A sunrise over voxel terrain

Nice – Dev Blog 69

Another week draws to a close, and it’s time to reflect on the work this week. It’s been a fairly quiet but very productive one. There has been a big focus for me this week on business development. It’s sometimes hard to balance all the things you need to do as a solo game developer – but it’s very nice when everything works out.

I’ve been gathering a lot of feedback about the art style of Fringe Planet – it’s something that I feel is holding the game back and would love to address. What is nice is when getting feedback from different people is when they say the same things – makes my job easier! One bit of feedback I’ve received consistently is that the game it self doesn’t have a scary look – it’s bright and cheerful looking. So I will be commencing “Operation: Darkening” quite soon, which will be looking into shaders and colour grading to give the game a more ominous feel – after all the peons are trapped in an eldritch dimension and surrounded by unnameable horrors.

An image of Fringe Planet with various filters on it
(one of several mock ups in GIMP being used to A/B test)

Interestingly something which this also touches upon is the conveyor belts.  When I introduced them to the game, the brightly coloured debug particles helped me very quickly tell what was on a belt. But because they are so brightly coloured (and because I’m still using the debug particles) it adds to the anti-ominious vibe.  So these particles are actually quite high on the list of planned changes (though I am debating a toggle option to turn them back on again, it’s handy to see what is on a belt in the distance).

As well as this, I’ve been in discussions with Indietopia Games about the marketing of Fringe Planet. There has been some fantastic strategy meetings, and some very cool ideas exchanged. Everything is still very much in the brain storming stages, but there should be some very cool things happening soon, helping to spread the word of Fringe Planet even further.

I’ve also been working with a solicitor to get some very important paper work sorted. This is incredibly exciting for two main reasons. Firstly, it’s an incredibly sensible and practical thing to do – making sure everything is legal is something that needs to be done by a professional. Secondly, I got to use the phrase “I’ll have my solicitor look into this” during a phone call – which made me feel immensely pleased (I am very easily amused).

Finally, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback about last weeks blog post – a lot of folks who are using the ideas in it to help them work on their social media offering. It’s incredibly cool to know that I’ve helped folks – I will be writing more about Twitter in the future.

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

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