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[Dewfreak83]

Been working hard on the mini card game that will be used for boss battles in Heroes Guard. Some temporary assets and incomplete mechanics, but hopefully you get the direction I'm heading!

[Dewfreak83]

Trying to add in-game instructions without breaking to much of the theme. How confused are you after reading the in-game instructions and glancing at some static screenshots?

[Dewfreak83]

Created a poster to use any time I setup a demo, going to print-shop tomorrow!

[Dewfreak83]

Almost have the first iteration of the card game wrapped up for alpha testing. I'm already enjoy playing it - I think it has real potential!



Just have to add the notification for a "critical hit roll" and a basic tutorial system... and what ever bugs pop up between now and then  

[Dewfreak83]

Got my first real piece of "press" today and I'm so excited! Firstly to just be noticed, but second is that it is from someone who is very involved in the gamebook genre! I was always planning on reaching out to him, and was sooo excited when he emailed me first a few weeks ago with some questions regarding his April article!

April A to Z – U is for Underbyte studios

[Dewfreak83]

When it rains it pours! Hah, well it may not be pouring, but someone else came across my little game and liked it so much they also blogged about it!

I've been aware of Screenshot Daily on reddit, but figured out of all the titles out there - I probably wouldn't get picked up (being so niche). His words were

Really like the concept, and the art is pretty good for a non-artist... the art is good by itself IMO...but pretty awesome that you learned it as you went

Which put a big smirk on my face. He did a really nice collage of still images and GIFS: Screenshot Daily: Heroes Guard

He really went out of his way to put this together - as I noticed he cropped and modified gifs to make it "pretty". So awesome. 

[Dewfreak83]

Phew! Finally got the second alpha build out to get feedback on the card combat portion of the game. Sent out a slightly more professional looking newsletter, and nearly doubled my amount of testers!



Taking another look at my marketing plan now before working on the final alpha build... 

[Dewfreak83]

With the second Alpha out the door - I wanted to get a handle on my marketing plan. This became even more important now that I have been accepted into TWO conventions to setup a free booth!

My first convention is at Too Many Games in PA.


Followed by an even more local convention, Artscape here in MD!


I spent a little longer on this than planned, but finally updated my game "poster" to have a good bit more fidelity than the previous version:

[desttinghim]

I really like the new poster. Looks really good.

[Dewfreak83]

Thanks! I feel like I can clean up a few more things on it... perhaps I'll get one more pass on it before the game is done!


Was excited for the wonderful feedback, and then more good news: got my new business cards in today!

[Dewfreak83]

Well just launched my first bit of marketing / crowd-funding for my company! I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from my mascot guy, so decided to do a shirt with him:



If anyone is interested, they are available over the next 10 days!

[Dewfreak83]

So for my final Alpha build I'm working on adding two final key features:

• Saving & Loading
• Score Screen

For the Saving & Loading, I thought it would be neat to go with a bookshelf menu approach. You would pull the book off the shelf that you want to continue reading - or add a new one:


And for the score screen, I'm planning on having a trophy room where you'll see all your accomplishments and a chest of gold that calculates your total score:


I have most of the art done, and am planning on doing all the code to pull it together now! 

[Dewfreak83]

Getting ready for all the conventions. This new table runner that just came in will help!

[Dewfreak83]

SUPER excited to get a physical print of my card game in today!!!

Planning on using this at demo tables. Everything came in really nicely. Only 2 cards have small scratches on the back. Plenty good enough for a prototype build!

[Dewfreak83]

As I continued to iterate on the inventory and add some missing elements, I became very unhappy with it.

More and more it just started to look like some game UI elements "splashed" onto a page background - which really broke the immersion of writing in a journal and the overall atmosphere...

So I took another stab at redesigning and for the most part am pretty happy with it:





Also started playing with different sketches drawn on the page to help add a bit more personality to it...

As always, let me know what you think!  

[Dewfreak83]

Getting ready for the conventions and trying to increase the art fidelity of the game. Since the interactive map gets so much play, I decided to take another crack at it!



Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I think it is a big step-up from the previous - but let me know what you guys think! I'm a bit biased... hehe. 

[Dewfreak83]

Convention season is now over for Under Byte Studios... phew! 

Let's just say it was a HUGE SUCCESS showing off the game! The most surprising part is that the game is so niche, so I never imagined THAT many folks would really be into it. But were they ever. Folks would bring back wives, they would bring back friends. They would even come visit me at other conventions!

It was so amazing to see folks cheer and be excited while playing the game. And be upset when something doesn't go as planned as well. It put a smile on my face when a parent and child would sit down and play next to each other - and the child would lean over and give tips to their mom/dad for completing a story: "No! Break the door down, it will test your strength..."

I can't recommend it enough for everyone out there to at least attend one convention. It was so neat to be able to iterate between each one and see how players reacted to the changes. You'll never get better feedback any other way!





I'm hoping to have an open beta sometime in September. if anyone is interested, feel free to signup for the newsletter on the website!

[Dewfreak83]

October and still no beta! Argh! 

This stuff takes far longer than I want it too... sometimes I just get stuck on a piece of writing or some artwork that "just doesn't look right". I know if I could spend longer on this stuff it would look better... I'm slowly improving, but I'm not 100% ashamed of this stuff. This guy looks kind of scary:



But I'm pushing forward. I hope to send out a sign-up for beta within the next 2 weeks, as I've finished most of the beta content and am now just working on art & polish.

I don't know how far I should reach out for participants for Beta #1, I'm wanting to just post it to my followers (FB, Twitter, Google) and get their input first... but I think I may just bite-the-bullet and put it out to some of the interactive fiction community as well. Always scary to show off something that is incomplete...

Other good news, a local artist offered to do some free work for me! That was pretty rad. I knew it would be too complicated to match up in-game aesthetic, and I wasn't ready to rely on them for something so critical - so I had him work on some marketing material. I spent some time to collect references and arranged some sample scenes, and this is what they provided:


Overall, I'm pretty pleased - especially with the desk one.

And I used docontract to ensure the ownership of the assets changed hands properly - very simple process. I loved it! There was no "do work for free option", and probably with good reason. So I paid the artist $5 through paypal - again, very easy process!

But as with conventions that are "free" to showcase at, I've learned nothing is free. The $5 aside, it took time to collect references, exchange emails, and setup/look into docontract and paypal business. But if I'm gonna go anywhere with this stuff, I will no doubt need to work with more and more folks!

[Dewfreak83]

I'm excited to share that my project is nearing beta status! If you are a fan of the genre or are intrigued by what you have seen so far, please sign-up for the beta!

[Dewfreak83]

There were a few hiccups with Google Play and Apple. It seems that google play takes several hours for the link to be available to everyone in the beta - the fact that some testers are in other countries may play a factor here. Next time, I'll wait at least 4 hours to send out the newsletter!

Now Apple on the other hand... that was a little bit of a shit-show. The dashboard for iTunes Connect and external testing is pretty buggy. Adding pre-existing users to the beta resulted in not everyone receiving notification emails about the beta. Worse yet, the steps their tech support had me go through ended up completely locking me out of adding beta testers... period. Emails started rolling in about folks not being able to test or just not receiving the notification email period.

Apples solution: Upload another build, and wait the 1-2 days for it to process. In the meantime they would get me in touch with the engineering team... which they mentioned may take even longer. That being said, at least the folks on the phone were friendly. 

Also what makes it all so difficult: the status column for the testers doesn't update properly. It will update with "Notified" when it sends out an email to each person - but I confirmed that this is not 100% true. It will also update when someone installs your game - but I also confirmed that this is not 100% true... so broke.

Anyways I figured out that if I deleted all users and added testers from the CSV only, I was able to kick off the test again. So after a few days of headache... folks are playing and things are going really well!

If you like numbers and analytics you can see all the graphs on my sites blog, but here are two of the most important ones:



I'm very happy with these numbers! The price point I am going for is within reach, and large portion of players really enjoyed the game. But the game is very niche, so I don't expect to rope everyone in...

Still a long ways to go for full release, but I think Heroes Guard: The Journal is on the right path. A big Thank You to everyone who have supported me (comments here count!) or have participated in the beta so far!