Games as an art form

The letter of apology / New game, patches announcement for my previous games

Hello, dear friends!

It was a long time since the last patch for Mechanism and even longer for Algotica. Majority of those who played these games and liked them (or disliked but waited for improvements) start to think that I've abandoned my creations. The short answer is 'no'. The long answer lies below…

I’ve decided to make games when I was on my third year of getting bachelor degree. (I was 19 or 20) It was an IT-faculty, but the teaching methods was not very good and also I suddenly found that common programming is boring as hell for me, although I had no difficulties in understanding it. But what I was really interested in is art - in an every possible form. I loved to write music, draw paintings, sculpting… well, everything. In my childhood I thought that I would certainly become a filmmaker. And of course, I loved to spend hours with video-games. It was a summer and me thinking about what I want to do for my life - certainly not be a just-programmer guy. The idea that games are also made by people struck me as a lighting. I’ve spend summer learning some of the game engines (SFML, Unreal, Unity) and decided to stick to Unity (who would know, huh). I spent weeks without even an hour of sleep, learning and creating small prototypes during summer of 2014. I just couldn’t sleep because finally found out that there is a one activity that can include all kinds of art in its essence.



In 9 month I’ve released two finished mobile games on Google Play, fully free - no ads, no transactions. Got in total about two thousand installs, while thought about at least tens of thousands. I was naive indeed. It was kinda disappointing, because even though those games were for mobiles, they actually had an okay graphics, sound and gameplay (At least, I hope so). What is more important - all assets I made myself - from the very first day of this path I’ve decided that I will be doing as much assets on my own as possible, and I still keep this rate high. I think about 95% of all content in my games are my own, usually I take some ambient sounds from free stocks, just because I’m too lazy to go outside and record some wind or leaves rustle. Nevertheless, I lost my fate in mobile games (and mobile games still just uninteresting things for me, except for ones) and decided to focus on PC.

My last year of education - exams, thesis work - all these bullcrap, that distracted me from games making. I thought that I would create a game for a thesis work and that’s it. But the problem with professors is that many of them is too old for games. Most of them think that making games = playing games. While some of my student colleagues were getting applause for making library website (that was made using online web page-generators). I was getting only pressure from academics that there is no place for games in university. But in the end we found a compromise - I should make an educational game and that would be accepted as a thesis. And the Algotica become idea - I was certain that I should make a game about programming, similar to the human-resources machine, but with sweet 3D-graphics and overall cute design. Algotica was very well received on several game conferences and indie cups, get several awards.I thought that I've finally not a newbie now, that I know how to make games. Of course I was wrong. And when I released Algotica, I felt it very well. Tons of bugs and problems. Some of these problems were on game-design side. Algotica was made in year all by myself, but it felt very unpolished. I received a lot of criticism and took it very seriously. After several month I rewrote whole game from scratch, reduced a lot of bugs - game changed a lot, new mechanics, new levels, even a new story. I thought this will be a new start for the game, but the result was very sad - it didn’t impress players at all and now the review score of Algotica is 55% - I understand that criticism, but it kills me nevertheless. Hoping to start develop new free chapters and content for Algotica, I started to feel that I just can’t even stand this game myself - because I've spent so much time with it and want to go further. It like a relationship, like a marriage(I guess), but with Algotica it was a marriage of convenience (it was a thesis work at first, remember?).

https://eo.steamhost.cc/app/593330/

The idea for my next game - Mechanism - was born in my head, and not in others as it was with Algotica. The development was faster this time, and I thought that “NOW I FINALLY UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING”, but harder in a psychological and personal sense. Parent didn’t understand me quite well, they thought that games is just a childish period in my life - and this idea was biting me painfully. Because for me, it was clear - making games is what I want, even if it doesn't give me stable money, because it is even not about money, it’s about revealing yourself. Mechanism was released at summer 2018, also received a lot of criticism, but not as much as Algotica. And most of it was because of poor testing. About 50 bugs were fixed only in a first 12 hours after the release. I see a lot of problems now with Mechanism, I think it has a really powerful story - but I hided it so much and so unprofessional that it might seem that there is no story at all. Some of the game-design decisions were also unclear to players, so that some of them thought that permadeath was a bug (I’ve took out that later), and etc.



https://eo.steamhost.cc/app/645290/

I feel very painful every time I see a constructive bad review, because I am making my games alone, I like this loneliness in a creative process. When you release a game it is like you release you naked mind and soul to the audience. Sometimes audience can say good things, sometimes bad, pleasant and unpleasant. Really hard to handle that, but gives a lot of unusual sensations. Game development became for me a disease - Hypomania growing into mania hysteria. Five month of psychotherapy with pills partially fixed this. This letter of apology is born because of my conscience. Games for me is not just entertainment, it is much more and I want to tell you that even though Algotica and Mechanism are not good as I wanted them to be, I made them with good intentions, without any thought of making garbage. I want to say sorry for all my players. And I want to make an attempt to fix it:

Till the end of the summer I will release a patch for Algotica that fixes all bugs I found till now, and also adds reworked game levels from the original version of Algotica. Also there will be a big patch for Mechanism with new and reworked content and, of course, bug fixes. Hope when these updates come out they will restore your believe in me.

I’m doing this in a hope that you will see that I’m a honest guy without harsh commercial intentions and it’s important for me that you felt good with my games.

But this wall of text is not over yet.
I want to announce my new game - Selfloss. More specific information you can find on the game page. I hope you will support me and if you like, add to your wishlist. Moreover, if you reading this you can try among first the exclusive demo of the game. Add me to you friend list and ask for a link in direct messages. I want to make this game in a different way, I want to make it being close to the audience as much as possible. See this as a new style of game development. I want a direct feedback from each person who has something to say. I am not a corporation, I am just a single human, so there is no sense in hiding development from you.

You can leave all your feedback there or on Steam discussions page.

With this game I will be more careful, more thoughtful, I want it to be something close to every player’s heart. Start this journey of making Selfloss with me.

https://eo.steamhost.cc/app/1086620/