Getting the game out there

On April 4^th we officially finished the game and gratefully put it down to refocus our energies on actually graduating from College.

We had always wanted to get the game out on a digital platform, Steam being our dream. But we consistently pushed the deadline for Steam submission back and back and back. We were terrified, really, truly scared to do so, or at least I was. Rumors of Steam’s blacklist had reached us, if they rejected you once it would negatively impact you forever more. Whether his rumor is true or not, is utterly beside the point. But we all had this nagging worry that the game wasn’t good enough, that we had made it while we were still students, that it was missing something.

It didn’t help that we entered the student IGF, the Edge Create Challenge, and the Intel Level Up Challenge and didn’t get anywhere. We got no feedback either from any of these contests. Was there some major flaw they all discovered? Was the game really not that unique? Was the mechanic to simplistic?

RPI banished a lot of those thoughts though; Marguerite and I drove down with a few other teams from Champlain and blew the competition away. Loc placed first, and my roommate’s side scrolling fighting game, Satoshi and the Thousand Samurai came in second.

It was the first time we received feedback and critique from an outside source, who enjoyed the game immensely and gave us a few pointers which were then integrated into Loc 1.1. But showcasing the game, when you can be there and explain or sell your idea is so much different than packaging it up and shipping it out across the internet to parts unknown.

Loc 1.1 was it, likely our last update, unless something spectacular happens. So we started the rounds for distribution, Steam, Origin, Impulse, IndieVania, and Union (Unity web store). And Success! Indievania accepted our game! It’s a small fish, compared to all the rest on the list, but never the less, a huge success for us. Now we just do the hardest thing, wait for more responses.