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[Pezomi]

DOWNLOAD LINK

Today I decided to put out the first public alpha build of Shoppy Mart via itch.io. If I'm 100% honest I'm pretty scared of feedback. The game is kinda of weird and I don't know what people will think of it, but that also kinda makes it fun. Anyways, I hope you like it! It's about 30 minutes and takes you across 3 days of work. Let me know what you think!

[Ambrosios]

I only played the first day of work, but I like it (I always liked this kind of games  )

Here is my feedback :
- Game is haaard. I only got complaints and never succeded in getting one customer happy.
- Typing the product code worked at first, but it started to show nothing on screen after 3 clients (only the screen didn't work, I could always enter the product code and put it in the bag).
- First time, tried to enter the code with the code list opened but it didn't work. Maybe you could let the player enter it with the list opened (the player should still need to close the list to get the product inside the bag).
- I didn't saw the conversation panel at first, maybe that's why I got a lot of complaints 
- When trying to scan the product, I often trigger two times or even three times the scan by accident. It seems it has no effect for the moment but it is a little annoying. Maybe you could put a timer which keep the player from scanning multiple times the same product in a small interval of time. (I would not get very happy at a mart if they scan my product multiple times  )

[Pezomi]

I only played the first day of work, but I like it (I always liked this kind of games  )

Here is my feedback :
- Game is haaard. I only got complaints and never succeded in getting one customer happy.

I'm sorry you didn't get a happy customer! That's no fun!

- Typing the product code worked at first, but it started to show nothing on screen after 3 clients (only the screen didn't work, I could always enter the product code and put it in the bag).

So on the monitor? Like where the keypad is? It stopped displayed the numbers you were typing? Even though it still registered the numbers? I'll have to look into that. Thanks for letting me know.

- First time, tried to enter the code with the code list opened but it didn't work. Maybe you could let the player enter it with the list opened (the player should still need to close the list to get the product inside the bag).

Yeah, I actually did that intentionally but I could totally make that possible. I could see that getting pretty frustrating to keep opening and closing it while you're trying to learn the codes though. That'll be in the next update.

- I didn't saw the conversation panel at first, maybe that's why I got a lot of complaints 

Haha! Talking to the customer gives you more time to complete the order. Any idea on how/if I can make that more clear?

- When trying to scan the product, I often trigger two times or even three times the scan by accident. It seems it has no effect for the moment but it is a little annoying. Maybe you could put a timer which keep the player from scanning multiple times the same product in a small interval of time. (I would not get very happy at a mart if they scan my product multiple times  )

I can fix that too! You're right in the fact it has no effect. Thanks for trying it out and taking the time to give me some feedback! I really appreciate it!   

[Pezomi]

I posted the alpha on itch.io and made a post on reddit. The response was overwhelming, and very motivating. Here's the totals after 3 days:

I was expecting about 100 views and 10 downloads at most. Quite the morale-booster! Then it was back to work, after getting some feedback there were two bigger bugs: A customer would get 2-3 receipts if they payed with cash, and ID's would occasionally wouldn't show up when a customer was buying alcohol. I fixed em and uploaded a new build. Now it's onto new stuff! Here's some new characters.

[GalaethGames]

I like the policeman!  He's old and hates his work and just wants his beer!

[Pezomi]

New gif of the Police at work:


I've been working away on some stuff I don't want to give away right now, but I wanted to show you guys some progress!

[Pezomi]

Nothing I can really show this week, but I can talk about it!

There was a bunch of little stuff that I went around and cleaned up, stuff like if you put the receipt in the bag there wasn't a sound but if you gave it to the person there was a bag sound. There was a handful of audio queues that were awkward like that. I have had the ending of the game in my head since the start of it but I'm finally going through and connecting the dots to make it happen. I went back and played Papers, Please for about 5 hours on Saturday at looked at how he did progression and learning the mechanics. The theme of that game is so strong, I love how everything is themed. That's the biggest thing I took from it, I wanna work on making a better theme of Shoppy Mart. Really make it look and feel like you're in a grocery store.

Also, there have been some videos of people playing the Shoppy Mart Alpha! It's exciting to see people playing the game! and the comments were mostly positive! Here's a link to one by AlChestBreach:



That's all I have to share this week!

[Pezomi]

Shoppy Mart is on Greenlight! I just wanted to share that here, I'm super excited about it but at the same time have 0 expectations about it. Go vote for it if you want! 

Also! I updated the alpha itch.io, check it out here: http://pezomi.itch.io/shoppy-mart

[oldblood]

Be prepared for some anonymous hate to pour in. Steam users are... vocal. Take all the feedback you get with a grain of salt. Best of luck, will be sure to give it an upvote.

[Pezomi]

Be prepared for some anonymous hate to pour in. Steam users are... vocal. Take all the feedback you get with a grain of salt. Best of luck, will be sure to give it an upvote.

Thank you for the words of wisdom, I appreciate it.

[Pezomi]

This week I've been working on playing with this phone mechanic. It doesn't do much so far, and I've held off on spending too much time on it because I am still not sure of how it will actually help the game. Here's what it looks like right now:


Beyond that it has been sending emails, playing other games for research, and reading up on game design. Also I figured I'd give an update on Greenlight after a week of being on it. Here's what the stats look like:

(click to enlarge)

I don't know what you think of it, but it went better then I expected! I am basically a nobody, so to be 11% of the way in a week is a lot better then I expected! The 23% yes to 75% no's tells me I am doing something wrong. Most of the comments have something to do with it being a Papers, Please rip-off and a newgrounds flash game that doesn't belong on steam. Which I believe stems from the character's graphics.

This week I plan on adding more moods and adding in an order type as well. Right now every customer has 1 out of 6 moods. This determines what they say when you ask them questions, but the orders are random. Every time an item spawns it just picks a random item to be with a 30% chance to be a produce item every time. I plan on changing that to each customer having an order type. For example there could be the 'Burly Man Ordertype' where it's all steak and beer, a 'Health-Nut Ordertype' and it's all produce, and then maybe the 'Classic Mom Ordertype' with cereal, milk, eggs, and pasta.

That's all for this week!

[oldblood]

Here are my reactions to all this:

● You're getting some hate as expected. Take feedback into consideration, but take it with a grain of salt. Always important to "read through the lines" with feedback to discover the root issues behind the complaints.
● Wow. Only 1,122 views in 6 days? Greenlight is getting way less traffic than it used to.
● Wow. 215 "yes" votes puts you at 11% to the Top 100? My first game needed over 10,000 Yes votes to get on Steam.
● 23% "yes" is fairly low. I think a lot of the hate is geared more towards the art than the fact some people associate this mechanic with "Papers, Please". I personally find the art to be a funny-take on this game not taking itself too seriously.

Now take my feedback with a grain of salt:

I think generally you would have received a better response if you would have used a better or more edited video to pitch the game. The current video is super basic and (feels) rushed, which probably adds in to the fact that people feel assume this was thrown together (even if that was not the case). I think people could look past the art if the Greenlight page and trailer were more polished and did a better job of "selling the idea". Greenlight is basically a sales pitch. If don't put a lot of effort into trying to sell your idea to the masses, you will generally find a mediocre or negative response. Either way, you will likely see your Greenlight traffic take a pretty serious nose-dive over the coming days (assuming it hasn't already) so the challenge will be getting traffic back to your page to get more "Yes" votes. This is how so many games were ending up in "Greenlight Limbo".

If you don't make a strong first impression, you can "waste" a lot of valuable traffic at the beginning of your campaign and end up "stuck" without traffic or votes later. Your options then are to "ride out the wait" and just keep working on your game as the game slowly collects votes. Or you can attempt to relaunch your Greenlight at a point down the line when you have more to show and can put more effort into the sales pitch. You will lose the "Yes" votes you collected, so its not a risk-free move, but sometimes- its the only option.

You've got some interesting mechanics here and a unique game idea. Your next steps really depend on what you see happening with this game and what your own personal goals are for it. You may find you want to release it for free to build up more reputation. You may find you want to go back and redo a lot of it to make it more commercial. If art is not your forte, you may find it worthwhile to partner with someone to contribute.

[Pezomi]

Now take my feedback with a grain of salt:

I think generally you would have received a better response if you would have used a better or more edited video to pitch the game. The current video is super basic and (feels) rushed, which probably adds in to the fact that people feel assume this was thrown together (even if that was not the case). I think people could look past the art if the Greenlight page and trailer were more polished and did a better job of "selling the idea". Greenlight is basically a sales pitch. If don't put a lot of effort into trying to sell your idea to the masses, you will generally find a mediocre or negative response. Either way, you will likely see your Greenlight traffic take a pretty serious nose-dive over the coming days (assuming it hasn't already) so the challenge will be getting traffic back to your page to get more "Yes" votes. This is how so many games were ending up in "Greenlight Limbo".

If you don't make a strong first impression, you can "waste" a lot of valuable traffic at the beginning of your campaign and end up "stuck" without traffic or votes later. Your options then are to "ride out the wait" and just keep working on your game as the game slowly collects votes. Or you can attempt to relaunch your Greenlight at a point down the line when you have more to show and can put more effort into the sales pitch. You will lose the "Yes" votes you collected, so its not a risk-free move, but sometimes- its the only option.

Yeah. I decided to do it just out of the blue. I think I'll leave it as it for now. I should have waited for the game to be closer to launch, it was really rushed and because I rushed it I've gotten, what I believe, an appropriate response to the work I put into the greenlight page. I believe I pulled the trigger too soon, I just hope it doesn't come back to haunt me.

You've got some interesting mechanics here and a unique game idea. Your next steps really depend on what you see happening with this game and what your own personal goals are for it. You may find you want to release it for free to build up more reputation. You may find you want to go back and redo a lot of it to make it more commercial. If art is not your forte, you may find it worthwhile to partner with someone to contribute.

Thanks, these are the questions I've been asking myself since September. haha. I have enough finances to work on this until June, at which point I'll have to pick up a part time job at the very least. When it comes to the art, I am not gifted. Because of that I am actually working with my brother. We've already redone most of the art I did originally, the things that we haven't redone yet are the menus, customers, and the backgrounds.

The game went from a joke to an idea that I believe stands on it's own feet and gives an experience that no other game has captured. When it comes to how viable I think this game will be commercially, I still don't know quite yet. It sounds like people like the idea, just not the art. Which for me is good news! Because I can change the art! Thanks for taking the time to share your experience, reactions, and feedback! I really am grateful that you took the time to help me. I am always open to advice and am trying to take this adventure of making a game as a big learning experience. After all, this is my first game, I'm trying to not get too far ahead of myself.

[TheChaoticGood]

So kinds like a funny papers please?

[Pezomi]

So kinds like a funny papers please?

Sure.


Here's a look at the first take of the intro for Shoppy Mart:


It's a work in progress, but it gives a good idea of what I am shooting for.

[Pezomi]

Just wanted to put out a quick update saying that the game isn't dead. It's been over a month now since the last update and progress had come to a halt due to a handful of reasons.

The biggest being feature creep. The more and more I had thought about the game, the more and more I wanted to make it the best I could. But in all reality this is my first game, I just want to make a game and be able to call it finished. Maybe the scope won't be as big as I wanted, or the graphics as great as I first imagined, but as long as it sheds a little bit of light on what it is to be grocery clerk, and gives people the chance to try their hand at experiencing it, then I can have my peace with it and look towards the future. I gave myself until June to complete this, and I plan on sticking to that deadline.

[Pezomi]

/end?

Shoppy Mart is getting pushed to release due to a lot of things, the biggest is since my last post I've been dealing with a lot of issues Game Maker Studio has been throwing at me. The biggest being file corruption. The good news is that I have back ups, the bad news is that I've had to work to get the game back to where it was and while doing that I've had issues with sprites not showing up, rooms not being found, and code not being saved. It's been 2 weeks since my last post and if anything I have lost progress on the game.

I'm really disappointed with it all, but I think it's for the best at this point.

This is the first bigger game I've ever tried to make and because of that, the entire customer system actually relies on the grocery bag being present. Looking at it now, almost 9 months since I started working on Shoppy Mart with no prior experience, it's really bad and it wouldn't be a bad idea to just scrap it all and start from scratch. The game has changed a lot from when I started, everything except the customers. Which is really a shame. The customers in the game were the customers I drew on the first night I tried my hand at making a game.

I still really like the idea and think that Shoppy Mart gives you an idea of what it is like to work at a grocery store. Maybe one day I'll revisit the game with a Shoppy Mart Redux. Who knows?

Here's the totals on itch.io after 3 months of the alpha being available for download and giving it 2 updates:


My expectations going in where to get about 100 views and like 10 downloads. Some youtubers covered it, one of them gaining over

That has been really cool, to see people enjoy playing the game.

My Steam Greenlight campaign is still sitting at 18% of the way there, which makes sense. I really blew that. So yeah...

For now this is the end of it. It's really been a great experience and I've learned a lot in the 9 months since I started working on it.

9 months and I have an alpha of a game. wow.

[oldblood]

You should be proud of the work you've done. Many developers slave away for years at games that arent any more complicated than Shoppy Mart and they never finish them. Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand. You've learned a ton along the way about both developing and marketing your games and all in just 9 months... not bad... Looking forward to seeing what you tackle next.

[Pezomi]

You should be proud of the work you've done. Many developers slave away for years at games that arent any more complicated than Shoppy Mart and they never finish them. Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand. You've learned a ton along the way about both developing and marketing your games and all in just 9 months... not bad... Looking forward to seeing what you tackle next.

Thanks. 

[NinthPower]

I flippin love how simple this game is. The video on your greenlight is so awesome. It's friggin' groceries!