The reason I didn’t write one of these last week is that I was busy making games. I hope you’ll agree that’s a good reason!
Those last two weeks were devoted to Pixel Session Vol.1 and getting it out! And it’s out now! You can get it right there!!
Before detailing that subject, I also started a new thing, Pico-8 doodles! That’s just tiny Pico-8 programs I make to test effects I’ve had in mind, without making it a tweetcart or a live-coding because those things actually take a lot of time! Don’t worry though there will still be tweetcarts and live-coding! Here are some doodles though!!
So as explained on the last “weekly” post, I’ve been making a pack of Pico-8 games!
Here’s something I learned: making 6-8 games in two weeks is near-impossible.
There’s several problems here: The first one is raw creativity. Especially if you’re unwell for any reason at all, chances are you might run out of it eventually. The second one is scoping. Scoping will take time for each project and it will destroy your ideas. Most of your ideas will seem worthless after sitting down and asking yourself “what can I make out of this in 3 days max”. The third one is closely tied to the previous ones and it is your morale. Finishing a game feels great but you don’t have much time to appreciate that because you already have to worry about the next one. Making games that fast is emotionally exhausting.
So instead of making 6-8 games in two weeks, I made 5 games in 3 weeks! The first three were already in the previous “weekly” post so here are just the fourth and the fifth!
I’ll make a post-mortem eventually to point out what went right, what went wrong and the stuff I learned, and there’s quite a lot of that! But right now what I want to say is that I totally fucked up the marketing phase! I did market the games well on Twitter and I believe most of the buyers are coming from there but I should have been doing it at other places too. Talking about the project only on Twitter was a big mistake is what I’m saying. I also messed up my planning and sent mails only to a very few game news websites, because I don’t actually know that many, and only after releasing the game. That’s also the time when I realized I should make a press release. But it was too late. I did do a press release and I did send mails but to no avail so far. I’m not making those mistakes again.
Here is some promo art I did! The first one was because of Red Ded Redamption’s announcement, I wanted to ride the hype!
Pixel Session Vol.1 is out and even though I’ll keep mentioning it from time to time, I’m getting back onto something else! JOY! More on that next week!
Those two last weeks were intense, especially at the very end with the release. But at least that also means they’ve been highly productive so yay for that!
Next week I’m thinking and planning some more about JOY’s design and construction! And also actually making things happen in it! I’ll be making a TRASEVOL_DOG shirt or vest too because I’m going to IndieCade Europe next month and I want to get recognized! Also business cards! And Pico-8 doodles!
Have a great week!
Take care!
TRASEVOL_DOG
* TRASEVOL_DOG * 
Leave a Reply