Hey {{nickname||there}},
Thank you so much for being one of the first 10 subscribers to my newsletter. I really appreciate your support for the work that I’m doing and allowing me to send you updates directly. I am experimenting with different formats of updates and working on my own writing and video skills. Please send me a reply if you have any preferences, feedback, or requests of things you want to see more of, less of, or new kinds of content.
Moving forward, I am planning to send out a quick email like this one each week with a quick progress update on my journey as a part-time game developer. In case you have not opted into any of the optional notification categories, this will also be where I link anything I’ve posted in the previous week. Some of you subscribed to the Game Studies tag may notice that there’s a bonus post for this week that didn’t get sent out. Check it out if you’re interested in watching me analyze a stylized top down 3D action game!
This past week, my main goal was to get out a visual proof of concept for a tactics game. I was able to get that done in less than 10 hours, which is much faster than I would have been able to do at the start of the year. I posted this as a YouTube Short and Instagram Reel, but the data wasn’t too promising on either. While it performed just as well as my other posts, it confirmed that early validation for video games remains really challenging. The idea to make a visual proof of concept is still something I want to test further, but it’s clear that I will need to get a very highly polished video that’s roughly 15 seconds or fewer to get a valid test. It still surprises me how much content can be fit into 1 to 2 seconds of a short.
Next week, I hope to complete my work on an ability framework for Godot that I can reuse for my game and finish the modeling of an art collaboration that one of my friends was kind enough to agree to. He finished his portion of it very quickly, so I have to make sure I hold up my end! Connecting with people in the indie game dev scene has been the highlight of my last month.
Are there any games you’ve been playing or looking forward to checking out? Do you have any games you think I should review as part of my game studies? Send a reply and let me know. As always, thank you and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Cheers,
Connor