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Memody: Sindrel Song - Week 1

5 years ago987 words

Sindrel Song's been out for a week now, so here's a bit of a review of how that's been, and where I'm going with it next.

I was psyching myself up to expose this personal project to the world, fearing negative feedback or just more scrutinising eyes on me, while mentally preparing myself for disappointment. Sure, earning like $50,000 for it seemed a bit unrealistic, but surely I could get 100 sales on Kartridge in the first week, right? That's a tiny amount!

I don't actually know how many sales I've got, though. There's a stats page I can see, but it's been showing 0 sales all weeks, so either I'm looking in the wrong place, or it takes a while to update, or it really has been that bad. I'm inclined to think it's inaccurate though just because a couple of people said things that suggested they had bought it. I very much doubt the number's anything close to 100 - it's probably less than 10 - but it's a shame I can't see any data.

There are four reviews on the game, three of which are from regular commenters who've been here throughout the testing (and who got the game for free), which I appreciate, and one of which is a negative review telling people not to buy the game because it's boring and a waste of money. So that's great. Thanks, random person, for trying to ruin its chances of success because you personally don't like it. Surely nobody in the world would feel differently to you.

Perhaps that reflects the kind of feedback it'll get when (or if) non-testers start commenting on it though. Something to look forward to...

If you've played the game and you've not left a review or anything, I'd like to hear from you!



Kartridge is small, and you have to download the client and create an account etc before you can get the game, so I wasn't expecting much when releasing on there. The next step will be releasing on Steam and mobiles.

I've been looking into at least getting the game working on my iPhone, and for the most part it does! Though there are some concerns.

A big one is that it's just more awkward to play with a touchscreen. The layout is horizontal, and after fumbling around with a few ways to hold the phone, the best I've found is using one thumb from each hand for three notes, kind of like the three fingers per hand suggestion with PCs, but the hands are stretched oddly and cover the screen a lot. The buttons are quite small too, and they're clustered at the bottom of the screen, where the iPhone annoyingly has this bar thing that you swipe on to close the app. It'd be possible to move and scale them, but then there's less screen space for showing the played notes visually. I'm also unsure how to handle switching between light and dark modes, especially when it's just for one brief note. Any suggestions here would be very welcome.

Additionally, there are some really weird graphical issues that don't make sense to me. For some reason, Memody's face turns partly transparent, but only while she's sitting in this area and the quality's set to Best.



The ocean also disappears on all graphical qualities...



...but weirdly, only during the day. At night it appears, though there are weird black bits in the shorelines.



It's probably some shader thing I don't quite understand, especially since the oceans are an asset I didn't make, but it's something that'll take some looking into.



I've been talking with my PR person (JohannasGarden) about the Steam release, and she's suggested that I could get a publisher, sort of like with my old Flash games. I think I talked about this here or on my other blog before, and how we're going to look into ArmorGames for that, the sponsor of my very first Flash game eons ago. I don't know how that'll go, but it might help to get the game out there in ways that I can't manage myself.

I don't know whether that'd apply to the Android and iOS releases or just Steam, or even whether they'd be interested; I should find out soon.

I feel that I should be promoting the game myself now, but honestly I'm reluctant to do so if Kartridge is the only platform available. Perhaps I'll refrain from doing that until at least the Steam version is out there.



One final thing: I did an 'interview' for the game with someone JohannasGarden contacted about it, in the form of answering a list of questions sent to me via email, about my history as a developer and the inspirations for this game, etc. I went a bit overboard with it and probably wrote way too much! I don't know anything about the popularity of the site it'll be published on or what to expect, but I'll link to it when it's made public. I also think he's writing a review of the game itself, so hopefully that won't be another one saying the game's boring and too difficult or something!!



So yes. I can't pretend I'm not disappointed by how this has turned out so far after pouring so much of myself and my time into this, but how many people release novels and games and albums, and how many of those are successful? I've been spoiled by the success of my Flash games, but they were free, and this isn't. I don't know where it'll go from here, but perhaps I need to set my expectations and hopes quite low. I don't know whether it can become a career.

It's discouraging, but I've come this far, so I might as well try to keep pushing this to see how far I can go with it.