Hi all,

I do apologise, but I think for the first time in almost 2 years I am not going to be writing a review for this Friday (SHOCK HORROR!) due to the recent release of Twixel on Steam Greenlight. Because of this gargantuan undertaking I am putting myself through, I thought I’d share some thoughts and feels on the whole process, and what I hope to do from here.

So, on Sunday I done it, I pushed the button to share Twixel with the gaming community that is Steam. I had been considering doing this for a while, but was concerned about the state of some of my promotional material and whether the game was actually finished enough yet to apply for greenlight. In the end, I decided that the sooner I get my game shown to millions of potential customers the better.

Alas, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post, I may have made a mistake. My trailer for the game (which can be viewed below), was one quick draft to at least show each level and 1 obstacles in each level in both 2D and 3D perspective. As it currently stands, I feel this is my greatest downfall in all of my marketing material, with the trailer making the game out to be really simple and all symmetrical. This isn’t the case, as I’ve spent the last few weeks working hard on over 50 new obstacles that will be completely random on both sides of the screen to push players to the max when it comes to difficulty.

In the coming weeks I really need to redo this trailer, as it really doesn’t represent the game well.

Since the launch of the Greenlight campaign I decided it was time to release a beta of the game, one that could be played by many testers so that I could get as much feedback as possible on what they felt were the shortcomings. I’ve given the game out to 30 people so far, and out of those 30 I’ve had a fantastic response of…. 6. Whilst this isn’t amazing, I’ve had some great comments from those testers, with 2 of them asking for in-game volume controls (which I’ve now implemented), as well as highlighting many bugs on the obstacles themselves (some weren’t aligned correctly causing “glitches” to appear in the level). I also asked these testers what would be the price they feel would suit the game, with the average price so far sitting at £2.99, exactly the price I was looking for. Needless to say, I’ll continue sending out test builds of my game to these testers, and will take their feedback seriously so that I can make the best game I possibly can.

I call Steam Greenlight hell because no one ever warned me of the amount of arseholes on the internet. Not only does my no votes continue to increase at a worrying pace compared to my yeses, but some people decide to go out of the way to put you down for even working on something. I’ve had some commentators say things like “congrats you learned how to put cubes and squares on a screen thumbs down”, or “This took 10 months of development? Are you kidding me?”. Whilst harsh, they don’t compare to one person making a group of games called “The trash of Greenlight” where he’ll sort through the trash of greenlight so you don’t have to. In every instance of these comments I think the end commentator forgets that there’s a person behind this project, someone who is currently doing this all in his spare time whilst also working a 9-5 job and writing reviews at GamrReview. It hurts, but I’ve also had a lot of positive comments, so I must push through and ignore the haters. how can I improve this and hopefully get less haters? The trailer needs to be redone so badly, I feel it’s the thing people watch and then instantly judge the game on.

Over the coming days, and hopefully by the end of this weekend I should have a second test of the game available, one that will actually increase the speed of the stage on harder levels, as well as adding 3 additional levels for randomisation (rather than the obstacles appearing all in the same stages, so one stage can be seen as a practice stage and another the real test of skill).

Thanks for keeping updated with Twixel!

Dan