Hey there everybody, Jacob here. A LOT has happened since our last dev log, so let's just get right into the juicy stuff, shall we?
Both the game's new steam page and the game's upcoming kickstarter are now live!
The steam page is here and the kickstarter page is right here! Both got approved the first time I requested it, which is honestly nuts to me. Seriously, when I was trying to get the steam page for the prototype version of the game up (the version ya'll are familiar with), it took 5 attempts. It was hell. Thankfully, things went smooth this time. You're gonna hear me promote these pages and beg ya'll to follow, wishlist, and subscribe to them a lot for a couple of reasons...
These metrics, such as wishlists and kickstarter follows and such, help give me and the rest of the team an idea of how big the launch is going to be. More groundswell means more features for the final release, such as voice acting, more translations, and even more story content on top of the new content we're adding. This is true not only for the kickstarter, but also for the steam page. After hitting certain metrics (10,000 wishlists being the big one) Steam starts showing the game to a LOT more people. Which works out great for everyone. So please, hit every button on these pages. Wishlisting is free. Following the kickstarter is free. So please press the buttons. The future of the project quite literately depends on it.
We also have a casting call on-going for the game's voice acting!
That's right! Depending on how well Escape Velocity's kickstarter goes, the game is going to have VOICE ACTING. Partial voice acting, sure, but all the most important scenes (in my opinion) will be voice acted. We might be able to get full voice acting if we can find a publisher (that's still not going well, lol), but for now, we're focusing on the kickstarter, because that's something we can realistically achieve. If you or anybody you know is interested in trying out for a role, you can scope out the competition/apply here! Check out and see if you can guess who the team is thinking of for each role. ;) Seriously, there is some real talent that has auditioned and maybe even a few names ya'll will recognize...
Raies' CG grind continues!
In addition to the new art of Judith greeting you at the door, another CG of her is in the works. This will likely be her last one for the opening act, with Violet coming up next. Yeah, there's gonna be a LOT more CGs in the first chapter, so get excited. :) Here's a preview on the one Ray is currently working on.
I think the oven mitts are adorable, personally.
About the 500 review goal for the game...
So I did promise I would talk about this more in the last dev log. Essentially, the reason I'm focusing so much on the kickstarter, steam, social media and all that stuff funnels back to one thing: Steam Reviews. It's no secret that having your game on the steam marketplace is costly as a developer (with steam taking around 25% of the total profits your game makes last time I checked). Thankfully, they DO market your game really intensely if it crosses certain thresholds. The first is having over 10,000 wishlists before you launch. The second is...of course...having steam reviews. And I mean a LOT of steam reviews.
Here's some more info on exactly how that works.
TLDR: Once your game hits over 10 reviews, steam essentially knows it's not shovelware and starts showing it to more people. This continues at the 50 and 500 review benchmarks, with 500 reviews putting you in such a high percent of steam's games overall that they do a huge bulk of the marketing on the storefront for you.
For indie games with almost no marketing power like ours, this is a dream come true and the main appeal of the platform...and the most reliable way to secure the means to make more games. So, while the rest of the game's assets are being finished, securing those 500 reviews in the first couple days of the game's official launch is going to be everything. We already know we have a great experience on our hands, but getting people to not only know about it, but also review it, is going to be the main battle. So far with the prototype version, we're only at 176 reviews, so clearly we can't just do what we did last time again and call it a day. So I'm thinking of giving out 1000 review copies of the commercial release to anybody I know is willing to leave a helpful review.
It will be closer to the final release of the game when I give out review copies, but I'm fairly certain I can give them out to anybody. Still, I gotta know they're willing to leave a review in the first place, which is tricky to discern, but reaching out to people that have already left a review on the prototype version is one way I'm thinking about doing that. Steam might not let me do that though. I don't know; this is all just me spitballing anyway, and if anybody has any better ideas to reach that goal (asking Markiplier is not an idea; no influencers have returned my emails), then I'm super open to hear them.
Anywho, that's about all I got for now! I'll give you guys more news as things progress, so until then, stay cool.
Yours and stuck in Florida forever,
Jacob