Welcome to the first entry in Ember’s journal, our monthly devlog for updates about all things Ember and Bad Plan. If you like what you see or have any questions please leave a comment below as we’d love to hear from you - it really keeps us going!
Since we just launched our Steam page we don’t have anything for you now, but in the interest of transparency we aim to provide updates on just how many wishlists we have gathered each month. If you don’t know, wishlists are super important for indie games as they show the audience’s interest. Not only do they help us predict possible sales on release, they can be great material to get interest from publishers, investors, and grant funding bodies. We will also share data on the game’s ‘hype’ on Steam, according to the (excellent) GameDiscoverCo hype chart. All of this is just to let you know how things are tracking for the game: our goal is 7K wishlists for release, and thanks for helping us get there!
Here will update you on happenings across all our socials, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, itch.io and Game Jolt. We started most of these only a few months ago so they are still growing, but we hope for it to be a great place to reach a wider audience and community. If you want to join us on any of these sites scroll down and click through on any of the links.
Throughout October we are posting a fun series on YouTube shorts where we unboxed a horror-themed advent calendar; you can check it out from the first entry: https://youtube.com/shorts/9hLR3rbTd4o?feature=share
Our first Announcement Trailer has been tracking well on YouTube, with nearly 5K views; 84 likes (96.6 likes vs. dislikes) and 33 comments. If you haven’t caught it yet, here it is:
https://youtu.be/tBQH6OAE0Cw
And we love our our full Gameplay Trailer which we launched with the Steam page too:
If you’re not across the development of the game, Dan started it about 12 months ago all on his own, and taught himself everything he needed to know to get the prototype running (which you can play at https://badplanstudios.itch.io/end-of-ember). Problem was, he’s not a trained programmer, so we were left with a pretty bad case of spaghetti code. He got Eli in to help him and they worked together to finalise the build for AVCon at the end of June. Chad then came along to help with production and business stuff and they formed Bad Plan Studios in June 2024.
After AVCon, Eli started getting PTSD and a pretty bad twitch in his eye when we suggested working on the prototype, so we shelved it and started an entirely new project. This felt like a big step backward (especially for Dan, lol) but it was necessary to ensure the code base had a proper architecture and Eli understood how everything was done, and then it could be scaled up to include the whole vision that Dan has in mind. So we are still working towards the goal of having the new project at the same content level as the prototype, but we are hoping to be there some time in the beginning of next year. Stay tuned!
Not much to report here: Dan and Chad attended Melbourne International Games week in October and had a great time mingling with other industry folks and playing games at PAX. Eli has been busy building a pool, celebrating his Buck’s weekend in Melbourne, and preparing for his wedding in November. And we’ve all been doing the Dadly thing, caring for the little crotch goblins.
Thanks for reading, peace out and see you at the next one!
Love
Chad, Dan and Eli