Hello,
in around a week and a half I'll be releasing a game I've been working on for the last year and a half.
It is titled Throw Me in the River, and is a visual novel following a man's life over the course of 80+ years. Each scene is driven by his relationships with his various family members, and moves backwards in time by 20 years.
Truthfully, I'm extremely nervous about releasing a game that has such an unusual concept. It makes marketing the game extremely challenging, especially since I have $0 to work with for the marketing budget.
One approach I've made to combat this is building developer's commentary into the game that dives into how the game was made, showcasing concept art, interviews with the artist and composer, and showing various iterations of the game, from the game jam that I did 5 years ago that lead to this game's prototype, to the sibling game I released a couple years ago that features the same characters.
My hope is that in the same way that I was inspired by director's commentaries and special features in films and other games, someone may play this game and think back on it more fondly because it provided all this background info and they would be quicker to recommend it to others even if just from an educational standpoint.
I hope people are interested in the project and will check it out.
Here's a trailer:
And here is the link to the game's website, which also links to my Twitter (and later tonight, will point to the Steam and itch.io store pages, but those can also be found via google):
https://www.sidegroupgames.com
Thank you for your time! It means a lot to me that you took some time out of your day to read my anxious ramblings.