Warp Is Released!

I have a weird feeling this week. I finally published a game. To the general public. Granted, I did not do much marketing (none at all to be honest), do not expect anybody else apart from friends and family to glance at it and despite having putting it up in the “pay what you want” category I expect no sales whatsoever. But it is mine, and I managed to do it and it is the most polished thing I have ever done. Massive thanks have to go to SSM for providing the music, to my girlfriend for testing it and testing it endlessly with me late at night and having the patience of waiting for me to interrupt the playing and logging the bug (or even fixing it) like a good boy. I would also like to thank JRRG, since he also listened endlessly to rants about what to put in and what to leave out of the game, even though in the end I did not have the time nor the energy to implement the features he requested (sorry!).

Looking back on making the game, there are many things I could have done better. I procrastrinated way too long on adding the main feature that would have really added to the solo play, which was a vs AI mode. I started doing the bits that I knew how to do, and which arguably were very needed for the game: designing the ship models, tunnel generation and tweaking so that it felt difficult but fair, working on the different powers, etc. By the time I felt like starting work on the AI I got infected with COVID and was relatively burnt out by the project itself, and it felt a lot like a chore rather than something cool to add to the project.

The weirdest thing is that I really wanted to add AI. It was a good challenge, a cool thing that would have been interesting enough to code and would have been flashy to see. The problem I found in this game is not that the last bits were the bits that I did not want to do because they were tedious and boring, but I was getting overwhelmed even by the tiniest things that I actually enjoyed, like making the sound effects or composing additional tracks. It had never happenned to me, and if I hadn’t already a couple of projects in the back of my head I would think that this is the end of my hobbyist gamedev career.

So, in summary, the first week has been exactly as expected. I sent the game around to my friends, put a tweet linking to it and you can count the downloads with your fingers. But it is going to stay there for a long time while I add other projects, and hopefully get some love as people stroll by the page. Go do so now!