Developing a game in 30 Days, Releasing it in hopefully less than 60 Days — A transparent story (aka a Tale of self-induced Burnout)
Overview
Part 1: The first Week
Part 2: The Second Week
Part 3: The Third Week
Part 4: The Fourth Week
Part 5: The Fifth Week
Part 6: Week Six & Seven
Hey there gamedevs and players!
Dennis and Michael here from Deck13. Dennis also has its own company called A Grumpy Fox (just cause he always wanted to develop a game developed by a grumpy fox. Don’t even try to understand that).
Dennis pitched me (Yep, Michael currently writing) a week ago his idea: develop and release a game in 30 days. He is working on his main game called Lunistice as well but somehow has a creative breakdown and needed some fresh ideas. Also for some reason he wanted to go through the full Unity pipeline to refresh his knowledge. And since we both work in the Publishing part of Deck13, Deck13 Spotlight, his idea was to make use of the ressources we have to actually make it a commercial release. Since he is developing the game, he can’t be the Product Manager for the game. Which is why I now have to manage yet another project. Thanks. I guess.
Anyways. The idea got a small update: Finish it in 30 days. And release it afterwards, number of days unknown. Due to console submissions. They take some time. And if we wanted to go for one console only as well, we’d need to start the certification process right now already. With no game at all. And we can’t yet travel through time.
But how to market a game which has no assets available yet? Which will be done in 30 days? Well. We had this idea to share the development story in realtime (more or less. I don’t know what Dennis will do, but I won’t update this article on weekends. Or maybe I will. Heck, we’ll see).
The rules are simple:
- Dennis streams the development live on Twitch every evening (German time. In German. Sorry) and I have to come up with the marketing part.
- We share everything whenever possible. That means if you are a game developer yourself: Yes, we’ll share wishlist numbers, what we did each day, our marketing actions, sales numbers. Still have to figure out how far we can go so that we don’t violate any NDAs.
- The game is (will be? I’m getting confused…) a 3D Plattformer. And the price will be 2.99$. And The community can help shaping it up.
- Buying assets is allowed (e.g. Skyboxes. some 3D Models. The Soundtrack)
- 30 Days! 30 DAYS DENNIS! I bet a Snickers that it will take a few days longer lol.
- This article will be updated. So keep it bookmarked if you are interested.
- We will also share post launch marketing actions and discounts etc.
- Uhm… dunno. Maybe I’ll add a few rules later on.
Let’s go!
Last Week
What happened last week: Dennis pitched the idea. And asked me if we could release the game via Spotlight. I said “Uhm, okay, whatever”. I thought he’d be joking. Well.
He also pitched it to our Boss Mathiaswho said yes. I should add that I currently am responsible for 6 projects. Now 7. Thank you Dennis.
Day 1
Dennis and me met in the office where he pitched the idea again. A roughly 2 hour long 3D Plattformer. He also came up with the idea to make it speedrunable (is that even a word?). His idea was to make it a short game for a low price and put a few hundred bucks as prices for people who upload their runs to Speedrun.com. To get some visibility. And I was already thinking about the discount strategy for the game on the Switch.
In the evening Dennis announced the project via his own community and stream (I should add he is also a Twitch Streamer. That’s also why the full development can be followed live). In the first stream he used his community to create a rough game design and to chose a name for the game. I did not watch the stream.
Streamlink: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1091534507
Day 2
Dennis sent me the name ideas via Slack. Until then I still thought it’d be a joke. And he asked me if I could register the game with Nintendo and Steam already (which reminds me: I need to get in touch with GOG as well…). But in first place he asked me to pick from three names:
- Lunistice: Eversleep
- Eversleep: A Lunistice Story
- Eversleep: Lunistice Gaiden
I picked the 3rd one.
I picked the name. Yay. And I registered the products.
In the evening on Stream the character controller was nearly finished. A scene manager was created to load levels. Collectibles were modled and included. Some placeholder enemies were added. The Unity input system was replaced with Rewired. Did cost Dennis 50$ so far. And, the most important thing: A speedrun timer is already working. Marketing Strategy might actually work…
Streamlink: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1092569633
Day 3
Today we discussed the marketing stuff. Dennis is singing “heeeeelp, it’s day 3 of 30…. (the 30 was pronounced like thirtyyyyyyyy), why did I just dooo thisssss” while I’m writing these words. We were discussing possible IMGUR posts once the game is out. And reddit. And Medium. And how we want to announce all this.
We’ll just share it via Twitter for now as it seems. We don’t have any assets. So we can’t announce it to the press. Probably our main audience in the beginning will be gamedevs as they are the only ones who might be interested in this story. But that might still help. I needed to figure out if I could edit Medium articles after they are live. Turns out that’s possible. Small victory for me. Tweet will go live in about 45 minutes from now (it’s 2:23PM here). Still have no idea what to write. Dennis said that he’d share stuff via his gamedev Twitter as well. Interesting times ahead.
Update: Tweets are out.
https://twitter.com/Deck13Spotlight/status/1417829278654345220
https://twitter.com/AGrumpyFox/status/1417827488131133445
3:47 PM: A colleague of our main team just came in and said “I love that idea. It’s like doing a gamejam but completely go nuts and say “fuck it, I wanna die””. Thanks Björn.
Evening: Dennis continued working on the game. First real level assets were created. A first level was blocked out and tested. And yep, the character does the Naruto run.
Streamlink: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1093616570
Day 4
Thinking about the product pages right now. It’s around noon. Should I write a typical text describing the game or put the focus on the development of the story? I’ll probably go with the later one as it is more interesting compared to “Oh yeah you can jump around through levels”. I mean, sure, it has a story. But let’s face it: We could also just explain how the game was created and what the intention is. I’m a fan of being honest.
Just checked out a few examples where this approach was used. Undertale does it quite well. Hm.
Afternoon Update: So, I started working on the Steampage. Not yet on the description. But an interesting option most people don’t really use for marketing are the system specs.
So, dear developers: Make use of this wisely. Probably you won’t sell a copy due to this. But maybe you will. Humor is always an option and while most people never will take a look at the specs (let’s be honest, they hardly ever scroll down that far), someone might do it. And if you are lucky and you have some fun stuff hidden there, they might take a screenshot and share it on reddit. Or imgur. Or… uhm… TikTok I guess.
Evening: Dennis sent me a picture of the first build running on the Switch.
Truth is: He slacked me that the game is already running 60FPS on 1080p. And I asked him pics or it didn’t happen. He complained that he only has two hands. I said I just hear someone crying and not working. He sent me the pic.
General Advice: Make sure, if you can, to test out builds early on. This will save you a lot of time later on.
On Stream Dennis also got a Keyart from the community! (Thank you chosenvowels). We did not expect this. We even contacted our mothership, Focus Home Interactive, to see if they had some capacities. And Dennis crawled through Fiverr.
More level blocking took place. Also the “ability” to fall off edges was implemented. Well. No. It wasn’t. Dennis started to implement it. But failed. Right now you can still walk on walls. But the animations for falling are in if I understood the video correctly.
Day 5
I need to remind Dennis to post something tomorrow on Twitter with #ScreenshotSaturday attached. And to link in the first answer to this article. This needs to spread a bit more. And yes, with Screenshot Saturday you usually reach other developers in first place, but there are outlets which are scanning the hashtag by now (e.g. RockPaperShotgun, Kotaku sometimes, Hardcore Gamer etc.). And: Devs might share your shots as well. And they are followed by some fans as well. So while you mostly reach Devs with the initial tweet, its still worth participating every week.
Also we’ll probably create medium article every week and crosslink between the articles. Otherwise this is getting out of control.
First rough iteration of the store text has been done. Haven’t shown it Dennis yet.
Dennis just told me it isn’t a fox but a Tanuki. What the heck is a Tanuki?
Update: Working on the second Medium article now. Will link it here. And yes, we’ll also prepare some fact based overview in the end for those interested in numbers only.
