Firstly, let me apologize.
I had initially planned on releasing this blog post yesterday, but sadly, I somehow messed up and DELETED THE WHOLE POST! So, now I’m doing this again. Thankfully, I think will be much better anyway. Hope you enjoy.
Between last Thursday and Friday, I released my VERY FIRST BETA! Currently, BETA 0 of Monstructs: Makers and Mayhem, this is alongside the FIRST EPISODE of Slime Kingdom (released just in time for Christmas last year). So now, I officially can say, I’ve got two releases out for the world to play!
YAY ME!
No lie, these past several days have been a rollercoaster of emotions for me! After the release, I posted my game just about anywhere people can see it. There’s even a version of Slime Kingdom on Newgrounds (See this post about my experience)
I have had GREAT reviews, BAD reviews and some down-right LAZY reviews! I got a TON of feedback that really helped me improve the systems, graphics, mechanics, etc! Much of this has been eye-opening and I feel the games critiqued will go much farther along in development. Some feedback I’ve gotten I was puzzled about, but I think that may be due to player’s systems or something beyond my control, but will try to address as best I can.
In fact, I’ve been working to lot of these thoughts and comments (even though I told myself I’d relax for once) which will result in a release of Monstructs: Makers and Mayhem’s upcoming BETA 1! As I was gearing up to fix some unknown issues In Slime Kingdom, my computer GOT SICK AND ALMOST DIED on me! This happened a couple of days ago and I pretty much had to fight with this thing for like a DAY AND A HALF until I got some help from a friend and got it resolved. Thank God none of my game dev files were damaged, lost or infected with a virus. Unfortunately, time was lost because of this, but I can continue development of these two games bright and early tomorrow!
During this brief (although it seemed like an ETERNITY) time, I learned two very important lessons.
DO NOT OVERREACT: Yes you did spend a great deal of time thinking, coding, drawing, songwriting and developing your game, and you’re 100 percent justified in defending all your effort. However, you can’t let every little comment knock you off your square. The reason why, is if you can put you feelings (and righteous indignation) aside, you will get great feedback that will help make your game much better. Plus, the trolls will either just disappear, come around or can be easily blocked. The same can be said of positive feedback as well. Be careful when you get a lot of flattering comments, as they can make you get lazy, overconfident and resistant to change/growth.
CONVERT YOUR CRITICS: If you can, that is. Again, even lazy reviews like, “Your graphics suck, bro!”, can be used to find real, genuine critique and feedback. Let me share what happened on my Game Dev DISCORD. I had a player come on and say that if I was going to charge for this, i need to put more effort into my assets, so they wouldn’t look like RPG Maker’s RTP. At first, I asked him to elaborate and expound on his premise; he couldn’t. My next reaction was to just boot him out my room out of hand. Thankfully, I waited to see if he was just a troll or not and I’m glad I did. Within the next day, he tested both games and gave me in-depth feedback on systems and other things I thought was resolved and helped generate ideas that helped my projects. Yep, you guessed, folks! I found a hard to find, diamond-in-the-rough—a REAL Beta Tester!
Next week, I’ll be correcting more issues with Slime Kingdom and adding assets to Monstructs, along with more promotion work. I also have a great idea, to help generate a gang of buzz for these games and can create a great community of players/devs. Please stay tuned to this blog as I’ve got great hings planned for this year!
