Happy Birthday, Zeepkist!
One year ago, on my own 24th birthday, I launched Zeepkist on Steam. Version 1, Patch 0.
A lot has changed since then!
Zeepkist launched with about 130 blocks and about 60 different materials. When the next update goes live those numbers will have gone up to well over 1100 blocks and 130 materials.
We had 18 different zeepkists and hats. These days we have (off the top of my head) over 60 of each.
We had 24 official adventure levels and the end-of-race GUI has changed once or twice since.
Most importantly, Zeepkist had no Steam Workshop, no Online Multiplayer, and we used to share our levels in zip files in the Discord!
Needless to say, Zeepkist has come a long way already. And I’m very excited to see what the future will bring!
To celebrate all this I wanted to write this short little blog post to reflect on the past year and share some thoughts. And while we’re here, I also wanted to share a rough roadmap for the next bunch of time.
Zeepkist Origins
So in case anyone from the future is reading this, Zeepkist launched more-or-less a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.
The year prior, I was studying film in Brussels. I lived in a big student house with a lot of friends and days not spent burning out over homework I spent hanging around the city and having parties all over the place. Zeepkist at this point was no more than a fun hobby project.
Life, generally, was pretty good. The only issue was that I really was burning out over homework. I was in my final year of film school, and film school was hard work, and even if I graduated, the film industry itself would involve just as much (if not more) crunch than I was already experiencing. I was, at that time, coming to the realization that becoming a filmmaker was very much not for me.
But before I could figure out what I was going to do instead, the pandemic hit.
Internships got cancelled, student films got cancelled, and over the course of half a year my diploma was basically handed to me on a silver platter. All of the lockdowns and whatever weren’t fun by a long shot, but it did save me from burning myself out even further. And what it also did was give me a lot of time by myself with nothing else to do than work on my little fun hobby project: Zeepkist.
Hashtag Yolo Indie Life (2020)
And with that I decided that I was going to become a game developer for real. No more messing around, I was going to put Zeepkist on Steam and make a ton of money in the process.
(Spoilers: so far, only the first part of that came true)
I tried getting in touch with some publishers, even had some talks with one, but eventually none of that worked out. I settled for launching Zeepkist independently instead.
In the summer, I moved out of my student house and back in with my parents in the Netherlands. They had a room in the back of their garage where I could set up shop, and so I got to work.
The first order of business was ripping out the spaghetti-coded level editor and building a new one from scratch:
In September I began work on proper materials and volumetric lighting:
November was almost entirely spent (wasted) on trying to mitigate a very annoying Unity physics bug where zeepkists would completely explode when colliding with an edge between two different blocks.
I managed to fix it for about 98% of the time and I’m still not entirely happy with it and it’s still causing some issues that I’d like to fix one day.
It was a dark month, and also the origin of that one weird statue that says “Nov 26, 2020”.
In December I got to building a bunch of adventure levels and began polishing up for a January 28 launch.
I only thought it fitting to launch on my own birthday. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.
Launch and The Rest of It (2021)
Early 2020 was all about burning out over film school. Likewise, early 2021 was all about burning out over launching Zeepkist and its potential success.
The build-up to launch was filled with emailing Youtubers and press, photoshopping marketing material, writing blurbs and descriptions and text, all the meanwhile polishing up Zeepkist and making sure it passed Steam cert (which also almost didn’t happen in time).
It was a very very busy time.
Top Gear NL and Power Unlimited wrote about me on their website! Twitch streamer and Trackmania superstar Riolu loved what he saw and wanted to play Zeepkist when it came out! Which he did! And it was great! (Before some Trackmania drama happened rip)
And then came time to launch!
I spent most of that day preparing all Steam news posts and Twitter announcements, and then most of the evening hanging around on the Discord watching the reactions roll in.
Everyone was loving Zeepkist, and I was finally a proper game developer.
And then came the rest of everything.
In February I was hard at work on the construction update! And in March I was working on a medals system.
In May I launched the Steam Workshop update, which had taken me about two months of development.
I spent some time making a bunch of random content, and then in July I decided to jump into the deep end and start work on Online Multiplayer.
It took me until the end of August to announce it, and then it took the rest of the year until the beginning of November to actually release it.
(Don’t let anyone tell you game development isn’t an insane amount of work)
The rest is very recent history. I’m still working on the new terrain blocks update (more on that later).
Health Considerations & Personal Life
When I first decided to put Zeepkist on Steam I’d imagined I’d make enough money to at least move out of my parents place.
That never happened.
The reality of game development is that it’s pretty hard to make money. We’re in a volatile era of games monetization, the ground is shifting under out feet, and on top of that we all have to contend with a HUGE amount of alternative entertainment options.
This weighs heavily on the mind. And with Zeepkist being my only source of income, money was a big source of anxiety throughout 2021.
On top of that, the pandemic was still going on AND I’d moved from my party-friends-packed student city back to my hometown where most of my old contacts had lost touch.
Adding everything up, 2021 wasn’t great on the “fun good times” front.
To alleviate this, I recently decided to get a part-time day job, to pay some bills, decouple the success of Zeepkist to my personal financial situation, and to get some more social interaction going.
And it’s great! I’ve got far less anxiety than I used to, I’m making a bit of money on the side, and in general I feel nicer and more relaxed. So that’s a good thing!
The flip-side is that I’ve got less time to work on Zeepkist, and that translates to a slower update schedule. It’s not ideal, but in the end mental health always comes first. And in any case, I’m still committed to working on Zeepkist and there’s still a ton of content I’ve got planned.
So that’s how things are going on the personal front.
Now for the roadmap!
Roadmap
I am very bad at making time estimates. So we’re not going to be getting any of those. And also I’m not planning TOO far ahead into the future, because things along the way might change.
But I do have some actual plans for the near future!
1: Zeepkist Version 8: The Terrain Update
The terrain update is going to be all about adding (you guessed it) a TON of terrain pieces to Zeepkist, allowing people to quickly and easily decorate their levels beyond pillars and weird square blocks.
I recently finished adding 720 new terrain blocks in 24 sets, and I’m now going to move on to a bunch of other blocks that need adding. Vertical rock faces, horizontal rock plates, some bridge blocks, maybe some extra trees.
I want Zeepkist to look real pretty soon!
Then I’ll need to code some extra features, fix some small bugs, and build a couple more adventure levels.
In any case, we’re more than halfway!
2: Zeepkist Version 9: The Settings Update
Zeepkist Version 9 is going to receive a complete overhaul of the settings menu. I want to give people full control over their Zeepkist experience.
The plan is regular old settings for Graphics, Display, Sound, that sort of thing. But also key rebinding & controller options such as deadzones.
I also want to decouple the options from the main menu, and allow it to be accessed in game as well.
Another fun thing to add in this update would be custom “horns” for in online multiplayer. That would mesh well with the key rebinding & would allow for more DLC monetization.
3: DLC
I intend to make a lot of cheap cosmetic DLC for Zeepkist. Special themed zeepkists and hats and that sort of thing.
I’m undecided on the theme of the first DLC, as well as when it might launch.
I don’t like the concept of DLC, but I do think DLC will be vital in making Zeepkist pay my bills. I still intend to move out of my parents’ house someday, and without more money that’s not happening.
In any case, DLC will always be cosmetic only and I won’t be locking essential gameplay features behind it!
4: The Great Big Zeepkist Demo
In order to attract more people to Zeepkist I also intend to make a free Demo build of Zeepkist. It should feature a couple of adventure levels for people to get a taste of what Zeepkist is all about, and maybe convince them to buy it!
This shouldn’t be too hard to do. But I’d like to wait for Version 9 to come out, so I can include the new and improved settings menu in the demo.
I don’t have any hard plans for what I’ll be doing after that. I’ve got many ideas: Replay System, Global Leaderboards, Wings & Rocket Boosters, Water Physics, etc etc. But I’m going to wait and see a bit more before planning the next set of updates!
Happy Zeepkisting!
And with that we’ve come to end of my thoughts and reflections on Zeepkist, life, and game development! I hope it wasn’t too much of a mess of thoughts and you enjoyed reading through it!
I’ve turned 25 years old today and I wonder what 2022 is going to bring us.
If you hop into Zeepkist today you’ll get an exclusive Birthday achievement with complimentary hat!
Tell your friends about Zeepkist! <3