Starting Over

Good news everybody! This new start is over. We are hanging our current project on the nail and are starting over. Why? We thought it would work, but it doesn’t. Simple as that, but let me elaborate a little bit. I still believe that the idea is amazing and can definitely work given enough time and resources. 

The biggest problem and ultimately the reason for scratching this project is that we are creating a multiplayer game for singleplayer. The gameplay is completely focused on 1v1 combat. You can imagine it like a mini fighting game. The premise is dancing on a 3x3 square. Every time you execute a successful dance move you can attack your opponent to score points. Yet how long have you played smash just vs ai? Or any other fighting game for that matter.

Ok, then why not make it multiplayer?

Oh boy, there are a lot of reasons, I will name two of them here, starting with the big one.

Multiplayer is not fun when there aren’t multiple players. This is a reality we as Indie devs have to accept. We can’t make a multiplayer game expecting there to be tens of thousands of players online in the first days, where in reality there would be about 9. Us 3 and some family members. No we have to first grow our following and then when there are people playing our games, when we are established and when we have another amazing idea we can come back two multiplayer.

Reason number 2: Multiplayer is hard. Really hard. Now I have been using Photon (a multiplayer programming framework) and it is quite nice. You can certainly get a fun co-op game going rather quickly. However, once you start going for a competitive game, where people expect to be on the same handicap and where you need anti-cheat, it gets too tough for me.

A lot of precious developing time would be “wasted” on making the game multiplayer ready, time that could have been spent creating new amazing features for the core gameplay. 

Where do we go from here?

We will be releasing the first prototype of our game the following days so definitely keep an eye out for that. Then it is back to the drawing board. Brainstorming, sketching, thinking and drinking (for creativity purposes only). Until we get our next idea and we can get back into the mix doing what we love. Making our Ideas come to life.

Until then, stay inside and make games!

Simon

Bromberry Games