Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Adventure, IndieCrashlands
Dev Chats @ 2pm CST
We're closing in on that arbitrary 300 review mark we set for ourselves! HUZZAH!
DEV CHAT IS NOW LIVE! We'll be hanging out for about an hour (2pm-3pm CST). Come say hey and ask a question!
Didn't want to ever see our faces? WELL TOO BAD.
See you soon!
-samuel
Dev Chats @ 2pm CST
We're closing in on that arbitrary 300 review mark we set for ourselves! HUZZAH!
We'll be doing a devchat via google hangouts in about two hours (2pm CST). I'll post the link in here. There's Q&A and we'll just be hanging out for an hour or so so you can ask Crashlands and Butterscotch questions all you want!
Didn't want to ever see our faces? WELL TOO BAD.
See you soon!
-samuel
HOLY CRAP YOU DID IT (& some dev chats)
You guys are great.
UPDATE ON THINGS WE WERE WAITING FOR:
- Kotaku posted a glowing review
- PC Gamer posted a not-quite-so-glowing but still good review (73/100)
- TotalBiscuit tweeted about Crashlands
- We got TouchArcade's Game of the Week
- Over 1500 concurrent players on steam alone, and growing!
- Current Metascore of 83 on PC and 100 (!) on iOS
- Adam (the tools and web brother) seems to have fixed most of our server problems. It only cost him 6 months of longevity due to the stress! SYNC AWAAAAY!
One last thing we'd like to get to wrap this launch UP:
- A freakin' review from IGN. Tweet them!
NOW GATHER ROUND FOR SOME DEV CHATS!
There's something I'd like to note about our design choices with Crashlands that I see in some of the comments and that the PC Gamer review touched on somewhat:
This game was designed to be platform agnostic:
Meaning it plays equally well on PC and Mobile. This put us in the precarious position of possibly being unclaimed by EITHER platform, since gamers on each occasionally have hard biases against another platform. Initially, this took the form of us stepping into threads to clear up the dual points of the game either being "A shitty mobile game trying to get on PC" or "a PC game trying to get a shitty port onto mobile."
Now that the quality of the game has been established this is less of an issue, but for those here who are concerned that Crashlands' presence on mobile SOMEHOW means it is an inferior game on Steam, it doesn't; what it means you can play it wherever you want however you want and it remains a great, cohesive experience.
Further, nearly all of our Beta testers (whom we used for the final tuning of the game's balance and design improvements) primarily played on PC - that's what the game is actually most optimized for, from a feedback standpoint!
A note about the controls:
The game is designed to work extremely well with a mouse, which makes it work perfectly on a touch device. However, this control scheme choice is viewed by some on PC as a holdover that's sprung from the game's presence on mobile, which is an understandable assumption but a bit odd if you extend it to other PC games that rely on the same scheme. For example, Diablo uses extensive mouse control - but its lack of presence on mobile means its controls are considered only with regard to how well they work, not as though they're a necessity for touch screens. (For those of you who simply prefer controllers/WASD movement, that's a different thing entirely!)
All of this leads to the final question of different pricepoints on Steam ($15) vs Mobile ($5), for which the answer is 2-fold:
1) We believe Crashlands is easily a $20 value. But we want people to play on everything they have (crossplatforminess!), so we split the price for a buyer between the two.
2) The mobile market has massively suppressed pricing - putting a game on that market for $15 from a generally unknown studio would be a complete financial disaster. Trust us - we did it with our first game (for $2.99) and it fell on its face so hard it burst through the crust of the earth and nearly destroyed our fledgling studio with the resulting magmic eruption.
Hope that answers a few of the most frequently asked / assumed things! Thanks for helping make this launch RIDICULOUS. (Seriously, we made high-pitched yet-still-extremely-manly noises when we saw the Totalbiscuit tweet).
Feel free to drop your thoughts below, but remember to not be a jerk. We're all humans here, playing games because we love them or making games because we love to.
Stay frosty,
samuel
1/3rd of our 3 brother studio
HOLY CRAP YOU DID IT (& some dev chats)
You guys are great.
UPDATE ON THINGS WE WERE WAITING FOR:
- Kotaku posted a glowing review
- PC Gamer posted a not-quite-so-glowing but still good review (73/100)
- TotalBiscuit tweeted about Crashlands
- We got TouchArcade's Game of the Week
- Over 1500 concurrent players on steam alone, and growing!
- Current Metascore of 83 on PC and 100 (!) on iOS
- Adam (the tools and web brother) seems to have fixed most of our server problems. It only cost him 6 months of longevity due to the stress! SYNC AWAAAAY!
One last thing we'd like to get to wrap this launch UP:
- A freakin' review from IGN. Tweet them!
NOW GATHER ROUND FOR SOME DEV CHATS!
There's something I'd like to note about our design choices with Crashlands that I see in some of the comments and that the PC Gamer review touched on somewhat:
This game was designed to be platform agnostic:
Meaning it plays equally well on PC and Mobile. This put us in the precarious position of possibly being unclaimed by EITHER platform, since gamers on each occasionally have hard biases against another platform. Initially, this took the form of us stepping into threads to clear up the dual points of the game either being "A shitty mobile game trying to get on PC" or "a PC game trying to get a shitty port onto mobile."
Now that the quality of the game has been established this is less of an issue, but for those here who are concerned that Crashlands' presence on mobile SOMEHOW means it is an inferior game on Steam, it doesn't; what it means you can play it wherever you want however you want and it remains a great, cohesive experience.
Further, nearly all of our Beta testers (whom we used for the final tuning of the game's balance and design improvements) primarily played on PC - that's what the game is actually most optimized for, from a feedback standpoint!
A note about the controls:
The game is designed to work extremely well with a mouse, which makes it work perfectly on a touch device. However, this control scheme choice is viewed by some on PC as a holdover that's sprung from the game's presence on mobile, which is an understandable assumption but a bit odd if you extend it to other PC games that rely on the same scheme. For example, Diablo uses extensive mouse control - but its lack of presence on mobile means its controls are considered only with regard to how well they work, not as though they're a necessity for touch screens. (For those of you who simply prefer controllers/WASD movement, that's a different thing entirely!)
All of this leads to the final question of different pricepoints on Steam ($15) vs Mobile ($5), for which the answer is 2-fold:
1) We believe Crashlands is easily a $20 value. But we want people to play on everything they have (crossplatforminess!), so we split the price for a buyer between the two.
2) The mobile market has massively suppressed pricing - putting a game on that market for $15 from a generally unknown studio would be a complete financial disaster. Trust us - we did it with our first game (for $2.99) and it fell on its face so hard it burst through the crust of the earth and nearly destroyed our fledgling studio with the resulting magmic eruption.
Hope that answers a few of the most frequently asked / assumed things! Thanks for helping make this launch RIDICULOUS. (Seriously, we made high-pitched yet-still-extremely-manly noises when we saw the Totalbiscuit tweet).
Feel free to drop your thoughts below, but remember to not be a jerk. We're all humans here, playing games because we love them or making games because we love to.
Stay frosty,
samuel
1/3rd of our 3 brother studio
WHAT A FREAKIN' DAY, TEAM
Crashlands launch has gone really well! Let's run down the LIST OF GOODNESS:
- Nothing broke (too terribly, anyway)
- Steam, Apple, and Google all did their part to feature/promote the game
- Our players nearly universally love the game (note: If you have a bug, report it to us, not in the review section you MANIACS!)
- The gaming press seems to be catching on to the idea that Crashlands is a great game that can be played anywhere, instead of thinking it's either a) a pc port to mobile or b) a mobile port to pc. We'll slowclap for them when they finally get it figured.
- Forums, subreddit, and BSID usage is up approxmiately 1 BILLION PERCENT.
We're still hoping for a few things to happen, which you can help with:
- 300 Steam reviews (Drop us one if you haven't yet - THEY'RE LIKE WORDGOLD)
- a Total Biscuit WTF IS show (tweet at him here!)
- PC Gamer and IGN reviews
Now we're back with our faces to the Butterscotch grindstone to iron out a few of those reported bugs and technical glitches, and then we can begin work on the first update!
HWHWOHOHOHOHOHOHOOOOOOAYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
-samuel
CRASHLANDS IS LIVE!
Thank you all for making this possible for us! You're the best gaming community we could ask for!
-samuel
Feast your ears on some PRE-LAUNCH PODCAST!
We took a short break from freaking out yesterday to record our weekly gamedev+comedy podcast - and we tackled all the Crashlands related questions that were in the backlog.
If you want to pass one of the <24 hours to go by learning more about the development of Crashlands and how it evolved, slap some earbuds in and give this a listen!
https://soundcloud.com/butterscotch-shenanigans/ep35-coffee-w-butterscotch
We can't wait for tomorrow! AHHHHHHH!
Pre-Launch Podcast recording TOMORROW! (Tuesday)
We've got a gamedev comedy podcast we record every Tuesday afternoon where we talk about what games we're playing and do some diving on what we're working on.
With Crashlands launch coming up we're having a special Pre-Launch episode! What's special about it is that we'll be freaking out because launch is just 2 days away! CAN YOU FEEL THE NERVES?! CAN YOU FEEEEEL THEM!?
If you want to ask a question to be answered on the podcast, or vote on others, you can hop over to podcast.bscotch.net and throw your words in the pile! We'll record around 1pm CST on Tuesday.
Stay frosty. Thursday cometh.
-samuel
Just a few days left!
As we head into launch week we'll have our faces glued to various review sites and streams, trying to get that last bit of awareness squeezed out so that this launch can go KABOOOOM. Thanks to all of you who have sent us some kind words or offered up your favorite streamers for us to contact - they've been very receptive.
Stay frosty!
-samuel
Let's Plays are live!
The Let's Play embargo was lifted on Tuesday, so there's already a fistful of people enjoying the crap out of Crashlands. Remember to wishlist us if you like what you see so we can hit you up on Launch Day! Here's just one of our favorites so far-
Zueljin's Let's Play, where he hatches his first pet!
7 days to go! Thanks for the support so far - we're so excited to make this launch a success!
If there are other youtubers or streamers you love who you think we should contact, feel free to drop them below and I will hit them UP!
Best,
Samuel