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MARDEK on Steam - Final steps! UPDATE 6 - Minor improvement suggestions?

5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago2,821 words

I'm adding MARDEK to Steam, finally! Gasp! There are a ton of forms and things to fill out though, so I'd appreciate your thoughts about some things!

UPDATE 6
There's still more to do with this and I haven't set it as Coming Soon just yet, but I'm getting there. Someone sent me an email telling me he's the one who let Matt Roszak know I'm a cowardly nutcase who was putting off emailing him (embarrassing that my anxiety's both so crippling and so transparently exposed to people who follow me, but oh well; also I'm joking with my wording here, he was nice about it), so that's that mystery solved, but he also mentioned that there are only four Gold Ore items in the game, but five craftable items that require Gold Ore. I remember other people mentioning this in the past too.

I could fix this by adding it to a chest and as a low drop rate to some monster species, so if you have any specific suggestions about which chest and which species, I could do that quite easily.

I can also make some similar updates like this which would enhance players' experience without costing me any significant time or effort. So if you have any suggestions of minor things that would only require changing numbers, I'd be quite happy to make them to the Steam release of the game!

UPDATE 5
I've been looking at what Extras I can include, and I've dug up two Word documents of old notes: one's 16 pages long, the other's 74 pages long! I want to check through them to make sure they're okay to release to the wider world, since they were never meant for eyes other than my own, though that'll take time! I'm struggling to read them at the moment; I keep zoning out. I'm also wondering whether I should add comments in them from my perspective in the present (in a different colour), though I don't know if that'd be welcome or irritating.

What I'm thinking is that I could have the basic game for $9.99, plus an 'Extras' package for an additional $4.99 which includes the OST, Piano Collections, plus these notes as pdfs. I'd include concept art, but I never had any! There are some crude drawings of the characters' faces (including some I never got around to including) in one of the Word documents though.

I also need to update the description of the game from the one included further down in this post, though my mind's been foggy while trying to write that.

What I'll try to do is open up the base game to the couple of beta testers today just to make sure that's all working, then I'll set it to Coming Soon hopefully in the next couple of days. Steam requires a couple of weeks after that before actual release though, so it's likely the actual release date will be mid-to-late May.

UPDATE 4
Thanks to those of you who've shown interest in beta testing! I want to keep the number to a minimum since I only really need to see if it works at all, not for people to test the whole game, so I've chosen a couple of familiar people now and that should be enough for a start. If we find any issues, I'll need more people, but hopefully that shouldn't happen!

I still need to add some extras tomorrow. I'll include the old story notes as a pdf, I'll include the walkthrough, and I'll need to decide what to do about the soundtrack.

What I'm thinking from all the feedback I've got so far is that I'll set the price as $9.99, with maybe a 10% off sale for the first... while (what's the norm? A week? Longer?), but there'll be an option to buy the soundtrack + piano collections for an extra $4.99 for those who are interested.

UPDATE 3
I've finally got around to making the annoying 'capsule images' for the game. Here's what I had to make:

















Time consuming. These things don't just appear out of nowhere!

Now all that's left is deciding on a release date and a price. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what price is appropriate, so I'm still currently undecided there. And release date is going to be at least two weeks from now because that's what Steam requires... so that's annoying.

I should have a couple of people "beta test" it before I confirm a release date though, just in case it doesn't even work. I say that in quotes because I'm not expecting the full beta testing experience, which would take ages and which was already done for MARDEK. Basically I just need a couple of people to check if the game runs without major issues at all, not to go through the whole game or anything. If you're able to play a few minutes and it feels as it should, that'll be enough.

If you're someone I'm already familiar with - that is, someone who's followed me for probably years and commented a lot - and you're interested in helping out with this ASAP, let me know here! I'd ask you specifically, but I don't want anyone to feel obliged so giving the option here seemed better to me.

Though since I'm editing a post rather than adding a new one, I hope people actually read this!

I've also been doing some major replanning of Divine Dreams these past few days, so I'll likely write a post about that later today. That'll replace the other Alora Fane one rather than this one (which got fewer views in three weeks than this did in two days, interestingly).


UPDATE 2
Steam gives me this checklist of things that I need to complete before I can move to Coming Soon, so I might as well post it here. I'll update it as I make progress so you can see how I'm coming along.



The annoying 'capsule images', 'library assets', 'community capsule', 'community icon', and 'client icon' involve making various bizarrely-sized images to represent the game, and I keep putting it off because it's such a chore. It'd be fine if I just had to make one or two, but there are loads of them! I'll get there eventually.

Steam tells me that it requires at least two weeks between setting the game as Coming Soon and actually releasing it, so maybe the release date will be further in the future than I assumed. At least you'll be able to add it to your wishlist in that time, I suppose. I've not even set the release date yet because of this.

I've not set the price yet either, because of uncertainty due to the comments here.

Oh, and I need to set the Original Release Date since this is a re-release, so if anyone knows what I could enter there, let me know! It's complicated by this being three games combined, plus I'm feeling too lethargic (lingering depression) to look up the games on Kongregate while some of you might have links to those readily available.

UPDATE 1
Friday 24th, morning: I've combed through the many, many hours of MARDEK gameplay footage I recorded and ended up with 123 screenshots, which I trimmed down to 34. That's still way more than would be necessary, but at least it gives a good idea of the scope of the game?

There have been varying thoughts about the price, which are valuable to hear. I'm aware that there's a free version still available, but I've been repeatedly told by people that they'd like a version they can have in their Steam library, as I suppose that feels more like owning it. This version also has uncompressed sound, which I feel is significant, plus I'll be including things like the walkthrough, development notes for the whole story (using a pdf format sounds good), and someone mentioned including the OST, which I could also do (plus the Piano Collections one). I'll include the walkthrough I made too, though I'm aware that's also already freely available; maybe I'll make it so you can easily summon and hide it in-game with a key, or something? I'd include concept art and stuff too, but back then all my notes and drawings were in physical notepads, which I've since lost. I'm open to ideas about what else I could include.



I've paid $100 to Steam for the privilege of submitting to their platform, so now I have to fill in a bunch of forms. I already did this for Sindrel Song, so I'm familiar with much of it, though indecisiveness - and the sheer drudgery of it - tends to make me drag my feet. Since some of you probably have strong feelings about MARDEK, and likely a better understanding of what players what might be interested in, I thought it could be interesting to ask for thoughts before finalising anything. It's not like I have teammates to discuss this with!

Let's go through the things I have to fill out in order. I'll keep updating this as I make progress, so check back if you want to see how things are coming along!

Description

What do you think's important to include in a description for this? Here's what I've written off the cuff:



That first paragraph's ugly and should definitely be rewritten. I don't really talk about the gameplay, though I'm only really expecting people to get it if they're already familiar with the game, for nostalgia reasons. There's inconsistent tense ("was originally released", "I've managed to dig up").

Oh, I'm planning to include the single planning document that I've found about all the chapters, by the way, to at least explain what would have happened later. I think that'll be interesting to some people. It also contains descriptions of the three released chapters that don't match how they actually turned out. I'm unsure what format to include it in though; it's a Word document, which feels very... unofficial?

Mature Content

Does MARDEK contain mature content? I'm honestly quite stumped by this! It's not something I'd call mature, but I suppose there are bits that aren't exactly child-friendly either?

This is annoyingly binary:



"View Example Products" shows these:



They're fairly unambiguously mature. But is MARDEK's occasional filthy humour enough to quality it as 'mature'? It's certainly more 'mature' than, say, Final Fantasy, but can you think of anything in it that might be disturbing enough to warrant a mature rating? Do usually implicit sex jokes count as 'sexual content'? It's not like it contains "graphic violence" and "frequent nudity", unless you count Solaar's appalling lack of clothing as such.

There's this list of more detailed options, but it's labelled "self-rating for distribution in Brazil", suggesting it's some requirement of Brazil's government rather than something that'll be applied to the game in a general sense (I wonder how many millions of people from Brazil would buy this):



Even with that, I'm not sure which of those apply to this. Does it include 'killing'? Technically, but not really? Are there any of those that you think MARDEK contains but which I haven't ticked here?

I worry a lot about these things as if they matter, even though they likely won't at all for a game that's unlikely to get many sales. I suppose they're more a concern for games that sell millions of copies. Still, I'd rather do it right rather than risk getting the game taken down, or getting in trouble in some more worrying way.

Do you know what games similar to MARDEK have done regarding mature ratings?

I remember on Flash portals you could just select between things like 'everyone', 'teen', or 'mature', which made things a whole lot easier. I wish I could just do that!

Minimum System Requirements

This was a pain for Sindrel Song too. I think I just ended up putting silly information in there after someone told me another game did that. I wish I could just leave it blank, but Steam won't let me!

Screenshots and Trailer

When I last played through MARDEK a few months ago, I recorded the whole thing, so I have that to use for getting screenshots and a video trailer.

Do you have any suggestions of which scenes might make good screenshots, to represent the game as a whole to someone who's not seen it, or as reminders for someone who last played it years ago?

I don't particularly want to make a trailer, but I think Steam might require it? That's annoying, since things like that take time. Any ideas about what a trailer could contain? I'm not going to make anything new for it (like new music), so it'll just be assembling stuff from what I've already recorded. Which bits do you think best represent the game, though?

Icons

I need to make a whole bunch of icons that represent the game, which is such a time-consuming chore. Not something you can really help me with though, unfortunately!

Cloud saves and achievements

As I talked about in a post yesterday, I likely won't be able to add support for achievements, unfortunately, but I've figured out a way to hopefully preserve save data.

I see from filling in this stuff now though that Steam already has a system for supporting the saves of legacy games, so maybe I've just wasted a whole lot of time on that when I didn't need to?? Hopefully though it should mean that there shouldn't be any risk of losing save data! A big relief.

Beta testing

I'll eventually need some testers eventually just to make sure everything works, but don't volunteer here; I'll save that for a separate post. I also don't want more than a handful, because most people who volunteer just never reply once given a code, so I lose a sale and get nothing in return (other than the feeling of being taken advantage of and a hit to my ability to trust people). Lovely.

Pricing

Speaking of sales, I'm planning to sell this thing, both because on a selfish level I never earned much from it before so it'd be nice to earn some now (especially since it's not like I'm earning from anything else), and from a player's perspective, I think that makes the game feel more 'official' and of value than something that's free.

How much would you be willing to pay? I'm thinking $9.99, but maybe that's too low? What do other, similar re-released games do?

I'll also run a sale of Sindrel Song alongside this release, because it's currently got just 135 sales, but it's on 670 wishlists.

Release Date and promotion

Maybe aiming for the 1st of May wouldn't be a bad idea? That's only a week off. I see that it's a Friday too, which isn't bad. It's not like I'll be having some kind of release event though really, so maybe I'll just release it 'whenever it's ready' and not make a big deal about it.

I've been wondering about that though. I'm not intending to do any promotion just because I feel that only new games are worth that, and this is essentially just a port. I'm assuming sales will mostly come from people being hit with nostalgia and deliberately seeking it out, a gradual trickle.

I don't know whether I should mention it somewhere or do anything though. For Sindrel Song, I sent out a press release, with help, but I don't know if that made any difference and it was a lot of stress which I'd rather just do without.



We're almost there now, but any thoughts about these remaining steps will be greatly appreciated! Like I said at the start, I'll update this post as I make progress.