Unicorn Training Weekend Sales

     It's an early status report but I'm sure some of you are as interested as I am in seeing how well Unicorn Training did on its opening weekend. It's doing better than I expected and my inner flame burns brighter than ever knowing that I have a real chance at being a successful indie developer! I don't see me making enough for a Macbook just yet, but I can expect my first ever payment from Google to come in next month!

Catch some rankings and numbers to satisfy your curiosity below the break.

Press Kit Trouble (It'll Have to Wait)

     I took a look at Pixel Prospector's list of indie dev press kits and starting thinking of ways to organize my game stuff in a professional way as practice for when I try to get big-time game journalists' attention. I thought that using the presskit() program would be as easy to use as Blogger has been for running this website, but it turns out to be more complicated than that and may even cost some money to run over the years. It's basically not something to be handled in the middle of a school week and I'll have to put it off until I have time to look into making a great game press kit.

     Making something nearly as nice as Shovel Knight's on a budget of zero is harder than I thought it would be.

Bugs... Bugs Everywhere...

     The release of Unicorn Training came with the expected nervous waiting for something to go wrong. In this case, many things. Being that I've never made a game this complicated, I had exponentially more bugs post-launch than I'm used to (with games like DragCore). I had some shaky internet access all weekend so there were lots of moments where I wondered what could go wrong next. The feeling disappears when I upload a new patch, allowing me to rest easy with the feeling of having a game that works. Too bad it's not permanent because I know there are some things wrong with the game that can't be changed due to the way certain systems were designed.

Join Yotes Games on Google Groups For Early Access!

     I was inspired by this Gamasutra article to get serious about using Google Groups for public testing. It may not be useful at the moment but having a playtest group / forum ready to go will benefit me in the long run. My upcoming game will be pretty community dependent as I try to make a competitive turn-based RPG. I'll need hundreds of Alpha and Beta testers to get it just right. Having tons of people involved in testing will help out marketing wise too as people spread the word.

     If I ever release a public demo or give out early access codes, it's going to be to people in one of these groups. Yotes Games Exclusive will be for the few I choose to help me find things like game breaking bugs or play through spoiler filled story moments that I don't want the public to see. Yotes Games Playtest will be wide open for anyone to find, share, and post to. This is where I can get feedback on balancing and what people like, dislike, or get confused about. This would be the stable build I push onto YouTubers who want to play an early version of the game.

If you want access to public playtest builds of my future android games, participate in exclusive download code giveaways, or post on a forum that I will read regularly:

Join the Google Group: Yotes Games!