of course the risk that by even doing so it still doesn’t bring the expected results. I mean I’m no stranger to doing sacrifices while hoping something and that what I hope for still doesn’t happen. For 6 years now I tried to adjust my life to make sure I could work on games and I have yet to get what I want which is … really just more time to work on my games … In a perfect world doing so full-time without hoping to get rich.

Having nothing to complain about after all

Maybe I should just leave things as they are right now as frankly it’s the best situation I have been so far when it comes to my personal life. It’s not all that great to my secondary-professional life but still. So really my main question right now is “How long will it take me to maybe find that breakthrough idea that might give me any kind of interesting result considering my current situation”.

It’s a question I have no answer to as it all depends on what this brain of mine gets me next. AND how long I think I can deal with my current situation. There are a lot of factors here. Do I want to stay where I currently work? Do I feel motivated enough to work on another game? Are my financial needs met by my 4 days a week work.

So for some I have a dream position. Me I see the good and the bad of it. It’d be great if I’d be working on that perfect game that match my current situation but you can’t order that on command. Much to think here.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a fan of match-3 games either. I never understood why so many people got excited about sliding gems around just for the sake of sliding some more gems around. I’m not one to tell others they’re “having fun wrong” though. I just didn’t see any reason to spend more than 3 seconds playing one.

Obviously my opinion has changed on the subject as I released one. To be honest I never thought I’d work on such game. Here’s how it all happened …

11 games

Before working on Bret Airborne I released 11 games and 3 of them were MMOs (Golemizer, Dungeon of Loot and Star Corsairs). All 3 MMOs are now offline but don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from indie teams (or in my case a single dev) working on MMOs. There’s much to be said but for this post I’ll just say that working on MMOs was what got me into game development and I don’t regret anything.

Overview of a city created by players in Golemizer

All of these 11 games ended up being … well let’s say they ended up being incredible learning opportunities … But after releasing my 11th game and not seeing much results I really felt that no matter what my next idea would be that I should forget about it right away. Oh I won’t talk here about the reasons I didn’t see much results or if I was right or wrong to feel that way, that’s a whole different post. I’m just saying that it was how I felt.

I entered a phase where I would write down a few lines in my notebook for the next potential project, sleep on it and then trash it the day after because you know, there was no way this next idea was any good or that I could execute it in a better way than my previous projects. I was lacking the desire to push further any draft.

That’s when my wife told me: “You should make me a game”. I thought she was cute saying that. She just wanted to make me feel better and tell me in her own way that she was supporting me in whatever I was going through. For some reason I actually took her words seriously. I thought that since I couldn’t motivate myself to work on some “genius idea of mine” that maybe I should approach the whole thing from a different angle.

What are you playing honey?

My wife is not what most would call a “gamer”. The games she was playing were Pac-Man, Solitaire, Minesweeper and some match-3 Tetris clone and Bejeweled clone found on some random Flash games portal. Right … So you want me to make you a game … Sure, I’ll see what I can do … maybe … tomorrow?

I did try to show her other games but it never got anywhere. All she wanted was to spend some time on something she could understand in less than 30 seconds. I even showed her the “king” of casual games, Angry Birds, but nope, she wasn’t interested.

Exploring the unknown world of Match-3 games

Two of the games she was playing had the match-3 concept so I decided to take a look at it to see why I would want to work on such game.

So I played Bejeweled and played again and then played some other match-3 games that should remain unknown and almost bored myself to death in the process. Even though I had a clear objective to build a game my wife would enjoy there was no way I was going to work on a game I didn’t enjoy myself.

I then came across Puzzle Quest and Runespell: Overture. That’s when I finally saw some light in this dark tunnel. I found myself playing a match-3 game and flipping cards and having fun in the process! It was more than just matching gems for the sake of matching more gems or flipping cards only to find out that there was no way you could possibly win the current game.

Puzzle Quest

These mechanics were there for a greater goal. They were only abstractions for fighting enemies much like rolling a die while playing D&D or clicking an icon when playing most MMOs. With the addition of powers it wasn’t just pure luck, you could actually elaborate a strategy. Of course luck is involved. Like it is involved in D&D when rolling a die can make the difference between your character suffering a horrible death or defeating the enemy in a glorious way.

So finally I started to believed that there might be a way for me to work on a game that both my wife and I could enjoy.

A gift from the past

In 2010 I released a game called Blimp Wars. It was a badly planned and rushed multiplayer project built on the same engine as my first MMO for which I spent quite some money considering the fact that I took the game offline 2 months after launch.

I always kept all the assets not quite knowing what to do with these. After all they were like new since so few people ever saw Blimp Wars and I paid for them so why not use it all in a new game. What game? Well after 3 years of looking at these graphics like a foolish expense I was now seeing them as a nice gift from the past.

Some assets from Blimp Wars

Working backwards

It was really weird. Much like an out-of-body experience in which I was telling myself: “Here are some graphics now go make me a fun match-3 game”.

For 11 games I was used to take a picture and then cut it the way I wanted to create my own jigsaw puzzle. This time though with these self-imposed constraints it was like I was given a bunch of pieces with no idea what it should look like when assembled and no guarantee that these pieces were all from the same set. It was weird but since the point was to try a new way to work on a game it was also quite exciting.

Puzzle Quest and Runespell: Overture gave me the basics of what it would feel like so I was good to do quite some work from there. I was still missing that twist that would make my game different from others and I also didn’t want to get too deep into RPG territories to make sure the game remains in familiar territory for my wife.

FTL was a bit of an inspiration here even though Bret Airborne doesn’t share much with this game. One thing I like about FTL is that you make rapid progress and that even if you fail you can quickly start a new game and it still feels like one continuous experience. You don’t play different games of FTL. You just play FTL. While a single game is fairly simple it’s the whole experience of multiple games that makes FTL great.

For that I’d need an engaging combat mechanic through the match-3 concept and a fluid way to insert that greater goal I previously talked about. That’s why I divided the campaign into 10 zones the player has to go through to “win” the game. Progress is easily measurable and each zone provides just enough variety in enemies and powers to buy to keep you interested to get to the next zone. It doesn’t have the depth of a full-fledged RPG and it’s meant that way. If you fail the campaign you can quickly start over and not feel like you have such a long and boring road to get to the same point you were before. This approach allowed me to insert some RPG flavor to the game without getting too far away from the puzzle experience.

Squeezing a twist out of the match-3 concept

It was time to reinvent match-3 games! Or so I thought. There’s a good reason why match-3 games have a lot in common. It’s because the concept works as it is. After trying various tricks in the hope to “hide” the match-3 idea behind some “amazing” and exhausting twists I finally figured that maybe I didn’t have to go too far to add my own flavor to the genre.

There are two things I didn’t like from Puzzle Quest. The first one is that once no more matches are possible the grid is reset. For some reason it was giving me the impression that I didn’t have much power over what was happening. Sure it’s a bit more complicated than that with the addition of powers but if you couldn’t cast anything and there was only 1 move available then you HAD to play that move.

The second thing I didn’t like was that both players have access to the same tiles. While you can try to plan some turns ahead it often ends up being wasted energy as your opponent can easily destroy your plan. Again there’s more to it and I’m sure fans of Puzzle Quest might argue against that but still I felt there was something there that could be improved to allow more strategy.

Bret Airborne - Duel

That’s when I came up with the moving bar splitting up the grid in two. The resulting effect is that the grid now becomes an abstraction of your domination over the enemy instead of just being a pool of resources both opponents draw from without restrictions. It allowed me to remove the grid reset (which is mandatory if both players have access to all the grid because a player making a move not creating a match would always have the lower hand) and to give some freedom to players to better plan 2-3 turns ahead instead of always going for the best possible move available.

This relatively small addition completely changed the dynamic of the game and involved even more the grid in duels. The result IMHO is that you don’t see as much the match-3 concept even if it’s still very there and push forward the strategy element.

Full steam ahead!

At this point I felt I had enough pieces of the puzzle together to go ahead with this project. I sent an early build to my friend and “design compass” Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green as I still needed some kind of approval of my idea just to make sure I wasn’t caught in some toxic creative bubble and was quite excited when he told me that I got something nice there.

Brian helped a lot to complete the design and fine-tune things and I’m very grateful for his help. The greatest thing of all though beside his help on the design was that he was also enjoying the game as a player! It’s one thing to be told from someone “yeah you’re idea is good” but when that same person also genuinely enjoy playing the game it greatly reinforce your confidence.

With Brian and my wife enjoying what was slowly coming up together I had all I needed to make sure I’d remain totally focused and passionate about this project. It’s nice to not work in a vacuum from time to time.

So what do you think my love?

Well I didn’t get an answer to that … She was just too busy fighting enemies in her hot air balloon and cursing at the enemy for pulling a “cheap” move. For a second I got scared because her attitude and involvement in the game felt strangely familiar … Oh right! She looks just like me when I’m playing games! I guess there’s a gamer in all of us after all.

So with a smile on my face I launched the game I created and couldn’t believe that for the very first time I was playing the same game my wife was playing and that we were both having fun.

After this experience of imposing myself the creation of a game I never though I’d work on in a million years it makes me look behind and makes me have second thoughts about everything I thought I knew about how X genre is lame. About how “these” games are boring. About “why are these people playing such games?”. It might also be that I’m getting older and that I don’t care anymore to waste time on judging things I’m not familiar with. All I know is that I just release what might just be my best game so far and that I never expected it to be “just” a match-3 game …

Bret Airborne - Campaign map

Download the demo on: http://www.machine22.com/bretairborne/

Have a PC and a Mac? Well I have good news for you! You only have to buy the game once and you’ll receive BOTH the Windows and Mac version. Once you buy the beta you’ll download a ZIP file containing both versions.

I was planning to release a Linux version as well but sadly it appears Adobe hasn’t upgraded AIR for Linux since a long time (it’s not supported anymore in fact). Bret Airborne is built with AIR 3.5 so I won’t be able to make a Linux build available.

Update notes

• Added difficulty setting for campaign
  • Easy: more spare parts, AI doesn’t always make the best move available, enemies have a bit less HP, slightly better rewards, more time to build towers
  • Hard: less spare parts, enemies have a bit more HP, slightly worse rewards, less time to build towers
• Added a basic tutorial the first time you play
• Adjusted AI so that in rare case it would try to play before it could and ending up not playing at all
• Fixed AI trying to play twice on its turn when it’s not supposed to
• Tweaked the final boss fight
• Added random button for random customization of aircrafts in duels vs AI or player
• Fixed game ending before all spare parts were exhausted
• Fixed some glitches related to writing the file managing game profiles
• Campaign is now failed if the volcano explorer completion reaches 100%

What’s next

Well a lot of playing, taking notes and tweaking. It’s possible I add some tiny new features here and there but now it’s really time to play, play, play, play and play to make sure I get rid of all possible bugs and also to make sure things are balanced and fun.

The campaign is “complete” in the sense that you can now reach the end but there’s still tweaks, fixes and stuff like that to do but it’s actually possible to complete the campaign!

Update notes

• Campaign
  • Campaign can now be played from beginning to end with win/lose scenarios!
  • Completed story and tutorials (still need to go through that to improve the text and fix typos)
  • Added boss progression that will have an influence on the final fight (just check the campaign you’ll know what it means)
    • Currently only the HP of the boss change. It will also influence the powers and augmentations.
  • Added notion of spare parts (lives). Can lose 2 duels per zone max otherwise you lose (still have to add an “easy” mode for that too)
  • Introducing new enemies the further you get
  • Added various missing sound effects (store, combat, etc.)
  • Added path display so you know where you can go from each point
  • Fixed exit location to not appear at the same position of another location
  • Enormous amount of various other tweaks and fixes that I forgot to write down
• Added storm sound
• Slightly improved appearance of lightning blocks
• Added tutorial for gauntlet

Known bugs

This will be my main focus for the next update. These are quite annoying so I won’t go into “beta mode” until I think I have fixed all occurrences:

• Sometimes the AI select blocks and they immediately become unselected right after stalling the game (but the game doesn’t crash so you can still return to the main menu).
• Sometimes the middle bar moves 1 column to the left at the beginning of a duel.

What’s next?

Beside the 2 big bugs above:

• Difficulty setting for the campaign (more/less spare parts, gold, etc)
• Revise combination of powers/augmentations for all enemies in campaign
• Preparing for beta which means preparing a Mac version. I want the Mac version to be available as I go into beta.
  • Beta? It means that unless I have a really bright idea that I won’t be adding any more features and will only focus on improving what’s already in the game. So alpha = add stuff, beta = improve stuff already there. Well that’s just how I decided to name things anyway.

This new update finally introduces the notion of story in Bret Airborne. Why are you fighting balloons? Why are you building towers? Well those questions are starting to be answered. Still a work in progress but now it’s more than just shooting down aircrafts.

Story

While playing the campaign you’ll see towers around. This is a new mini-game, a race against the clock. You must complete the constructions of these towers to first gain gold and … well the other part is not in yet but it’s related to the final fight of the campaign. Why don’t you check out the campaign for yourself and try to guess what it’s about!

IMPORTANT: Erase your previous profile before trying the campaign (just click on “new” when selecting a profile for the campaign). Old profiles might create all kind of problems. Remember we’re still in alpha.

Build towers in Bret Airborne

Update notes

• Map
  • Balloons now flip when going left/right on world map
  • Added some particles
• Powers
  • Raised the cost of lightning strike so it fits firestorm
• Campaign
  • Added tower construction mini-game
    • Beside gold they will matter in the campaign as I work on the story and progression
  • Added first draft of story/tutorial display
  • The store on the first map will show the cheapest augmentations and powers
  • Slightly reduce chance of repair blocks appearing in campaign as duels were taking forever
• Chests won’t produce coins anymore (wasn’t supposed in the first place)
• Gauntlet
  • Player now has a free random power on the first duel of gauntlet
  • Powers and augmentations of enemies are now randomly set
• Tweaked edges of crystal so they stand out more from the background
• Changed sounds and particles effect for match 4 and match 5+.

Bret Airborne Match 3 RPG Map

What’s next?

More work on the story, more feedback related to “why am I building towers?”, probably more details on death penalty and hopefully a new kind of mini-game. That last point still need some off-computer work though.

I’ll also add the tower construction mini-game as a quick-play challenge. In fact everything added to the campaign will also be available as challenges outside the campaign.

There’s more than enough work in this to get me to next week’s update.

What is success? Let’s define it as “being able to pay for whatever expense you might have”. Nothing too fancy, just enough to be able to stay “indie” and not needing to have another job. if you don’t care about that then skip this post.

Step 1

Make a game and release it. It’s funny how many people don’t get this step right. I mean you don’t have to release a good game, it doesn’t even need to be fun! Just make a game and release it! There you go.

Step 2

Charge something for your games. Remember the goal here. You can’t pay for food if you don’t make any money so your work is worth something.

Step 3

Avoid reading the comments. Yeah it sucks but chances are that you’re still making shitty games so avoid reading the comments. People judging you are doing so in the present. You’re trying to start something so if you get destroyed by a bad critic at the beginning it really doesn’t help.

Step 4

Read the comments. Yeah it’s the opposite of step 3 but by now you have learned that you are dealing with the Internet and that if you start crying the moment some random stranger tells you that you suck then you don’t have a bright future in this business. Not all comments are bad. Well most are but you can still find some helpful tips in there. So read them and try to figure out what you can do to improve your skills. Remember though … Don’t read the comments …

Step 5

Release another game, and another, another, another, another, … You get the point. You need to do stuff to learn. Remember step 2 though. It’s fun to release games just for the sake of it but you also need to learn about charging for your games. You’re not doing this just for fun (if you are then why are you reading this anyway…). You need to learn how to fail at selling a game. And another one. And another, and another, etc.

Step 6

Do some more games. Yeah I’m not helping here. The sad truth however is that very few people will be helping you so you have to learn how to deal with it. You’re not doing the world a favor by making games you are trying to pay the bills. Learn to deal with the fact that making games = business. It’s selfish and that’s the point. Again if you don’t care about making money why are you still reading!?!?!?! The point is to make a living out of what you create and what you like. Not to make the world a better place to live.

Step 7

Time to take a break. By now you might have an alcohol addiction or some other weird shit. Take some time to think about yourself and your loved ones. It really doesn’t make any sense to keep going if you’re destroying yourself. Do you want to be known as the diva of indie gaming? Look around. Others have already acquired that title and even appeared in some pseudo-documentary.

Step 8

Look at yourself! You kinda know what you are doing. Well maybe not but at least you feel like being an “indie game dev” is a job! That’s a great step to reach! You now accept that there is a difference between doing shit you like and doing stuff that might pay for your expenses! Oh but some people didn’t have to go through that you might say! Well … Here’s the shocker: just because you decide to make games it doesn’t mean you’ll be great at it. Yeah, yeah … They say that if you’re really passionate about something that the sky’s the limit. Not true. You have to deal with your limits and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. We are who we are and we are not all equal. Learn who you are and try to make the best out of it. Don’t try to be someone else.

Step 9

Did you quit your job yet? If yes then it was foolish. You’re just starting to know what you’re capable of. Remember that you have bills to pay and that live sadly isn’t just a world of opportunities. It’s also a world of obligations. Make sure you can meet these obligations otherwise you’ll give up faster than it takes to say BYE!

Step 10

Release some more games. Feel free to give up at this point. Sometimes things just doesn’t turn the way you wish they had. If you do give up though then you only have yourself to blame. Don’t blame yourself too hard though. Just because you didn’t make it as the indie game dev you thought you would become it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. You still have amazing experience worth sharing. Maybe you’re 1 game away from “making it” but you don’t know. Point is that if you make it here you are already part of the indie dev you wanted to become. The only thing missing is the revenue and well … It’s tough as shit to make a living in anything so just imagine how tough it can be when you try to do it with games you create. Seriously … Take a minute and think about it. See? It’s not easy.

Step 11

Congratulation! You made it! Truth is you don’t really know why but it happened anyway. You found the right idea at the right time with the right execution. Who knows! Maybe you just were in the right mood! Something unexpected happened that got you on the right track you never saw before! It’s silly like that. Well not that silly as you still made it to that step so it means that you kept making games. Maybe it took 30 games, maybe 60 games but you made it.

The thing you might question is how old you are though. Well … If you became an indie game dev at 80 did you at least kept some people around you or are you some old shit in a house that nobody want to have business with? Have you been able to live a happy life or was it an obsession? Did you do what you like or were you just trying to prove a point. Was it fun? Yeah … fun … What you were trying to create. Had any?

My point? Well it should be fun exactly. We won’t all become great game devs but we should at least try to have a nice time trying. Our failures shouldn’t become live’s failures. Our successes shouldn’t become “the nice time we had”. It should just be “this is how I went with my life and it was fun”.

If I become a “successful indie game dev” one day I wish that I’ve made this possible without shooting myself in the foot. Sometimes it just feels that if you don’t make it “the way it should be done” that it was all for nothing. I really don’t want that. I just want to die old with my wife by my side while I had fun doing a strange thing that didn’t ruin my life. And that’s step 12. One day it will end. Did you enjoyed the ride or not? …

Finally you get to see what will be the campaign or story mode or the non-instant duel mode or whatever you like to call it. I’m not set on a final name yet as I’m thinking on adding more modes so just calling it “campaign” might give the impression that the other modes I’m thinking about are not the “real” game. Hmm … well it makes sense to me anyway.

Remember that the game is still in alpha so there’s still a lot of work to do but I’m now ready to get feedback on that part of the game.

Update notes

• Campaign preview
  • ERASE YOUR CURRENT PROFILE BEFORE PLAYING THE CAMPAIGN (just create a new profile over your existing profile) otherwise I guarantee it won’t be good.
  • When you start a new campaign you receive a free random power to help your offensive (something that do direct damage or create cannon balls)
  • If you lose a duel you simply get back to the start of the current level.
  • First version of world map so obviously still many visual improvements to add still let me know what feels good and what feels wrong. That will help me to focus my efforts.
  • For now it’s just an infinite number of zones with the same 2 type of enemies
  • Chests have a 10% chance of giving +1 gold in duels
  • Augmentations and powers price still need to be better balanced
  • Enemies now have a “bounty” value associated with them in campaign mode. This is the reward you’ll get.
    • Initial plan was to have coins blocks but I found that it was nearly impossible to adjust the price of powers and augmentations based on how many coins combinations could be achieved.
  • Eldorado now gives 20% more gold per reward for winning a duel
  • I still have to add a tower building mini-game to the campaign but if you have more mini-games ideas for the campaign let me know!
• If a player activate ramming speed and dies from it then the opponent is declared the winner
• Added error message when trying to activate time bomb when the power is already activated
• Updated description of powers
• Added information button (look for the ? near the HP bar) in duel to see augmentations
• Fixed possibility to play when it’s the AI turn
• Gauntlet
  • Slightly raised the chance of player to get cannon balls and lowered HP of enemy on first duel
  • Fixed music overlap
  • Fixed unable to load a game after exiting a duel and returning to the gauntlet
• Added music when losing a duel
• Additional check to prevent the board being lock when it’s the player’s turn

What’s next

Well more work on the campaign. A build tower mini-game will be added. Basically you’ll have to play a match 3 game with specific goals to build a tower. You’ll have 1 shot. If you succeed you’ll get gold.

I’m slowly starting to think to add a difficulty slider as it might prove useful for the campaign. I need to think of a death penalty so adding lives is a possibility (easy = 5 lives, normal = 3 lives, hard = no lives so you can’t lose a duel).

I’ll keep adjusting the price of powers and augmentations as I keep playing. I’ll also introduce new enemies and experiment with different combinations of powers and augmentations to make them interesting. If you have suggestions feel free to contact me.