Adarakion Developer Diary: Issue 48

Greetings from the mad house! Well, what a week it’s been! This beta stuff is fun! As most of you will be aware (and for those of you who aren’t, catch up!) RoChain went closed beta last week. We had a good initial response to people wanting to get into the beta and subsequently a great response (and some really good feedback) from those on it.

It’s encouraging to watch people playing your game for the first time and taking the time to come back to the forums to tell us that a) they really like it, and b) offer suggestions on how it could be made even better! We’ve had some really detailed bug reports posted too, most of which I’m pleased to say we have now squashed (bar a couple which we are currently working on). I guess the most encouraging thing for us as a team is that people genuinely seem to like the game (and I quote here from the forums):

“Loving the game to be honest…music and graphics are great…”

“Stupid bloody game, kept me up for an hour AFTER finishing a night feed with my little one.”

“It’s like crack!!”

“looks, sounds and plays great. everything ‘sits’ just right.”

“Yep, I really am that addicted”

Just a selection there – I’ve also been sent various other messages from people to tell me how much they like the game. Like I said to them, it’s SO easy to think that what you have produced is “ok” and just “ok” when you are working on it all the time. The gradual improvements you make to a game are tested a squillion times, so I guess that takes the sheen off things a bit when you play something too much looking out for one small detail!

To sum up (even though we are probably half way through the beta) it’s been a fantastic learning experience for me (and I can probably count all the team in that statement). Bearing in mind this is a small Indy release I feel like we’ve had to be man the forums 24/7 to get the live feedback and keep active so that the people actually playing our game receive the support they sometimes need. It’s been a really wild ride and one that personally I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. I’m really looking forward to finishing off on RoChain and going through all this again with Project Blast!

If anything this has reaffirmed my desire to do this for a living. To quote the chap from the forums “It’s like crack” – and it is. Listening to feedback from people playing the game is really the best feeling in the world – you’ve made something and others are enjoying it – there can’t be anything better than that feeling if you are doing it for a living surely? Oh. Other than the million pound cheque as well of course!

So, what’s next? Well with any luck the next step is to open the beta out a little – ready for official “release” in early September just to further iron out any straggling bugs. So, if you fancy an early play of RoChain then please fire us an email to “beta(at)adarakion dot com” and we will be more than happy to oblige!

Following on from that we can start work on Project Blast! This I’m REALLY looking forward to. The ideas we have in terms of level of quality for Blast! are quite ambitious (albeit achievable) and this (I guess) will be our flagship title – it’s what we are all about and this is going to set the bar for us. A fair bit of planning to do yet, but with the positive reaction we have received on RoChain, it’s certainly spurring us on to bigger and better things with Blast!

Thanks again for being a part of this journey, and welcome to Level 2!