One aspect of developing a digital product from the ground up is whether to give any insight into the builder process.
A lot of online personalities choose to do this (not least in game development) but I frequently wonder if this comes at the expense of the product itself. After all, if I build an interested fanbase, even a small one, but have a crappy game at the end because I wasn’t focused then that’s a net negative in my mind.
However, there’s something exciting when the process itself is part of the creation. And games, like paintings or music (which are meant to be seen and heard respectively) are meant to be played (weird right?).
Which means the game must be shared! 😅
Baselining Nyx the Knight
To that end I thought I’d do a baseline post on the current state of the game, some lessons learned so far, and what’s around the corner.
COMPLETED TO-DATE
If I were to inventory the key completed components, I’d probably list out the following:
- Micro, macro, and mega game loops designed/implemented ✅
- Game aesthetic completely established ✅
(this was much harder than I would have ever thought – and took a long time) - Core storyline written ✅
- Central world built out (not polished) ✅
- Main characters designed and coded ✅
- Main side characters designed and coded ✅
- Several portions of the main quest line implemented ✅
- Deployment pipeline to Steam completed and flowing ✅
(the game can be installed on Steam with test codes) - One significant round of user testing completed1 ✅
Probably the biggest takeaway (and the thing I’m most proud of) is there is an actual, playable game.
It’s unpolished… the implemented storyline is incomplete compared to the drafted storyline… but there is a real playbable game.
IN FLIGHT
In the near term (the next 2 – 3 months), these are the items on deck:
- Launch our Steam Page: store branding and copy in development 💻
- Completeness: Unpolished implementation of full storyline 💻
- Marketing: Game promotion + early tester enlistment 💻
FUTURE
Prior to the full launch, there are several key steps:
- Rigorous gameplay testing: internal developers, paid testing, early access players 🤔
- Extensive polish: sound effects, soundtrack (one of the things our team lacks is a musician, so we’ll probably have to go with a paid service) 🤔
- Production Marketing Push: I hate doing marketing (why can’t games telepathically make themselves known to potential fans??), but we’ll be doing some marketing pushes. 🤔
OTHER THINGS COMPLETED
There are many things that I’m proud of that don’t directly contribute to the product (but are still important to the final result).
Long-term roadmap process setup: division of work into new/triaging, ideas being developed, decided and committed, in-progress, and completed.
This roadmap can be viewed by clicking link below:
Agile / Kanban process established: while we don’t work in sprints (future change?), our tiny team meets weekly on Thursday nights to collaborate and make decisions on current issues. Work is assigned on a Kanban board. The highest level of the board is the roadmap and there’s a hierarchy down to small tasks.
Community Discord Server: while not as active as we would like, we nonetheless set up a Discord server for more granular player engagement. This server can be joined here.
Conclusion
And that’s where the game is right now. Timeline for launch is still unclear, but I have to admit it’s exciting to see progress.
Best,
Josh
Footnotes
- This is relative to the size of our game: it was a few people I knew who spent about 30 minutes each playing the prototype through. This was really helpful. ↩︎
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