Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #66 (Demo 4 released)

     Now that was a climb. Demo 4 is out there on the web now and it looks like hundreds of people are enjoying it. Feels good taking another step forward, but this mountain is still another year tall. Plans for Demo 5 are written and ready to be executed!

     See what the latest release means for Yotes Games below the break.

   Completed:

• Cleaned Overworld Tiles
• Cleaned Party Management
• Auto-Scaling Stats Menu
• Pony Move Learning List Formatted
• Social Media Campaign Planned (for Steam Greenlight)
• Adjusted Timeline for Demo 5 and Onward
• Bug Fixes
• Planned Improvements and Debugs for Demo 4.5
• Plans for the BYOC Build Next Week
• Shared Moveset Rules with EQD
• Shared Demo 4 Release on EQD
• Started Itch.io Community Page

     Lessons Learned:

• Learned so many things about GDC via Gamasutra.
• Itch.io makes it really easy to manage releasing a PC game. The easiest platform to work with by far.

       I relaxed this weekend to recover from the demo 4 crunch, but strangely, I'm not too shaken up by it. I think I can keep up a similar hectic pace for the rest of the game's development. Still need to have a basic tidy game ready for the BYOC next week so I can get some playtester feedback (and free advertising for the game itself). I've got a game jam coming up sometime in April since it was pushed back due to the Easter holiday weekend.
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   Downloads:

   I'll be keeping a close eye on Itch this week. The download/views chart is super useful for seeing if I need to step marketing up a notch. I wonder how many people are downloading these demos...

    Featured:

Shared on this blog as well as TekkenWolf's Let's Play channel.

     BGP was on Equestria Daily twice this week, which is possibly the biggest audience I have access to. The initial hundreds or thousands that push through there are what makes any video, demo, or blogpost visible to everyone else. Once there is something worth showing to a large crowd, you take it where you think the interested people are. I'm trying to get everyone talking at once during the game's major milestones. It's all about the Thunderclap effect to get things to appear in search/recommended algorithms.

     I really just want to get word out there so that when this game finally hits Steam Greenlight it'll have enough people waiting who want to click that thumbs up button. My indie career will pretty much crash and burn if I don't get 25,000 people on board with this.
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    This game has to be good. I'm determined to make demo 5 the most impressive jump in quality. Bugs need to be squashed here, or they'll affect perception of the game. I also need multiplayer up and running to test out the competitive core and human psychology elements of the game.