February was a quieter month after the hectic buildup (and aftermath) of the Alpha 1 launch. The main part of development was fixing bugs that became apparent with the much bigger playerbase (nearly all fixed now) and re-organising the roadmap based on player feedback. By far the most common piece of feedback is that players are desperately missing a way to keep track of all their dwarves through some kind of management screen so that has been bumped up the priority list to the top!
Until yesterday, the amount of exposure generated by the alpha launch was very disappointing. Very few gaming new sites picked up the story (thanks GamingOnLinux!) and most (but not all) youtubers who covered the game previously haven't picked it up again with the alpha release - I assume because there isn't a huge amount of extra content compared to the pre-alpha builds. The revenue brought in by the launch is very little (averaging around 1 sale per day) which should be expected really, especially without any major sites mentioning the game yet. Oh and many more of those sales than I would have expected include a tip, so thank you very much! Things are looking up a little with an article yesterday on Rock, Paper, Shotgun which I think it a tough but fair preview based on how early in development the game still is.
All in all, it's not the boost to development finances I had hoped for. Still, the way I'm developing the game is prepared for that. The Kickstarter funding allowed me to fully focus on development as well as commission new artwork and sound effects for a few months to get the game to Alpha 1, but that has all been used up now. This month I've had to go back to software development contracting full time which does not leave anywhere near as much time for gamedev unfortunately. This is not a permanent situation though, I'll need to continue this way for a short while as I stretched the budget beyond breaking and need to build up more funds. After that I'm planning to split my time into a healthy balance between gamedev and contract work, which should give some good results.
This does not in any way mean development is stopping, I'm fully committed to bringing this game through to completion. I thought I'd explain why things have been a bit slower this month and how I'm tackling it, as I've always been open and honest about the development process. Making indie games is a super tough business, and only the top 1% of titles break out into being a profitable success. I plan to get there eventually, I think where the game is now is still a bit early to find that breakthrough to a bigger audience, so I'll just keep striving forwards until it gets there!
