This week has been an incredibly busy week. As well as an incredibly hot one – the UK (and most of Europe) had a massive heatwave which made things fairly unpleasant alas. But still, the game development must carry on. The focus of this week has been two fold, preparation for the Kickstarter, as well as putting together a Steam page for Fringe Planet.

Kickstarter

This has been the primary thrust of work this week. The initial draft of the text is in place, and all the rewards have been drawn up. I’ve been getting some amazing feedback from both game developers and regular backers about the this Kickstarter draft and the rewards that I’ve drawn up. I’ll be thanking you all personally after the KS has launched, but every bit of feedback is incredibly handy and very much appreciated.

It’s amazing what another pair (or group) of eyes can bring to a campaign. There is still plenty more work to go. I’ve got my very talented artist friend (who created the Fringe Planet logo) working on various graphics for it, some of which have been delivered, some of which still need to be badly drawn out by me before being sent to him.

Unfortunately, the procedural face generation I was working on last week won’t be ready in time to feature in the Kickstarter, but it is something I will be talking about a lot more after the campaign (mostly because it is incredible cool). But I will be working with some static textures to give a final impression of what this system will produce for the KS.

I’ve also been working on story boarding the main KS video – which will focus on gameplay, but will also feature my dulcet tones talking about Fringe Planet and development in general. Recording of this video will be the main thrust of next week, along with getting all the graphics and screenshots in place.

Steam

Excitingly, also this week, I’ve submitted a Steam store page for Fringe Planet. It is very bare bones at the moment, but the initial goal of the page is to start to collect wishlists. It was an incredibly awesome moment actually seeing all the Fringe Planet information on the Steam store. I’ve spent many hours in Steam (as I’m sure many, many readers have) – looking at games, reviewing and wishlisting. Seeing the Fringe Planet logo inside the familiar Steam user interface was both an incredibly exciting moment, as well as a very surreal one. The page is currently under review by Steam and once approved I’ll edit this box just below to include the final link. [Edit: edited!]

I know that to get on the Steam store all you need is a commercial bank account, a proper company and to pay a fee, but it still feels like a huge achievement to me (I’m still giddy about it many days later!). It’s feeling like a year and half of work is finally starting to come to fruition!

Other news

Not much to report on the development front. But a few exciting things are happening behind the scenes. I’ve had another couple of interested parties approach me about Fringe Planet, nothing concrete and things are still very much in early stages of talks, but we shall see what will happen on that front. I’ve also been approached by Game Dev Loadout and have been asked to appear on their podcast. Which is very much a first for me. I am incredibly excited about it. The recording will be happening on Monday, and with so many fantastic gamedevs who have already featured on it, it’s quite the honour!

There is a lot more to read about Fringe Planet… why not try:

• The oncoming storm – Dev Blog 57
• Kickstarter thoughts – Dev Blog 59
• There is something emerging from The Void – Dev Blog 80