Drawing of the Last Breath - post mortem

It's been quite a while since I did one of these long-form blog posts, but after the launch of my latest game there were some thoughts mulling around that needed to be aired out, with a little bit more room to breathe than they would get in a Twitter post or even thread.

I recently released a new game: Drawing of the Last Breath. 

• It's a fan project and I don't own the IP; consequently, people can play it for FREE
• Setting:
• Main character K'Thriss Drow'b (portrayed by Kris Straub of Local58, Broodhollow, and Chainsawsuit fame (amongst others ))
• story beats taken from the DnD podcast Acquisitions Incorporated: the "C" Team
• mostly set in the Underdark of Faerûn
• The game was my first bigger, multi-month project in Godot Engine
• Players navigate platforms while dealing with enemies in a dynamic way
• Rich lore through item descriptions and environment
• Small scope but various tools to approach situations
• Meaningful collectibles with lore and base for unlocking spells and abilities
• Unlockable speedrun/timed mode when beating the game

Building interest for a game difficult to describe

• 2D action platformer
• twin-stick combat (targeting spells with right stick)
• puzzle elements (putting the right collectibles together to unlock abilities)
• story-rich through lore

A video showing this puzzle element was the first "reveal" for the game (not counting a hidden tweet). This minute-and-a-half video took me ten minutes at most to capture and upload. It got shared by Kris Straub, gathered nearly 80 likes, and got a dozen retweets. I was stoked, that seemed like a good foundation to build some momentum.

Closer to the release I did a narrative teaser, with some of the audio from the show thrown in. I spent a few hours editing it to get it just right. It gathered 11 retweets but got only 30 likes. Huh. So the gameplay was more enticing. Or was it the newness factor?

Despite the heavy crunch towards the end (9-20h30 evolved into 8-22h), and a one day delay because of issues with saving the game on the release version*, the game came out with little technical compromise for the vision I had. 

Oof

Sharing the release of the game on Twitter, I got that coveted retweet by Kris, but despite that "signal boost" it ended up gathering 11 retweets in total and only 31 likes. I had expected a multiplication of the original teaser, but instead got a fraction.

Now, these raw numbers and retweets all hide some of the work that went into them. I don't have many followers 160ish and so rarely get much traction on anything. When I tweet something that I think deserves some extra attention, I try to post it on some relevant discord and reddit pages as well. 

I posted in more channels for the second and third tweet than the first. However, I did not tag anyone in the first tweet, where I did tag in the second and third (Kris Straub and Jerry Holkins). For the first, it was actually someone else who tagged Kris in (after asking me if she could do so). So perhaps "the algorithm" found the second and third too obnoxious because of it? Or tagging doesn't work that well unless you have a certain number of followers? (On the other hand, it's somewhat amazing that you can directly talk to your inspirations at all this way on Twitter)

The numbers of the downloads of the game itself were also less than anticipated. Just thirty downloads for the first three days. I had expected... well I don't know exactly, but more. My wife made a new website and added the option to subscribe to a newsletter, but as you would expect thirty downloads do not get you (m)any newsletter subscriptions.

The numbers were disappointing. I had hoped to build some momentum towards the games I make in general, generate some fan interest that might help any Kickstarters or other crowd funding to gain traction; but these numbers told me I failed with that attempt this time. Not the first failure in my game dev career. But in the end, in the world of 2020 more than ever, I need this dream to keep me sane. So what else can I do but continue.

So I decided to backtrack a bit and see if I could learn anything. To change this "failure" into a growing experience. An especially apt exercise for this game (play it to find out why). After all, it's through making mistakes that we learn. 

What was my intention?

• Make a game for people interested in the "C" Team
• Illustrate some of the existential meandering of K'Thriss and their AGILE-satire approach of life
• A game for gamers, so it needs to have challenge or they'll get bored
• Trying out something new

I made this game for people like me. People who have been playing lots of video games. After all, I thought, the "C" Team crowd is a subsection of the Penny Arcade crowd and so they all play a lot of video games and are fluent in videogame mechanics.

What went right

I finished the game nearly on time (only 1 day delay on 5 month development time), with most of the scope in place. I am very happy/excited with the actual game itself and feel like my skills have grown, and I've already got a ton of ideas for how to build on this.

What went wrong

What I have come to realize more and more is that not all of these fans come from Penny Arcade first.** Not all of them have a lot of gaming experience or are fluent in videogame mechanics. Most of them have no controller for their pc and so use a keyboard for input. At the same time, I added keyboard controls as an afterthought.

So the game was too challenging and on top of that people were playing in hard mode.

So there was a mismatch

My expected target audience:

• Good game mechanic fluency
• Likes a challenge or will not stay interested
• Uses a controller; a keyboard is for those looking for more challenge

The people most interested in the game however:

• Rarely play video games (sometimes only 1-2 games prior to this one)
• Are looking first for story, challenge is more of an obstacle to overcome
• Have had no need or want to invest in a controller, since their PC is rarely a gaming device

Oof. Some time before the release I had already come to the realization that it was ironic that I had matched K'Thriss character with action platforming, since they are conceptually the most removed from it. Any of the three others would have been a more logical choice. But K'Thriss is my favorite, so they were picked, along with their interesting lore. But the mismatch would probably have been the same had I picked another character. This fan base is more separate from the PA one than I had expected, more diverse certainly, but also less videogame-focused than I thought. Tabletop and board game certainly, videogame seemingly less.

I tried to fix the mismatch with a video giving some tips.

But that was a band aid, not a solution. When you are not looking for challenge but story, these difficulties are just frustrations. Besides this video did not get any traction so didn't solve anything.

Once I understood this, I simply went back to the game and adjusted some of the challenges to make them a bit more doable for people playing on keyboard (yes, that does mean that the game is a bit different when playing with a controller). 

Alternatives

But what about people who just like action platformers? People waiting for the next Hollow Knight with some time to kill. Well, they might be turned off by the puzzle elements, and the focus on this aloof character; the dialogue audio might still be too much for them (had some feedback that said as much) because it makes too little sense without knowledge of the source. And it's not a pure action platformer, the jumps are deliberately a bit floaty to give more time to aim (since might also be aiming a spell at the same time) and also because I just liked it better for K'Thriss. They probably also don't see much allure in the trailers I made, since they don't show much of the core gameplay.

Not the greatest timing

When PAX Online was announced I soon took it as the deadline for my project. It gave some focus and a goal to work towards; and I imagined it as giving back to the community I like so much. At the moment however, I judge that most of the target audience lives in the US and during PAX Online already had a lot of content to watch live and stuff to do. They are too busy to spend time on this game. 

More importantly, PAX Online felt best when it triggered those feelings of togetherness and connection that physical PAXes offer. Of meeting people you share interests with but live far away from. A single-player game played at home doesn't trigger the right kind of nostalgia and offers too little social interaction.

I tried resharing, but of course, the game is by now old news, doesn't get any new retweets and quickly disappears from timelines. Still, I know that marketing is hard work, and I have a some ideas to get people interested in what the game offers for a few more posts; you only need one to go viral

Lessons learned

So, enough of this slow-motion car wreck. How do I do better next time? Well, I don't know. But I can take some educated guess:

• Ask, don't presume: I'm trying to gather some data from my target audience, which for my commercial game will be different
• Make it easier: I'm striving to implement a difficulty setting for the next game, that way I don't need to make the compromise decision but can hopefully give the player some control over how much challenge they want with their story (adding an easy but also a hard mode); this might also play a role in how tutorial pop-ups work
• Controls: personally, I really liked what gameplay I achieved in the game, so I want to keep that and build on it (though probably jumping will be snappier), but I need to think more about how to make the game as playable for those playing on the keyboard and perhaps not familiar with it
• Try to find new approaches to gain visibility (I've had vlogging suggested to me; it might work better than my streaming attempt, because of the magic of editing)
• The next game will have an original story; this will make it easier to manage player onboarding for the story, as everyone starts at roughly the same spot

*Godot devs: first copy save files to user:// from res:// or you won't be able to change the files

** Around the "C" Team grew a welcoming, joyous fan base that often shows its creativity, from manga style background stories to rap and music to gorgeous fan drawings by people who also work on Magic The Gathering. Even video game wise, I was not the first.