#oh and. the fucking mighty doom mobile game.

[skyllion-uwu]

Man I need to actually play Doom

[eirenare]

Möbius Final Fantasy: my experience & my 1st fanart of the game

[SPOILERS]

I remember I downloaded it for the 1st time on my mobile, time ago, and well... Let’s just say the game wouldn’t work properly when it comes about graphics. Seems like my mobile wasn’t good enough for them, so I ended up uninstalling.

Aaaand when time later I found out that Möbius was going out on Steam, well, downloading time, haha.

Didn’t play it much though and I didn’t advance much, until some days ago I decided to pick it up again...

... And now I’m just like, playing it a ton? Loving it so hard?

The gameplay is nice, the music is very good as well, the story is getting more interesting as it advances, and I love the characters so far.

I’ve ended Chapter 2 at the moment and I’m doing other things before I move to Chapter 3 (exploring other areas and getting Sicarius), and I have to say it’s getting VERY interesting... 

WoL (Warrior of Light), Echo, Mog, Garland, Sarah, Vox, the Azure Witch... Every one of them gives me feelings, in a way or another, and they all look pretty interesting.

WoL is a guy with good heart, and he’s also so sassy (and damn if he has reasons to be all sassy, I would be sassy and I would be salty and scared if suddenly I woke up with no memories, somewhere I don’t know, with a strange voice talking to me and another people that’s in the same situation, forced to fight and to follow a prophecy). Not to mention the times when he’s all witty and phylosophical! 

Echo is definitely a snarky, playful thing... But she also has a nice side. And some temper, too. And gods, that moment when she changed her voice freaked me out. I don’t even know if it was something true or if she truly was pretending, as she seemed to do. The fact that it’s said she guides people to its doom by promising them loot and so on it’s both interesting and scary.

I definitely enjoy when WoL and Echo interact, their clashes is something I enjoy a lot seeing!

And Mog... Oh, Mog </3 Rest in peace, sweet little friend.  I cried so much when Mog died, it was a heartbreaking scene, seeing Mog dying and WoL so worried and broken... I’m still not over it. Playing Möbius Final Fantasy without having Mog constantly doing wordplay and bad puns, trying to rhyme... It’s sad.

Garland is an interesting fellow. For what I’ve seen up until now, he’s neither on the good or the bad side, yet he helps and guides WoL while, at the same time, seeming to avoid some things (that one time he threw Mog away because he was talking of a certain part of the prophecy...). His attitude is, how to describe it... He looks like, insensitive, and the fact that Vox seems to want his head (or at least if he gets too close to the temples)... Don’t know. I mean, since Möbius seems to look like kind of a FFI version, or at least carries lots of winks to it, it could either be that his Garland will follow the steps of his FFI “brother”, or not. I have a feeling it could perfectly be either of them in the end, but I’m REALLY hoping that he ends up being a companion for WoL. Also... DAMN, when he took his helmet off. BEAUTIFUL MAN. I was intrigued as to see how he would look under the helmet but held no hopes of ever seeing his face, and then, suddenly, he takes his helmet off. That was awesome~

Also, I kinda ship WoL and Garland *COUGH COUGH* I don’t know if they’ll end up being enemies or not but, at the moment, I just ship them... Also, I call the pairing Woland lol

Sarah, along with Vox, stand in a weird spot to me. Let me just say... They’re SUSPICIOUS AS FUCK.

Sarah has a very delicate voice, maybe a very delicated one, and as much as she seems to be just as delicate, there’s something off about her. When WoL met her after Mog died for the sake of the prophecy, her attitude was just... HELL, it annoyed the crap out of me. Mog was kind and nice, he loved Sarah, and she acted like he was just a mere tool for the prophecy (what’s wrong with you Sarah?), to then shed a tear or two for him as WoL got angry and hit the crystal, suddenly appearing touched by what happened to Mog and about WoL’s feelings. How convenient that her tears calmed down WoL...

And Vox, oh damn. That high and mighty dude just looks as if he’s hiding something, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he and Sarah were the real bad guys, be it one of them Chaos in disguise, or his allies, for example. The same thing I said about Sarah applies to Vox: there’s something off with him. 

In all honesty, I woudln’t be surprise if Sarah and Vox were the bad guys. And if that was to happen, it would be hands down AMAZING. It would be a nice plot twist.

Oh, and also, I just met lately the Azure Witch, and she looks interesting as well, although suspicious as well. So far I like her.

I’m really, REALLY excited to see the story advance! Bad thing that we only have until chapter 4 for now. In Japan they have already chapter 6 and, if I’m not wrong, they’re going to have soon chapter 7. Good thing I didn’t rush chapter 3. Time to take it slow as to not despair waiting for more chapters, haha.

What I thought would be probably a bland story is quickly being filled with doubts, questioning, drama, and suspiciousness... And I think the drama has just started, given the fact that the menu dedicated to info of the game’s story and characters mentions “tragedies” that the Warrior of Light has to beat, if I remember well...

* * * 

Now... Fanart time xD I felt the sudden urge to draw Garland (without helmet) and WoL in chibis, and so, this happened:

I know it’ not the best thing, and in fact, I shouldn’t have drawn the noses, but I’m so used to draw noses, that by the time I noticed I was drawing these noses on the chibis, it was too late x_D

Also, WoL’s hair looks a bit more spiky than it is...

But well, had some fun doing this simple doodle haha.

And this won’t be the last time I draw them, that’s for sure, even if what I’ll probably do will be sketches and doodles.

[gavinbowman]

February?

Ok, well I’ve been off, so I don’t have any progress to share for February. I found a little time to play some games... but I didn’t finish anything. Lots of Fire Emblem Heroes because I had it on hand and I couldn’t sleep or was holding a baby or whatever. I like it, but I’m kind of done and I’m struggling to shake it off. It’s very compelling and sticky. I’d been playing Megaman X and Mighty Switch Force before the baby came along, but I haven’t really been able to return to them yet, my head is too out of it. And just this week I finally managed to grab an NES Classic, so I’d like to make my way through some games on that in the coming months. So expect a few #playmore posts in the next few months as things normalize for me here.

I’m trying to feel my way back into work and I haven’t figured out what I’m going to focus on immediately yet. So that’s a big vague blergh. I think I know, but I have to try, and my sleep deprived brain might not be in the mood.

So what else? We had a baby. She’s fine and great. Struggling to manage both of them though, but getting there slowly. 2 kids is definitely not just a bump up to hard mode me, it’s skip the tutorial and start on insanity mode. It must vary wildly on the age and acclimatization of the first kid though, and the temperament of the second.

Everyone is at GDC this week (and yes, I’m missing it like crazy, but I feel sick and tired so it’s almost like I was there), so nobody will read this. So I’ll probably post it next week, when just almost nobody will read it.

So, I said I’d do a recap on Zombie Free Throw at some point. It’s been a long time since I did one of these, there’s a lot of people doing better ones for more relevant or sexier games, so I’ll keep it pretty brief anyway.

iOS version launched on Jan 18/19th. It fortunately got a little bit of featuring in parts of europe and the rest of the world, so it got some downloads in that first week. Total downloads to date are around 86k, with a couple of hundred dollars in revenue from IAP, plus about $3,400 in ad revenue. The download graph looks like this:-

So yeah. Feature or die is the new normal. (Like I said in my last post, it’s been like that for a while, but it’s taken me a while to really embrace the fact that I need to make games that might get featured - or move on to other platforms already). This is the best launch I’ve had for a mobile game in a couple of years, since SBACEBALL, which also got a bit of featuring in Europe and the rest of the world, and had very similar results. It’s something to build on, it gives me hope for the future for us doing mobile games and fighting for feature spots, even if it doesn’t do much materially to keep us afloat as a full time studio. It’s just very nice to make something. Last years releases from my dept brought in about $15 max, so if I could drink without collapsing from exhaustion I’d probably break out some very cheap fizzy wine.

Three little things I’m happy about, I went for a launch night pizza with my daughter, it probably cost $30-40 (worth it, best launch celebration ever), I didn’t expect the game to pay that back (it probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t featured), so that felt like a win. I also met some dev friends for coffee on launch day, I guess that cost about $4, and I wasn’t sure I’d make that back based on recent form, so that felt like a win too. And finally, after the feature hit, and there were some downloads, I tweeted that maybe it’d pay for my Nintendo Switch, and it’s even managed to do that. So hurrah for Zombie Free Throw, and hurrah for spending a bit more time on my games and trying to let some of the clearly doomed half built ideas stay on the shelf.

The other thing I said in my last post was that I was going to focus on iOS games and not do Android for now. Both strategically and motivationally, and psychologically, it felt like the right move.

After I launched Zombie Free Throw, I was expecting a baby to drop, but she came a little late, so after the apple feature was dead I added an android version to Google Play, it helped me use up a little bit of that waiting for baby time (I should have used it to sleep, I know, I’m a fucking moron), and I thought maybe there was a chance that if there was any organic word of mouth out there from the feature, maybe it’d get some downloads.

Well it didn’t, to date it’s had under 300 downloads, and total revenue is around $5 (seems high, given the download numbers, so I guess a few of those people really liked it, so that makes me happy at least), with a 5 star rating from 4 reviews. So I’m not changing my plans there. On the plus side though, Android versions from Unity are technically fairly painless.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it’s customary in these things to either explain how I achieved such ridiculous heights with some vague speculation about the things I think I do well, or to try to explain away why I failed so badly with some vague speculation about the things I think I didn’t do well. I mean, we’re kind of in the middle here, so I’m not really sure what to highlight, but here are some things I’d like to have done, or done better, or not done:-

1. I’m still trying to adapt to making games over the course of multiple months, rather than on a jammy or 1GAM kind of schedule. I wish I’d been able to apply that throughout here. I still tried to crunch a couple of times to hit deadlines, like halloween or basketball season, or the holidays, (and ultimately the hard deadline was my baby break!). I feel like I could have done more with the game if I was able to apply myself more consistently over a few months and not sweat the impending launch target I’ve inevitably hung over my head.

2. But I’m still very happy with how it turned out, and it’s a bigger “product” than anything I’ve done in Unity before, more assets, more graphics and sound, game modes, menus, UI, and platform stuff, so there’s a lot I’m happy to have pulled off and learned.

3. Some PR or marketing would probably be a good idea. There are people who do this for a living, and there are publishers who do a much better job of launching games than I could ever do. So I have all these things in my pocket to try this year if I feel good about my games... which I intend to! 

4. It’s nice to have that little nut of optimism for this to carry around with me. I really have been running on the fumes of despair for far too long, I’m trying to stop that from bleeding out everywhere, and I think I’m still getting on top of it. It’s why I posted my outline plan for the year last month, it’s why I’m taking the time to post this mini-mortem. I probably won’t stop with the honest and often depressing monthly progress posts, those can be cathartic too, but it’s good to share some happy thoughts.

Finally, if I’m posting this after GDC, I should have a Switch by now. So umm, yeah, either I love the Switch, or I’m really tired and sick still and it’s still in the box, or I got screwed on the pre-order. See you next month... hopefully march is the start of a return to the new normality for me.