Facepalm

I just realized that I only have only one save file per device. If you log in as some one else and save, it overwrites the only save on the device. I somehow assumed XNA gave you a unique folder per user when you selected a storage device and never thought twice about it. Nope. Not how it works at all. Not even a little.

If I pull it from testing, I'll have to wait a week to re-submit. On the plus, I'll fix that issue and improve the saving / loading in general. On the down side, I want it out the door and there's no guarantee testers won't still find major bugs that would push me back another week.

That's a bad excuse. I think I'll pull it.

I Hit the Button

Game is submitted. Not sure what to do while I wait. I suppose review other people's games. Otherwise I'll come off as some professional game developer that doesn't give back to the community.

I bring this up because there was a surprisingly nasty forum thread on an indie game that went in for review a few weeks ago. It sounded like it was a larger studio that couldn't do an arcade release and went with XBLIG since they were mostly done anyway. Things turned nasty and personal quickly.

I really felt sorry for the developers. Basically everything they had done was an affront to the 'scene' as it were. So very middle-school-circa-1997-ish. I suppose it was probably the best-tested indie game ever, just because it had so many eyes looking for an excuse to fail.

Yeah, don't want to be in their shoes. Relevant (2nd half very very NSFW).

Witty Title, Now With Bonus Video

First up, a gameplay video. (Go to youtube proper to see it in slightly-less-blurry-o-vision. I think there's a way to embed the higher res version, but I don't know how and can't be bothered to look it up.)



Anyway, I didn't get much feedback from other developers, but I did find out that it's a bit hard to get into. I spent a week focusing on the initial user experience. I had originally wanted it to be like a classic game where the story is in the manual and you figured out the game by trying new things. Then I looked at the games I have to compete with.

I might have gone a little overboard with polishing the user experience:

• I added an intro cinematic, which explains the story.
• I made it ever so slightly easier. I think people forgive "too easy" more readily than "too hard" (regardless of what online forums would have you believe).
• I didn't think that was quite enough so I added in a dialog system that I could use to give some amount of hint and direction to the first couple levels.
• I still needed some way to explain all the status effects and such, and I just couldn't bring myself to do that in the dialog system. It would have been too much initial reading.
• So I opted for a few screens of reference material in the start menu.
• When trying to tersely word a help file, I realized that my combat system was generally just complicated to explain and a bit too random. So I made some technical changes to combat. Now attacks deal slightly less, but there's a chance of getting a critical hit.

As I write, I'm playing through the game and making sure the combat changes haven't broken anything. Then it's time to submit.

I'm kinda... finished?

So.

My game is available for playtest in the XNA creators club. It has to go through peer review before being put online. Playtest isn't actually the review, it's just a trial for anyone interested in the game. I'll give it a week of that before moving it to peer review. I have no idea how long that takes, but I imagine a few weeks.

Here it is. I think you need to be a member to even see that page, and I think a paying member to playtest. So that link might be useless.

Aynway. I'm releasing a game. Holy crap.