Press for “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth”

So “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” will finish it’s Kickstarter campaign in about a week. It only received a few backers in the last couple of weeks, one of which was especially generous. Overall, it still looks unlikely that it will lead to a successful funding.

It’s strange… my previous Kickstarter campaign got three times as many backers, despite even less press and an obvious lack of quality and polish. Many of those original backers were the sort of people to back hundreds of projects… maybe this is a sign that Kickstarter fans are finally starting to get wary about giving money to people after not receiving their dues from past projects. Or maybe they were hesitant that I made an entirely new game when the first Kickstarter failed, even though the two are ultimately very similar. Most likely, I’ll say that August is one of the worst times to run a campaign, perhaps because people are still reeling or gone from those expensive, time-consuming vacations. I won’t say it’s all entirely because of the game’s quality to keep myself sane, and also because it actually received more praise than anything I’ve shown before. Anyway, I’ll let it finish, but it’s disappointing that it’ll leave yet another black mark on my game, my studio, and my name. And it helps me feel better if it doesn’t support additional languages or features, since no one would care (maybe I’m being cynical here, but unless I ever sell more than a dozen copies, I’ll assume it true).

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“Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” – Development Progress for Hand-Drawn 3D Indie Game

It’s been a long time since I did a blog post. Which, really, is how it should be, I made way too many posts before. Again, this is because I am very busy finishing “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” which I planned for completion in August (next month).

It’s been a bit over 30 days since the hand-drawn 3D puzzle platformer has been on Steam Greenlight. It’s made some progress, although the biggest jumps it makes to the top 100 games comes every two weeks when Steam greenlight’s a giant batch of games. It’s nice to get those popular games, some of which have been there for a long time, out of the way, but it’s not exactly how I hoped to get my game passed. And I’m still confused as to exactly how Steam compares games to be in the “top 100,” as I expect it isn’t just number of visitors or number of “up” votes. Anywho, if you haven’t yet given the page a look, progress has slowed to a crawl, and I’d appreciate a visitor and a vote, either yes or no: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=268645572

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Development Continues… Unity 3D Textures For “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth”

I haven’t made a post in a long time. Don’t worry, I’m not dead. I’m just really focused on development for “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” my hand-drawn 3D puzzle platformer, the first true hand-drawn 3D game of its kind. So a lack of posts this month is a good thing.

I actually spent most of this month still working on “Drew” ‘s animation. I was hoping I was mostly done in May, but part of the game is that you slowly regain Drew’s color as you progress through the levels. I’m talking adding color to each PNG file one at a time, now giving me over 8,000 unique PNG textures (please stop laughing). It’s a shame it took so long, especially since I still haven’t animated a planned idle animation for her, and I still haven’t animated a second “guide” character planned. But I have done more than enough to at least focus on the levels, which I should really focus on this week, just to see if it’s still possible for me to finish this for an August release (I still think it’s possible, but I’m really cutting it close).

Drew at the beginning and end of "Drew and the Floating Labyrinth"

Drew at the beginning and end of “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth”

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IndieE3: An Early Review

What is IndiE3?

Most people already know what E3 is: one of the largest video game advertising outlets in the world. They show a variety of AAA and indie games, most of which from the biggest companies and publishers in the world. But what about the rest of the indie community? There are thousands desperately trying to find their place to shine, most of which actually deserve it with great games worth playing. But as expensive and limited in time as E3 is, it feels exclusive against these people.

And so, IndiE3 was born in 2014, days before E3 began, through a couple comments on Twitter. It blew up into a (somewhat) huge event, with hundreds of indie games on show, dozens of panels by fans and professionals on a variety of topics, and over a thousand people tuning in to the live streams. It was a revolution, and one indie gamers and devs have been waiting for a long time.

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