Oh my, things have been quiet around here. Well, we’ve been hard at work preparing for GDC.  Business cards have been ordered, tshirts have been delivered, and of course, loads of work has been done on the game. Orioto did some really cool and subtle art work on the business card that I’d like to share with you:

Here it is with all the business stuff (phone number removed!):

I’m very much looking forward to this GDC trip. I have old friends to see, new friends to make, and many things to experience. I’ll be attending the Indie Game Summit, and meeting other fellow indies. My sources tell me that indies are very warm and welcoming, so I’ll be frolicking about, getting to know them. I’m particularly looking forward to checking out all the games at the IGF pavillion.

I’ll be posting some pics/vids during the week whenever I can, so keep an eye out on the website and the Flickr stream. And of course, if you want to meet up at GDC, drop me a line at yac@pieceofpiestudios.com.

Orioto likes to tease me that I am at times too critical  of the game on the blog. He makes a good point though. In my effort to discuss issues we are dealing with, I tend to gloss over all the cool things we’ve done. From a marketing point of view, it’s certainly not the smartest tactic. The goal of the blog should be to get you guys excited about the game. If we had a PR dude, he would have shot me by now.

I don’t know why, but it’s easier for me to discuss the problems and the process than to gush about what we’ve accomplished. The truth is, I’m very excited about the game. Things are really starting to take shape and I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made the last few months. My goal for this game is nothing less than to make it fucking awesome. We both can’t wait to unveil some new stuff.

But since we’re not just ready for that yet, I will instead indulge you with some (cherry-picked ) comments from various IGF judges:

“This game has a wonderful base mechanic, and I think this could definitely go somewhere.”

“Swimming under the clouds is a fun, thematically interesting game with great visuals. [...] I really enjoyed this title, and look forward to seeing what it becomes in the future.”"Visually stunning/gorgeous/etc, gameplay very reminiscent of other blob platformers (Gish, Oculus, etc).”

“The art looks nice and the concept is interesting.”

“The art is pretty exciting!  Unique and beautiful, definitely has huge appeal.  I wanted to play this game more than any of my other IGF games on the strength of its tiny thumbnail screenshot, and the full-screen experience did not disappoint. [...] This game is already very, very polished and impressive, especially in comparison to the bulk of the IGF entries I’ve seen so far.”

I won’t indulge in this sort of shameless self-promotion too often; it’s mostly to balance yesterday’s critical look. I will however make it a goal to present the more interesting aspects of the games in future posts. After all, that is why you are all reading.

It’s been a little quiet since Christmas, but never fear, work continues to progress.

The IGF finalists were announced at the start of the month, and we unfortunately missed out. We were a little disappointed, but not surprised. Our demo simply did not compare to some of the other titles. And when one looks at the quality and polish of the finalists (and even some of the other games that didn’t make the cut), we feel no shame at all. Congrats to all the finalists. There are some superb titles on show.

As part of the IGF process this year, all the judges had to provide feedback on the games they judged. I was personally looking forward to this feedback with both a bit of excitement and apprehension. For the first time, we would hear back from people who didn’t know anything about us. We’ve done our best to perform some clean-slate user testing (i.e. not telling our testers anything before or while they try the demo), but it’s always been with friends or acquaintances. One can never be sure if they’re providing you with unbiased feedback, even when they are being harsh.

Overall our game scored lowest in the Audio category (not surprising) and highest in the Visual Art category (also not surprising). The comments varied extensively in length and depth. A few judges left brief comments and moved on, but even then, most of those left interesting observations about the gameplay.

Our demo certainly wasn’t without flaws. Perhaps my biggest mistake was including 23 seconds of unskippable text (ugh) at the start of the third level in the first version of the demo. We stuck that in at the last minute because we felt that too much of the context was missing. It was a travesty (on my part) not to include text skipping ability (we simply ran out of time), and we completely understand why people would simply stop playing the game at that point. We fixed this in the 2^nd demo, but unfortunately not quickly enough to get it out to all the judges.

We were also very pleasantly surprised at the extensiveness of some of the replies. A few judges not only spent a significant amount of time with the game, they provided extensive feedback on what worked, what didn’t, what frustrated them and how things could be improved. This proved to be very important for us. We are already aware of most of the obvious flaws in the game, but it’s the deeper experience that we’ve had a harder time evaluating. The most common feedback was that the game mechanics were interesting but either unclear or did not go far enough to create a fresh and fun experience. Most judges also experienced problems with the difficulty spike.

In particular, we were worried that two of the core gameplay elements (the platforming and the water management puzzles) were not complementing each other well. This reflected in the difficult progression of the demo. We had a challenge “teaching” the player both how to play the platforming, and the importance of managing the water.

The feedback has helped us gain a clearer picture of what is fun in our game (the platforming and exploration). We have worked hard the past couple weeks to refine the design to focus on the “fun” and iterate to remove some of more frustrating parts of the game. The game experience is going to become much clearer and tighter over the next few weeks.

Finally, we want to extend a big thank you to all the IGF judges for their feedback. That alone was worth the entry fee. If any of the judges are reading this, we would love to continue a dialogue with you, and offer you access to future beta builds of the game. If you are interested, please drop me a line at yac@pieceofpiestudios.com.