Hello my friends,

last we spoke it was April, so an update is due! It's been quiet over the summer as I was busy working on the new video game Crownbreakers but there's still plenty to talk about. So as always, let's get right to it:

PERSONAL

• I feel into a deep rabbit hole about ergonomic and split keyboards, alternate layouts and making my own ortho keyboard. All because of a talk about keyboards from the GPN (German)

• I did turn 43, as promised in the last letter.

• And I went to AMAZE, the best indie game festival I know, in Berlin. I met a lot of old friends there, which was a blast! As always.

• I wrote this newsletter in Austria, after driving here with the motorcycle for a short vacation. I included a detour to Slovenia to meet up with my friend Matej (maybe better known as Retronator) who just released his 9-year project Pixel Art Academy in early access. And while I was there I also met a bunch of other friends from Spelkollektivet that came to visit!

MEDIA

• On Matej's recommendation I started reading The Renaissance Soul, a book for people that are interested in too many things. The introduction is a little slow, because it tries to less uncertainty for people who are built like that. And the end drags on a little because it tries to wants to make folks hopeful about being able to build a life with so many interests. Neither of which really spoke to me, because this are not things I am worried about. But in the middle I found a bunch of interesting exercises, some of which I am still thinking about.

• I saw the Mad Max Furiosa movie in the theaters and loved it. It is obviously not Fury Road but it's still a lot of fun and a well-told story that I really enjoyed.

• More than Dune 2, which I felt dragged on and rushed at the same time. Plus the ending is just very mixed and abrupt, but then the book suffers from similar problems. At least it was as gorgeous as the first.

• I played some Showgunners as research for Crownbreakers. If you like X-COM it's definitely worth a look. I found the mix of realtime navigation and turn-based combat a little unusual and the theming is overall too edgy for my tastes but it felt well-built nonetheless.

• Inspired by Thai, my intern who is helping out on Crownbreakers, I wanted to try and regularly put together music playlists that collect the music I find in between newsletters. Here’s the first playlist!

WORK

Here's all the little tidbits of work, before I dive into the meat of the Crownbreakers video game below.

• I was part of the War Child Sale with Nowhere Prophet where a varied percentage of each game's profits (70% in my case) were used to help children affected by war. Ended up at around 250 USD. Pretty nice, I think!

• Crit Hit The Giant wrote up a nice review of Goblin Errands! And the game was part of Gen Con as part of IPRs big booth.

• I also ran the Goblin Errands Game Jam in May as a little birthday celebration. It was a small affair with a handful of folks contributing ideas and me streaming once a week but I am super happy with the outcome! Check out the submissions for some goodies for your sessions!

• The Mending Circle is also now finally in print! It's quite likely that the books will wait for me on my doorstep by the time I come back from vacation! I'll try my best to get them ready to be sent out as soon as possible however Gamescom is next week so that might delay things a week or two. But I am confident that I'll be able to start shipping books at the end of the month!

• I organized and moderated a roundtable discussion on mentally sustainable game development as part of the Gamestate festival. Having gone through my own share of crises I wanted to open a space for people to talk about their struggles and their approach to finding some sense of balance. I was overwhelmed by the reception and I am thinking of ways on how to build on that! If that’s something you want to chat about, let me know!

Crownbreakers Progress

Three months of progress on the game. What does that mean?

• I put in a number of help features to make the game easier to understand

• We added a number of small improvements after some feedback from AMAZE

• I added slowdown and screen shake to the game

• We improved the visual FX, like adding some fun flames and explosions.

• I added a method to change basic balance (such as crash damage) values during the game

• We tweaked the gameplay progress mechanics

• We came up with a proper system for defining what type and rarity of rewards to drop

• I built the procedural generator system that generates the levels

• We iterated on the first character class (The Hammer) and got it to a good place

• We started a small alpha test crew (more on that below!)

• We started working on the second class (The Marshal)

• We created a new system for how enemies spawn during enemy waves

• I replaced the outdated enemy AI with a new system

• I wrote and submitted an application for a production funding grant

• We overhauled the colors and started work on finalizing card and unit designs

• We got some more cool concept art done

• We started working on the 3d style of the game

Crownbreakers Alpha Testing

I mentioned it above briefly but we are currently looking to build up a small group of alpha testers that want to regularly play the game and provide feedback as we develop it. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, let me know by filling in this form here!

Crownbreakers: Marketing Thoughts

I’ve also been thinking about how to start doing some regular social media marketing for Crownbreakers. There’s two approaches I have that feel like they might be fun/worth doing. And I’d love your thoughts on it!

One is to do reddit posts about the game in various subreddits that match the topic. Like talking about the game’s lore in r/worldbuilding or about the card design process is r/gamedesign. These posts would have a topic but try to cover a lot of ground. This is closer to the kind of stuff I’ve done in the past and something I think I can do, but these are always a chunk of work.

The other idea is to do very short videos that cover a narrow topic. Like just showing card design changes or just mentioning one snippet of of lore with a corresponding visual. Obviously the target would be the various short video platforms but I also noticed that I like to see these kinds of videos from other developers. They give me a glimpse into their process without committing to a 15 min video or an overly long read. However I don’t really have a process for video creation yet so I don’t even know how much work that will be.

What option would you be more interested in? And do you have examples of that type of content that you think work well?

And that’s it! It’s been so long that I’m bound to have forgotten something here but I think that’s a good overview. As always, thanks for following along!

Much love,

 💚 Martin