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[Scott]

ff6.

Art style just gives me that feel. Even down to the color schemes chosen. I might be the only one that thinks that

Regardless, I'm unusually excited to play this, whatever the reason is.

[kittakaj]

Well, I can see how you might think it looks more like ff6 than zelda, seeing as I'm using a bigger range of colors and a less cartoony style than the GBC zeldas.  I'm also not using the weird sort of perspective of Zelda rooms (Which allows you to see the faces of all four walls, rather than just the top one).

[melos]

ff6.

Art style just gives me that feel. Even down to the color schemes chosen. I might be the only one that thinks that

Regardless, I'm unusually excited to play this, whatever the reason is.

I sprinkled magic powder into the game design - it grips your soul with a slightly firm vice. sometimes.

Hmm, what's new. A lot of tiny good thing fixed for thr demo. Worked on a dungeon song. I have this urge to do some church choir thing for a later dungeon, dunno if ill follow through with that. At my grandparents atm so I can only do a little bit. Stay tuned , friends.

[melos]

i give up

haha just kidding


no today i did a few fixes, mostly spending time at relatives, back home now. got to work on a little music, fix up the hub world, etc.

with regards to the demo, there's a few art things that need to be popped in, then we're gonna do a quick sanity check with our friends and then put it out probably over the weekend, send to press on monday/tuesday iono.

[melos]

bloop bloop bloop some updates

reddit screenshotsaturday

one of the musical things i worekd on today. i'm excited to finish this one:

http://soundcloud.com/seagaia/anodyne-go-wip-9-14-12

and this...mm.

[Sam English]

Just wanted to drop in to say this is looking splendid! Keep up the good work!

Also, I like that new song!

[melos]

Just wanted to drop in to say this is looking splendid! Keep up the good work!

Also, I like that new song!

thanks sam!


today i showed the game to some people at a meetup, albeit very flustered. some cool games there as well - octodad, organ trail. a few tigsourcers as well - craig stern and...I can't remember the name but his profile picture is an elephant!


the demo's coming on monday. this weekend we are doing a sanity check with some friends.

here's a picture of the todo list for the demo, which is FUCKING DONE. AGH

[melos]

Hm, the rest of yesterday I hashed some future design things out. Today I broke my laptop fan by using compressed air and not holding the fan in place. I am an idiot. Thanks to my 1,000,000 and abuse of version control, it's all okay. Well, all of my music settings were fine except for the soundfonts not being correctly picked...thankfully I only use a few so it wasn't too hard. Except for reinstalling Native Instruments Reaktor which I used in one place. You have to reinstall everything and the presets break because they embed some data specific to the computer. I don't know. It just wasn't an easy process, gah.

Made some refactoring fixes to help reduce memory allocation, but I won't put those into place until post-demo.

Did a lot of collecting press e-mails. Gee whiz, is tomorrow going to be fun...

Anyways, you can download the music from the demo version, which will be going up tomorrow, for free. Or you can give me a dollar and it'll be the first cent I make off of music...

http://seagaia.bandcamp.com/

[Belimoth]

Do you mean the demo is done? Or the to-do list is done.

[melos]

hey i know you know!

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah it's done i had to do screen resolution shit in the past hour and fix things with music but it's overnow i'm gonna eat some chicken wings

[Graham-]

you're sharing your demo with the press?

(sorry, I may have missed that)

[melos]

you're sharing your demo with the press?

(sorry, I may have missed that)

Yes, tomorrow. It's pretty much final for those first areas of the game. I am fixing little things tonight and tomorrow will be an absolutely miserable day of lots of messaging. I hope it works out...

[Graham-]

Ah. So they aren't on the hook yet?

Post how it goes. There's little talk among indies about this part of the process that I've seen. Or it's just light.

[melos]

Ah. So they aren't on the hook yet?

Post how it goes. There's little talk among indies about this part of the process that I've seen. Or it's just light.

Nope. I deliberately pulled playable things a few weeks ago (whatever you played was the most recent) and around then I started doing more "PR"-type stuff.  We decided to hold off on contacting press till we had something really polished to show.  Also gave me some time to rework parts of that first dungeon!

I'm definitely going to post on how it goes with the demo. I wonder if anyone at all will cover us. If not, there's a Dairy Queen near my home so I'll probably go drown my sorrows and then cry or something. I don't know...

[Graham-]

I worked twice at companies that marketed through the web. They didn't make games, but some rules apply.

What I learned:
  1. Extremely clean "press releases." This is what potential consumers/press see. They can understand what they need in a flash and dig as deep into it as they want.
  2. Regular updates. If they don't bite today, you keep updating regularly - collecting user comments/feedback, finding what press materials attract the most people - then do another press round at demo version 0.2, then 0.3, and 0.4 etc. _Eventually_ they give.
  3. When writing an email, or creating any press material, get to the point really fucking fast.

What I've read:
  4. Customize your emails to:
       . the individual you are writing to
       . the publication he/she writes for

You probably already know:
  http://www.gamespress.com/about.asp
  -> don't know how useful to new indies
and
  http://dopresskit.com/

And read:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167706/Ask_Gamasutra_How_to_annoy_a_games_journalist_with_a_press_release.php#.UFZzLbJlRcc

[melos]

I worked twice at companies that marketed through the web. They didn't make games, but some rules apply.

What I learned:
  1. Extremely clean "press releases." This is what potential consumers/press see. They can understand what they need in a flash and dig as deep into it as they want.
  2. Regular updates. If they don't bite today, you keep updating regularly - collecting user comments/feedback, finding what press materials attract the most people - then do another press round at demo version 0.2, then 0.3, and 0.4 etc. _Eventually_ they give.
  3. When writing an email, or creating any press material, get to the point really fucking fast.

What I've read:
  4. Customize your emails to:
       . the individual you are writing to
       . the publication he/she writes for

You probably already know:
  http://www.gamespress.com/about.asp
  -> don't know how useful to new indies
and
  http://dopresskit.com/

And read:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167706/Ask_Gamasutra_How_to_annoy_a_games_journalist_with_a_press_release.php#.UFZzLbJlRcc

Yeah, I've been working on making the generic parts of the e-mail very organized and straight to the point.

By being the actual creator of the game, I've managed to naturally avoid most of the don't-do-things (corporate bullshit, totally impersonal crap) - (just read that gamasutra article you linked to). The only thing really left is to have some personal message. It feels a little disingenuous to say a sentence or two just to make the thing seem more personal... But I guess even taking the time to write that extra sentence is better than not doing it at all? hm hm..


And yeah, I more or less duplicated presskit() for my website. It's a good organizational layout.

[Graham-]

You don't want to be disingenuous. I think a sentence is better than not.

My recommendation, find a single quality about the person/site that would attract them to your game. Then introduce with that.

[melos]

You don't want to be disingenuous. I think a sentence is better than not.

My recommendation, find a single quality about the person/site that would attract them to your game. Then introduce with that.

Yeah that seems like a good idea. Iguess I'll be doing that for the majority of tomorrow. the demo seems fine so i'm linking it up now.


For those who missed it, put out the songs from the demo for free on my bandcamp
http://seagaia.bandcamp.com/

and you can get the demo here
http://www.anodynegame.com/

**edit**

this is so exhausting

[melos]

hey, so here's how it's going so far:

I e-mailed/PMd/"submit form'd" about 35 people/sites since yesterday night and this morning. I tried to find specific people for most of them, but a few ended up being totally cold calls since I couldn't find e-mails or anything. Sometimes I ended up having to use those weird forms, or even tweet.

My messages all were a sentence or two about why I thought it might be appropriate (although sometimes I couldn't figure out one...), and then pretty much the same text - short description, why we're making it, then a buttload of links. I couldn't really personalize those because they are totally straight to the point. Then a friendly goodbye, because well, of course I'm grateful if they even take the time to get that far!


About 15 or so were youtube channels which I sent PMs with. One of the smaller ones said they would do an LP.

Out of the other messages, one person responded quickly and did an article (hookshot inc). Another person that I can't remember if I emailed did an article as well (wraithkal). IndieRPGs also covered the game on Saturday and again today.

I think I'll wait until wednesday and thursday, and then follow up, and perhaps e-mail a few more people too. I'm kind of just tired of doing this and want to write some music/make more content.


---

It's kind of odd - I spent a lot of hours doing this mini-research and e-mailing, and then when you step outside and go do some errand you feel totally removed from the entire realm of the internet and the fact you're working on a game - like you could have just sent rude messages, and it wouldn't even matter, since you're off somewhere else buying groceries or whatever. Just a weird thought.

---

As for analytics...we've had 5-15 visitors on the site constantly since the morning or so. I am not entirely sure how since there are only a few articles at small sites and I my FB/Twitter aren't that popular. Possibly from the Reddit posts I made on zelda, indiegames, and gaming?

Anyways, 3 or 4 press things are much better than 0! So it's going fine, I'd say. We'll see how the week plays out.

[Graham-]

That's actually pretty good.

Every loop through the cycle you can leverage your coverage for more. You can say:
  . we're covered by sites x,y,z
  . here's a link to all 16.

also, tip:
  . take metrics on page flow for your press releases, main content
  . then you can see what elements are registering etc. - very useful
  . and, give unique links in each each email, like www.tinurl.whatever.com --> www.blahblah.com/#21209821331<unique_id>
      -> then you can see who follows the links you give