I’m now days away from submitting to the app store, after a year of developing Unknown Orbit, I’m super excited/terrified/(?) to see how it goes. I feel like I’ve ticked all the boxes in terms of marketing, screenshots, trailers, press packs etc, I like the icon I’ve developed and I quite like the game I’ve made, so I like my chances of it doing at least reasonably well.
I actually feel like UO is the first game I’ve ever made. While I have worked with other people on games before, this is the first game that I conceived of, prototyped, then created all on my own. When I was a game designer with Ratbag, I recreated stock car racing rules, and then worked on a game design for a GTA/Mad Max style game which was never finished, and barely started. At Binary Space, I was never happy with how much gameplay we put in to the zombie games, and I was reliant on Saxon, my programming/biz partner to implement things. We also often disagreed about what features should go in, and being part time, many of my plans for the game just never made it in. So again, this feels like its ‘all me’, which is sort of scary… unless it’s a huge hit, in which case I will do an extravagant dance.
The game is probably 90% of what I wanted it to be. That 10% is probably half due to technical limitations and half lack of time, skills and resources. I imagine this is true for most games, though, and if things go well I’ll certainly be investigating updates or sequels.
Right now I’m waiting for Apple to change my account from an individual to a company. It will change from Jay Weston to Hyperfocal Design (my texture/hdri company), unfortunately I can’t use a trade name (Exbleative) nor do I want to form another pty ltd company, so I felt like this was the only option. Luckily Hyperfocal’s name somewhat translates well to games, and hopefully there isn’t much confusion as I try to promote the game under the Exbleative name!
Once I’m set to go with Hyperfocal, it’ll be one release candidate round on Testflight for super-final-for-realz testing, then I’ll submit and lose around 1 weeks worth of sleep.
Cross your fingers for me that some press like the game and review it!
Cheers,
Jay