Poll and a Competitor!

POLL

Firstly, I've made a poll that I'd greatly appreciate some feedback on. I am asking what features you would like to see in WWR going forward. The response of this poll might change the direction I take in implementing features going forward, you might get to see those features sooner!

https://strawpoll.com/q4491wf6a

COMPETITION

So last night, I found out about an upcoming game called "Wizard with a Gun".  https://www.wizardwithagun.com/

Uh oh. Someone has beaten me to it. Sort of.

Looking at the game, firstly, obviously, it has *guns* not exclusively rocket launchers. Also, it is going in depth with integrating magic with weapons, giving weapons magical effects. Also, crafting, building stuff and all that modern stuff apparently people expect these days.  I am not mixing magic with the rocket launchers (for now anyway). I also don't care about crafting and stuff. It's not a planned feature of this game (maybe future games..).

This has caused me to rethink my game a fair bit. How can I make my game stand out against this one, so I don't look like the copy cat?

I have some ideas. The thing I'm thinking is that, the mentioned game, is more of an action RPG with crafting and all that stuff. My game, aims to be quite a lot simpler, but focus on movement and skill shots (think FPS arena shooters). That's the sort of direction I will be going, going forward. So, for example, multiplayer games could be quite fun because you are directly fighting each other, with slow-moving projectiles. Not worrying about crafting guns and all that tedious business. Just pure point and shoot action! Like the good old days.

Also, it has now spooked me. I don't think I will be posting regular builds for this game, and no more updates on Twitter. I'd say I'm onto a pretty good game idea. But I am taking a long time to make it. So if I keep posting updates on Twitter, etc, people might notice and steal my idea and make a similar game. It's unlikely competitors will be as good quality as "Wizard with a Gun". But possible. So I'm going to scale back my updates to the public drastically overall for now on. I might post occasional builds, once or twice per year - if they are really worth posting.

I will be keeping back significant features now, like singleplayer campaign content, and major attractive features. I will start charging for the game once I can say it is really "fun" (Like when multiplayer is added and working nicely). I will have to think about this more, but basically, expect fewer builds going forward to prevent further public exposure. I will keep this page (Analytics say it's pretty damn quiet..) I still want to post regular updates though. But I have another place for that. If you want to see more regular updates, check out the Tas Game Makers Discord channel,  but also check out the cool people there too! https://discord.gg/h9fXpqeFEt

I might make a mailing list, or Discord server, or something like that where you can get more frequent builds. Once I'm at the stage where that makes sense. Once I'm ready to build a following.. Might make a Discord for my very minor "games business" (which isn't a real business, but  who knows..?).

I guess this has given me a bit extra motivation to work on my game now! As a very similar idea has been built with great execution quality. So it sounds like it is a good (potentially popular) idea. Maybe I'll spend a bit more than the one day per month at the game maker meetups to work on it. Maybe one day per fortnight, or more.