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[oldblood]

I love making such lists! It's the best when you are down to the last one and you can finally tick it off 
Great work, have been lurking/reading for a while and I can't wait until the final game! Insta purchase I'm sure 

Thanks so much for the support, always encouraging...

Wow that trailer was intense. The music was a perfect fit.

Glad you liked the trailer and the music.

Random bug I had to share today from some dialogue updates that broke the characters animations...

Almost creepier this way...

[ZeroTec]

Oh, I haven't checked TIG for a few days and Steam doesn't send you notifications if something you voted for is greenlit.

Congrats! Cool to see that you'll be able to launch soon 

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 73.

Oh, I haven't checked TIG for a few days and Steam doesn't send you notifications if something you voted for is greenlit.

Congrats! Cool to see that you'll be able to launch soon 

Thanks man, appreciate the kind words. And yep, made it through Greenlight "on schedule".

Speaking of Steam, the game is now technically integrated...

Obligatory Screenshot of game in Steam

Regardless of how many games you get onto Steam, it's always a boost to the confidence when you see your game in your Steam Library...

I'm technically now about 2 full weeks behind the schedule I setup back in May. But I remind myself the only one setting these arbitrary deadlines is... me. That said, I'm still getting work done everyday but I'm more focused on trying to iron out as many bugs as I can from the Beta II build before it goes live. In a perfect world, the Beta II will be very stable and the bulk of the feedback will be around the dialogue/story/endings etc.

Of course, things rarely go as expected, but that's still my goal to make this Steam build as stable as possible before I send it out (or until I'm tired of working on it). I'm aiming to release the Beta II sometime next week (Sep. 8th-12th appears viable).

***

AlphaBetaGamer was nice enough to cover the fact that I need Beta Testers and I now have more emails coming in everyday than I can respond to so there should be plenty of testers when the time comes. I currently have at least 50 testers lined up, but have another 30+ in the wings if I need more feedback (or if I'm not getting enough feedback). Ideally, that should give me a diverse spectrum of players and hardware to get a good idea on what's working or not working...

***

Once we're getting into the Beta II, I really need to start shifting my focus to marketing...

Marketing is one of those things you know you need to do, but the closer you get to the end- the more buried you are in your work and the more complicated it becomes to make time for it. Catch 22. Masochisia has been a VERY niche' game since day 1. I don't feel like I have unrealistic expectations for it because it's really just a super dark game that doesn't cater to any sort of wide audience. As long as its well received, even if it's a small audience... that would be ideal.

My budget for the game is almost completely wiped out so I don't have a lot of big plans up my sleeves for promotion:

      ● Storefront Live: Need to wrap up the Steam Storefront and get that live sooner rather than later. That will organically get views and allow people to slap the game into their wishlist (so that they can buy it whenever it goes on sale).
      ● Preview Build: I may put together a special "preview build" thats acts 1-3 of the game that would go out in a press release about the launch date. I don't know if thats a great idea or not since by time I likely send that out-- the full game will be just a few weeks behind it so that may be a waste of energy, I'm not sure...
      ● Multiple Press Releases: At the very least, need two. One with a finalized launch date, details about the game, trailer etc. And one about a week prior to the release with Steam keys for reviews etc.
      ● Let's Plays: The alpha demo got a fairly significant number of small-to-medium Lets Play videos without me promoting or sending out anything so I'm hoping that sending out Steam keys to LP'ers will be generally well received. I have a fairly large list of YouTubers, but I need to clean up the database to be more inclusive to those most relevant to what I'm doing with this game... I will likely send out the Steam Keys for LP'ers a few days prior to the release.

[slarti88]

Checking this thread after a long time! Great to see the greenlight and all the progress. Looking forward to the release now

As far as marketing goes, I think the premise of the game is unique enough to get bloggers and journalist to cover it. Add to that the fact that people have done lets plays already, without any explicit effort on your part is a pretty great sign. The only fear would be that the people who really get your game don't hear about it. Maybe if you can find a way to reach out to them directly, that'd be pretty great. For example if you have a kind of preamble story in mind that leads up to the game, or another story in a similar vein, you could post something like that in the reddit /r/nosleep threads, the people who like the stuff there might actually be a good audience for your game.

All the best for the release!

[Fenrir]

Have you already tried distribute() to send press or youtubers keys?
There's an option to have your game "public", making it visible to all the registered press, I tried it and it seems to work quite well, at least to reach a lot of youtubers.

[oldblood]

Checking this thread after a long time! Great to see the greenlight and all the progress. Looking forward to the release now

As far as marketing goes, I think the premise of the game is unique enough to get bloggers and journalist to cover it. Add to that the fact that people have done lets plays already, without any explicit effort on your part is a pretty great sign. The only fear would be that the people who really get your game don't hear about it. Maybe if you can find a way to reach out to them directly, that'd be pretty great. For example if you have a kind of preamble story in mind that leads up to the game, or another story in a similar vein, you could post something like that in the reddit /r/nosleep threads, the people who like the stuff there might actually be a good audience for your game.

All the best for the release!

Good to "see" you again! Some great ideas on places to look. It's a fine line between spamming communities and finding ways to promote to groups who may legitimately be interested but def things I should keep in mind. Thanks for the suggestions...

Have you already tried distribute() to send press or youtubers keys?
There's an option to have your game "public", making it visible to all the registered press, I tried it and it seems to work quite well, at least to reach a lot of youtubers.

Good idea. I have a dodistribute account actually, but I have only really dabbled in it. I need to dig into it a bit more... Could def make my life a bit easier.

Because it's Saturday...

[oahda]

Ugh, haven't had much time to check in on stuff lately and I'm tired in general, but I just wanted to peek in and congratulate you on all the good stuff that has happened for you and the game recently. Your constant progress is very inspiring.

[jamesprimate]

^ likewise, its looking fantastic. your constant progress and timeline-keeping is an inspiration

[oldblood]

Ugh, haven't had much time to check in on stuff lately and I'm tired in general, but I just wanted to peek in and congratulate you on all the good stuff that has happened for you and the game recently. Your constant progress is very inspiring.

^ likewise, its looking fantastic. your constant progress and timeline-keeping is an inspiration

Thank you both. Honestly, needed to hear that this week... The Beta II has been taking me longer than I expected and that can be disheartening for someone who is OCD about dates and timelines...

It's also a bit overwhelming to look ahead to trying to finalize a release date (which drives ALL the marketing) and just think about attempting to "get the word out" and the effort involved there... It's all a lot to take in but... it will all be over soon...

I know that the cardinal sin of indie developers is that you should "always be marketing" your game prior to release, but of course-- we all know this is easier said than done. What typically happens is we focus on the work and then attempt to cram in marketing in the last 3-4 weeks of development and then we wonder why our games have no traction... But without the support of a publisher or traditional PR Firm to me attempting to get the word out there and hoping some of what Im throwing will stick...

[/end rant]

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 74.

The storefront for Steam was approved yesterday so the Storefront is now live...

http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/396310/?beta=0

Even though I did not use any ratings board (like the ESRB), the game does feature a lot of dark content that is for ages 18+ and while the game itself does prompt a notice, I wanted to insure the Steam page had a warning as well since the game is not officially rated. The game would like be rated Mature (or possibly higher depending on how strident the ratings board is that week)...

Instead of a vague warning message on the Storefront, I elected to turn on the age-gates instead so if you browse the community section or the first time you visit the store page- you will need to get through an age gate. This is a bit cleaner and helps insure that the wrong audience doesn't unknowingly stumble into the game...

Live Storefront will allow users to Follow or Wishlist the game prior to release...

Feel free to share any feedback or suggestions you may have...

I'm considering putting together a short video that shows a bit more gameplay as the game is very narrative-driven, I don't want to paint the game as a serious puzzler or traditional point & click game. TBD if I will find the time to make a new video though.

You will also notice an "Available: October 2015". Haven't officially announced the release date yet, but it will likely be early into October. "Official" notice on that will come soon...

[nnyei]

Haven't officially announced the release date yet, but it will likely be early into October.

Whoa, that's really soon! Are you confident that you've given yourself a large enough time window to iron out bugs and maybe implement some changes based on the feedback you'll be getting from your playtesters? I'm not trying to discourage you or anything, but I'm a bit worried that you're going to work yourself to bone and drown in stress with that tight release schedule.

But regardless of that, yay for having an official page on Steam!

[oldblood]

Whoa, that's really soon! Are you confident that you've given yourself a large enough time window to iron out bugs and maybe implement some changes based on the feedback you'll be getting from your playtesters? I'm not trying to discourage you or anything, but I'm a bit worried that you're going to work yourself to bone and drown in stress with that tight release schedule.

But regardless of that, yay for having an official page on Steam!

Thanks! Yeah, I know what you mean. A big driver of it is really how good/bad the Beta II is. If its messy (bugs, people hate the dialogue, story arcs etc)... then I will take as much time as I need to clean it up. If it goes good (or at least better than expected) the release date in October will hold and I will spend the last few weeks polishing/fixing. Why I havent officially shared a hard date yet. If I need time though, the date will go back.

Speaking of Beta II, if my schedule today holds true... Will be sending you a Steam Key tonight...

Regardless, its gonna be polished and cleaned up over the next month. I'm not happy with a lot of the conversations and will be spending a lot of time reviewing likely all of them to clean them up. I know people are gonna hate the endings but... let's be honest... there can't be happy endings to a game like this.

[nnyei]

I'm glad to hear that it's not a hard release date, and that you'll take the time to polish everything up.

Last time I sent you my feedback, I barely commented on the dialog because I felt like I needed to see the bigger picture to be able to really critique anything, so that's probably going to change this time around.

I'll be looking forward to that key then.

[oldblood]

Last time I sent you my feedback, I barely commented on the dialog because I felt like I needed to see the bigger picture to be able to really critique anything, so that's probably going to change this time around.

Thats exactly what Im hoping to get. Feel free to not hold back...

The pain is good, right?

[Mark Mayers]

Finally played the Alpha II demo, here's my feedback:

Design feedback:

- Art is fantastic. I think the paintings/portraits were the most unsettling, in the best of ways.
The subtle details/implicit narrative aspects are something I've always found interesting in games.

- I only managed to get to the part after talking to Walter, I got lost with what to do after exhausting his epilogue.
The whole 'silence' -> 'eat your fucking heart' transition was great.
I want to revisit the demo tomorrow to see more of the content.

- Generally digging the atmosphere, you definitely have my interest.

Technical feedback:

- You might benefit from some type of dynamic scrolling speed for each area.
Ex. the closer you are to the end of the screen, the faster the area scrolls.
Scrolling between areas was a bit too slow for my taste.

- There's no higher than 1080p support; I think this game would look even more amazing in higher resolutions.

- The mouse cursor isn't locked to the screen. If you have more than one monitor this could cause issues, as clicking outside of the screen will minimize the game.
This can be easily fixed.

---

Overall, I'm interested to see where this goes, and I'm liking it so far!

[oldblood]

Hey markefus, thanks for the detailed feedback! If you want to finish the demo, you need to go collect "medication" from mother downstairs. The demo is pretty dated and a lot of the feedback you've suggested is spot on with other feedback we've received. Most of which has been corrected...

I do need to look at the cursor lock, but I've got some concerns it may impact some other components but maybe not. Need to just implement and test that so the dual monitor users don't complain.

If you've got time- I'd be happy to send you a steam key of the current Beta II build. Will send you a DM. Don't feel obligated to play it, I get we're all strapped for time here... Just figured I'd share.

[Transmission]

Hey congratulations on all of this.  The trailer looks great and the game has been coming along so quickly!  Very nice!

[Greipur]

If you still need testing you can send me a pm with a key, I've time this weekend.

[oldblood]

Hey congratulations on all of this.  The trailer looks great and the game has been coming along so quickly!  Very nice!

Thanks so much! Mechanically, it's a pretty simple game so I've been able to move at a steady clip. The fact its not a very "commercial" game keeps me motivated to get it out of my system so I can move on...

If you still need testing you can send me a pm with a key, I've time this weekend.

Yes, for sure. I can always use help with feedback! I'm working remotely this AM so dont have access to my stash of keys but I will DM you a key here in the next few hours...

In other news...

Yes, the game is now officially live and in the wilds of beta testing on Steam. There are "known issues" with the current build, bugs that I'm aware of that I haven't been able to diagnose or just didn't have time to do... I will be spending the next 2-3 weeks working on making changes and fixes based on feedback I receive. If you'd like to test, let me know and I will throw a Steam key your way.

[Mark Mayers]

Hey markefus, thanks for the detailed feedback! If you want to finish the demo, you need to go collect "medication" from mother downstairs. The demo is pretty dated and a lot of the feedback you've suggested is spot on with other feedback we've received. Most of which has been corrected...

I do need to look at the cursor lock, but I've got some concerns it may impact some other components but maybe not. Need to just implement and test that so the dual monitor users don't complain.

If you've got time- I'd be happy to send you a steam key of the current Beta II build. Will send you a DM. Don't feel obligated to play it, I get we're all strapped for time here... Just figured I'd share.

Got your message! I'll definitely give it a try sometime soon; activated the key and it's downloading.
I'll need a break from development and am interested in playing the Beta.

I figured it's an older build and you've changed much, but hopefully the feedback was useful (or at least reinforced what others have said, and your changes.)

Thanks!