Rollercoaster

Wow, it seemed as if too many things happened this past week. From fantastic to truly awful.

But let's start out with the good. Pathogen has been received well!!!!

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"Pathogen's simple-yet-addictive gameplay is augmented by a terrific presentation, with visuals that make it feel like you're playing on a computer from a 1980s sci-fi film."- theVerge.com

"A portable game of elegant strategy."- IndieGames.com
 

"I’d definitely say Pathogen is an absolute steal at $2.99 in the app store...A damn fine reason to share your iPad."- EnemySlime.com

"There’s no way to know yet whether (Pathogen) has anything like the durable interest of the classics, but I haven’t found any sign of a bottom to its depths."- Pocket Tactics
 

"A novel abstract strategy game that checks all the boxes for a fantastic digital experience...Success requires both thinking and feeling your way across the space, a delightfully snug balancing act that's much more fun than the haughty logic of other abstracts."- Pocket Gamer

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Which is all I ever wanted really. I think I poured too much of myself into this, its now very difficult to pull it away from my own identity, so it is truly amazing to see some else "get" the game.

Pathogen is currently sitting in the top 10 of both Strategy Games & Board Game categories on the App Store & it is featured as one of Apple Best New Apps, which is huge. We are working to hold onto that lead for as long as possible.

But this week crumbled into a decline of terrifying proportions....

We got hit by a few negative comments on the press side of things (though it didn't detract from the score too much), but it was in the user comments on the App Store page where people began to slam it for some of the "obvious" bugs that ruined the play experience.

In particular we had a mud slinger appear to make it his mission to tear into the game. While yes, you must have a thick skin, his persistence & attitude threw the whole company off...

The problem with a game (or any product really) is that its a result of human work, which means its susceptible to human flaws. That there is a story behind Pathogen, one that takes a year to tell, is completely hidden from the end user.

Yes, we had (i am using the past tense, it has been corrected already) a major issue with how single player progression saving was done. Yes we should have seen it, but its something we missed. Why? Because its just the 4 of us & within those first 24 hours Pathogen had more people playing/testing it than it ever had during the entire lifetime of its development.

More issues poured in & we had an incredibly difficult time trying to organize/assess/triage them into a list of things to do. To complicate matters, internally we had difficulty trying to reach a concensious of what we needed to fix first.

But finally we nailed it down, got to work & pushed a build to Apple yesterday evening.

Here are the major changes you should see in the next release.

+ Mute Switch Functionality - Pathogen now obeys the iOS mute Switch! Its not something done by default when building in Flash.
+ Improved iPhone experience - Buttons are bigger! & some have been rearranged to better suit the screen. This should help the overall experience for you phone users
+ General Optimizations - Especially in the single player
+ Single Player Changes - The entire "structure" of the Campaign has been reconfigured. Gone is the need to scroll down in order to play a level.
+ Save Issue Addressed - I have corrected the save issue that is plaguing everyone in the single Player! If a level was completed, & you lost that progress, you should be getting it back.
+ Infection Mode now available in Local Multiplayer - Because this mode is awesome, & i should have done it earlier.

There are more fixes coming down the pipe, but as its only Matt & I, we can only do so much.

 Lost a lot of faith this week, trying to scape together some more.

- Zach