Morning guys,
You probably have been wondering why haven't I published a video nor written a blog post in a while. Well, the reason is that I've been busy working on publishing the first video game with my game engine.
Yep, that is right. I'm publishing the first commercial game developed with the Untold Engine.
The game is called Untold Soccer. It is a hyper-casual soccer mobile game where you face five opponents, and you only have 60 seconds to score and win.
So, let me share a bit with you why I decided to publish a game with the Untold Engine.
For a long time, I've been working on the engine, improving it, adding features, fixing tons of bugs. During every beta release, I would showcase a small demo. These demos would showcase what I worked on during the release and what you can do with the game engine. The demos were great, but they did not put the engine to the test.
Lately, I decided to put the Untold Engine to the test by releasing an actual game and see how it is perceived by the public.
So, for the past month or so, I focused all my energy on working on a mobile soccer game. I implemented the game Artificial Intelligence logic, the game analyzers, players steering behaviors, etc.
I was able to complete this game in a short amount of time because I already had experience developing soccer games in the past. I knew what I had to implement and how to do it. All this knowledge came from my desire to build a soccer game when the Untold Engine was in its infancy. At that time, I failed but I learned a lot about developing a soccer game.
Moreover, I decided to take a different approach in game development; instead of releasing a full-blown game with several levels and complex game mechanics, I decided to take a play from the Hyper-Casual game's playbook.
Hyper-Casual Game Studios develop games with one level, simple mechanics, and short gameplay. This strategy allows them to fail and learn fast. This strategy is what I need if I'm going to make a robust game engine. I need a way to fail and learn from my engineering mistakes as fast as I can.
Aside from implementing the game, I also had to learn about Indie Game Marketing, spent most nights watching Youtube videos from successful game developers, learned a bit about App Store Optimization, and contacted several artists on Fivver.
I have to say that this time I was kind of lucky to find talented artists on Fivver. Most of the time, you find people who have no talent at all. I found a 3D artist that creates amazing voxel 3D characters, contacted him and he was able to design my soccer player characters, along with the animations. I was very pleased with the work that I decided to hire him to do more animations and soccer kits.
I also found a talented logo designer and he made the app icon and splash screen for the game.
Currently, an ad copywriter, which I have hired before, is working on the game description that will be shown in the app store and the landing page. I'm very excited to see what he comes up with. This writer is amazing.
So, when are you releasing the game? Well, I was going to release it cold-turkey after doing some in-home testing but several game developers suggested doing a "soft-release". Meaning, to release it as a beta-build to selected users and once the game is stable, release it to the public.
I liked that idea and luckily for me, the App Store allows you to release the game as a beta-build through a service called Test-Flight. It is a way to release your game to selected users, get their feedback and allow users to submit bugs. If you are interested in being a beta-tester sign-up here. I would appreciate it.
I'm planning to do a soft release in the second week of July 2021.
So that's the plan. I'm doing this and publishing a game with the Untold Engine.
Thanks guys for reading.
P.S. Don't forget to subscribe to my Youtube Channel. I will post the a video soon.
