Hey friends! It’s been a while, but don’t be alarmed. I’ve experienced some technical issues, but we’re back now, I hope. Big news today, let’s take a look at some Bibidi Bibidi developments! Warning: Playtest Inside.

How Am I Doing?

I’m good! We had some technical difficulties with the mailing service and instead of fixing it while on vacation, I decided to take a break instead. It felt like a good moment to wind things down for a bit. I’ve been writing this newsletter every week for 2 years straight! That’s a pretty crazy amount of output. I’ll try to pick it up again, but I might decide to decrease output to once per two weeks or something. We’ll see how it goes. Other than that, I’m also super excited to share some Bibidi Bibidi! news.

What Am I Doing?

We’ve launched an early playtest on Steam! You can head there and try it out right away! That’s exciting for a couple of reasons. We’ve done public playtests before, mostly with friends, but this is the first time we do it on Steam. This means we have our Steam store page up with screenshots, descriptions and anything a PC audience expects to see. That’s a pretty big milestone!

Then, as a result of that, we can start collecting Wishlists. Data is not very clear on that, but Wishlists are generally considered a measurment of interest in your game. Wishlisting a game makes you receive notifications when the game is launched or on-sale, so it’s the most direct way of converting to sales. It’s a bit early in the process to drum up real interest for the game, but it’s nice to have this online so we can passively rack up some statistics.

So what’s new since the itch.io version?

• Many UX improvements, including:
• Right-Click on card attributes to quick assign to a spell slot.
• Health bars!
• Status effects are now visualized on the spellbook, wizard’s portrait and enemies.
• Flashy warning when you’re about to die.
• More accurate number previews like incoming damage and damage you’re about to deal.
• Improved descriptions for effects and such.
• New Backgrounds!
• Splash Screen & Main Menu.
• Evergreen improvements like rebalancing & bug fixes.

I’m super proud on how far the game has gotten already, and I’d love to hear your opinion on where it’s at!

Why Am I Doing? (this)

Now I’m at a scary crossroads. I started this whole venture 2 years ago, when the company I worked at went bankrupt. The severance and wellfare carried me all the way here, but those benefits will soon halt. Because of this, I had to do some budgeting. I have a good amount of savings and some money in assets here and there. Essentially, it’s enough to carry me another 2 years, but after that time I will be destitute. Naturally, I want to avoid that.

We’re looking at trying to launch Bibidi somewhere in February, so I tried to calculate how much it would cost me to live off of savings until that time. It’ll cost me about 10.000 euros. That’s not nothing, but the alternative is to set-up freelancing and actively start building a client base and all that. So here’s the question… Am I willing to spend 10k so that I can work on Bibidi completely uninterrupted? Even if I end up not making any of that back?

It’s a hard question to answer in the spur of the moment, but I’m definitely leaning towards YES. Want to support me in this endevour? Go wishlist Bibidi Bibidi on Steam!