A post-mortem on an early access game. Ok!
That’s been in development for over 3 years. It really is more polished in its EA state than many games I’ve played that are in their “released” state.
You can’t argue that, with the tough and arguably silly crowd that revolves around Early Access on Steam, their choosing of word is quite poor.
The conclusion should probably be, that unless your game goes viral, or you’re not willing to base your marketing efforts on deceiving press and players, you should be preparing for a long run and a lot of hard work optimizing and building sales over time.
It’s a nice read, and I am happy they chose to share the experience… but yeah. I mean no one expects every game to be a runaway success right? I would think we would have a a few great games, a few really bad ones and most in the middle that mostly won’t make anyone an overnight millionaire but hopefully open a few doors for the company and/or the employees.
Nice!
Nice!
Cool.
I’m out.
Got a giggle out out of me Rock8man! :)
That was pretty fun. I don’t hate pixels that much. I mean I love Stardew Valley. My sister though… hates them. It took a lot for her to buy Stardew Valley and believe she would like it. I am still hearing about Terraria.
The teeny tiny pixel graphics remind me of Benefactor on the Amiga. (Now there’s a box!) crossed with Abuse or Soldat. I pressed “Add to Wishlist”.
Definitely reminds me of Soldat.
It makes sense since Transhuman Design is the company founded by Soldat’s programmer (He even mentions it in the email he has been sending around about the release of Butcher).
That makes a lot of sense, damn thing looks exactly the same, but better.
It is? Definitely a must buy them!
Though this statement left me a bit confused: The guy who did Soldat went on to do the excellent King Arthur’s Gold, and I (used to) regularly get spammed by the KAG2d mailing list, so surely if they had a new game out I’d have heard of it?
Turns out it is the KAG2d people AND I got an email about it, I just completely ignored it. Perhaps because I forgot they were called “Transhuman Design” rather than “The Soldat guy”.
Edit: Argh, back in April they also released Trench Run and gave out 30%-off codes for it for previous KAG2d players. Now expired :'(
Slayaway Camp is a slasher-flick-themed spacial puzzle game with 1) a well-thought-out set of mechanics, carefully paced, and 2) gobs and gobs of juicy, gory polish. It feels like it should be a mobile game (and apparently that version is coming soon), but the Steam version is currently 26% off–a discount that gets it down to $6.65… I assume the closest they could get to $6.66.
There’s so much unnecessary but endearing icing layered on this simple cake that I just have to recommend it. It also has the best settings menu I’ve seen since Pony Island. Don’t miss the slider labelled “Sliders”.
(Hat tip to Video Game Hot Dog for bringing it to my attention!)
It’s an expanded version of a free Flash game, in case anyone wants to try before they buy.
Thanks for the kind words! And yes, you can play a free web version at Kongregate (http://www.slayawaycamp.com/play) or get the deluxe version on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/530390/). The Steam version does have a lot more features and polish, though.
Jason
Finding Paradise (the sequel to the fantastic “To The Moon”) now has a Steam page!
Ah-ha! Now that I know it has some PopCap pedigree, it all makes sense! Congrats on the very fun little game, Mr. Kapalka!
From our own CliffyB comes Political Animals, which has quite a bit more depth than it would appear from the graphics.
It’s as if George Orwell designed Political Machine.
The two things I dislike are the least important - the graphics, which look like they were designed for a five year old, and the one really annoying music track that repeats over and over. Normally I leave music on in my games, but after about a minute I was ready to push a pencil through my eardrums.
If you can get past those, there’s a pretty good little game here.
Thanks kindly!
Oh yes, I’m loving Virginia although I’m only an hour in. It’s absolutely beautiful, the music is spot on, and the lack of “choice” doesn’t bother me at all. I am so grateful we got this and Firewatch in the same year. Games are going places they’ve never been before. I am blown away at just how much the environment is telling you about the people and the story, very clever.