Hey friends! Big news, so I’m swapping out the segments in a different order today. The Next Fest Demo is released! Next Fest is not public yet, but the Demo we submitted is up and running already.

What Am I Doing?

Our submission to Next Fest has been accepted! What does that mean? It means that the Demo we’ve been working on for the past 2 months is now live. Check out the trailer!

So what now? Well, Jonas and I are busy mailing the press and reaching out to streamers and such to see if we can get the Demo in the hands of more players. At the same time, we’re processing feedback from new players and making tweaks here and there before Next Fest is actually open to the public.

How Am I Doing?

I’m excited and terrified. Excited, because the game is in the best state it has ever been and hopefully an influx of people will see and play it in the coming weeks. Terrified, because it’s hard to say if it will do any good in a scalable way.

It’s possible that a lot of people will play it and find it mid. That’s scary, because it means our sample group of playtesters has been biased all this time. It’s possible that almost no one will play it. That’s scary, because we won’t get any information about why players didn’t pick the game up. It could be the Steam algorithm, which is scary because it indicates that the full release wouldn’t do any better if we handled it the way we did the Demo.

So yeah, lots of things that “could go wrong” to be anxious about. However, when I see other games with a significantly higher amount of wishlists while being a significantly lower quality game, I feel kind of at ease. Many games in our genre that I tried are kind of mid, but far outperform the expectations we set for ourselves. So it seems doable? I guess? And then comments like these obviously spur my confidence even further.

Why Am I Doing? (this)

A lot of decisions rest on how well Next Fest goes for us. Decisions about marketing, finances, deadlines, publishers, et cetera. Meanwhile, each Next Fest has more submission than the last. It seems pretty easy to drown among the noise, and historically we haven’t had a lot of success playing the Steam algorithm. It’s a bit disheartening to be honest.

Supposedly, the first few days of Next Fest are the most important to calculate traction and velocity. So as soon as Next Fest goes live to the public (on the 15th of June), I will tug on everyone’s heartstrings to go play the Demo and leave a good review and such. But for now, just wish me luck!