Art Reskin Almost Ready!

To say "I've spent the last 5 months re-doing the art" would be a stretch, since I've spent most of that time NOT working on it... but IN the last 5 months, I hired a freelance artist to completely rethink the visual design of the game, and I've been integrating his new visuals into the game.

I'm happy to announce that the newest version of Social Sessions is in review for the App Store, and will be available for both iOS and Android in the next week if I don't hit any snags!

I'm very very ready to let out a sigh of relief for finally being totally done with the game, and I'm much much happier with the way it looks and feels now. I hope you'll take a look at it again when it's out if you've already played it, or, if you haven't, give it a try! You can play a generous portion of the game totally for free!

Marketing Social Sessions

Well, Social Sessions is now officially published. I'm no longer a game developer, I'm a marketer. ...nope nope nope, that's not true at all. I hate marketing. It goes back to the summer I tried to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. TRIED. Never again. But for now, I don't want my development efforts to be wasted and not shared with the world, so alas, I will market however I can.

I started posting about my game to the community on Reddit. Some forums are hostile toward people "self-promoting" their own apps, and others are welcoming to it. Either way, that avenue quickly becomes exhausted. I sent about 150 emails in the last few days (no bulk email tools, just copy/pasting and changing names and email addresses by hand) to sites that review mobile games.

Wouldn't it be fun if there was a market for "local" indie games, the way there's a market for "local" music? Just go down and hang out at your local Cafe or bar and set up your game and let people walk up and play it with their friends. That would be cool. Someone needs to make that happen. Especially in a city like mine, Austin, where there are enough indie developers to warrant it.

Anyway, I've also been trying to use Twitter to spread the word. It's all a little disheartening. I really just want to make fun games, and let people discover them on their own... but I know that there are probably thousands of games out there that I WOULD like if I only KNEW about them... so that lets me know that I need to try as hard as possible to let people know about my game. The goal is to be "loud" enough to get the word to those who will actually enjoy my game, while not being so loud that I annoy everyone else.

Anyway, if you're reading this and you're one of those people that I'm trying to target (lovers of puzzle games, indie games, challenging games), go download Social Sessions on your phone today!

Live on iOS!

Social Sessions is now live on iOS and Android! Grab it! Play it! Enjoy it!

       

iOS is nearly ready to publish!

I've gotten Social Sessions working on iOS, including the iPad! I was stoaked the first time I saw it running on an iPad because it looked great! I just had to up-res one texture so it would look better. It mostly just worked! Yay!

Now I'm on to setting up my app submission... which is a bigger task than I'd anticipated. Last night I went to upload my screenshots... only to find out how particular Apple is about their screenshots. You have to have your screenshots in exactly the dimensions of whichever particular devices you are supporting. I can't just have a single set of screenshots... I have to have a set of iPad screenshots taken from an iPad, etc. It's a little frustrating because the same is true for the promo video, and the one I created won't work at all. Boo.

Well, I'm excited to be close to submitting. I did a Unity Cloud Build of my final iOS version, but then I found out that I can't just submit that. I have to build and submit from a Mac. So hopefully I'll be able to do that tonight.

Anxious to get it on the App Store so I can really start promoting the game. I'm excited to be able to stop hearing people say "Oh you released your app? Oh well, let me know when it's on the App Store".

Big plans, little schedule

If you're wondering, I've got a handful of changes that I'd like to make before Christmas, along with getting the game on iOS. I'm also going to be away from my computer for a little while around Christmas, so I'm starting to feel a little bit of self-imposed pressure to get stuff done before then (otherwise I won't be able to stop thinking about what I have left to do).

I sat down and made a schedule of my tasks, and tried to figure out if it's even possible. I think it should be possible, but it leaves little room for testing and unknowns.

I'm also debating whether to prioritize iOS, or these new features. It'd be nice to have the game solid and ready when I release on iOS, since it's a more fertile market. But I'd also like to get my game out on iOS sooner rather than later, so I can start marketing the game harder. Right now, when I market, I hate always having to say "Sorry, it's only out on Android right now."

Also, milestone! Someone 100%'d my game. And they did it all in one sitting, no less. I think it took them 2 or 3 hours. It's actually someone I know. He had nothing but good things to say about it, which is great! He's head and shoulders above everyone else on the leaderboards!

Okay, those are my scattered thoughts for right now. If you've played the game, you have something more to look forward to in a few weeks, and if you haven't played it, go play it! It's free to try!

Hester Games... The Beginning!

Horray! Hester Games, LLC, exists, and is a real and legally verifiable entity! :D

This is exciting to me, but maybe not to you. What should be exciting to you is that I'm going to be making games you will hopefully find creative, compelling, and awesome!

Social Sessions (Hester Games' first game that will be released in the coming weeks on the Google Play Store, and soon after that on Apple's App Store) started a few years ago when I started to teach myself Unity game development and C# programming. Suddenly, my imagination came alive with ideas of what I could make! Social Sessions took form slowly, and went through several iterations. At first it was just an idea that I found intriguing, and surprisingly, hadn't seen anything else quite like it.

The puzzles were challenging, for sure. That was what I liked, but that was the main hurdle: getting people to grok the puzzles right away. Playing that balancing game between challenging and fun. Lots of people threw up their hands and said "I just don't get it!" So, with that in mind, I worked hard to give useful tips to the player along the way, and chose a progression of levels that would slowly introduce players to the more difficult concepts. Eventually I began to see that spark of determination in people's eyes when they really got it and were self-motivated enough to buckle down and solve the puzzles (and even try to get a 3-star rating on all the puzzles!).

I've spent the last 2 years developing this mostly in solitude, but I hope to connect with the community of gamers who might be interested in this or my future games, from now on.

I'll post more about Social Sessions more specifically (video soon!), and also keep you updated during and after launch, but for now, here's a rough draft of the Play Store description:

Be the therapist you always knew you could be and try to make all your patients happy by manipulating their feelings and relationships!
Social Sessions is a group-therapy-themed game that will seriously challenge your puzzle-solving abilities. Make your way through the calendar as you right the wrongs in each group of dysfunctional relationships. Push yourself to perfection by figuring out how to solve each session in the most efficient way.
Then, just when you start finding your groove, you'll be challenged by four new special level types, introduced each new week in your therapist's calendar.

 Leave a comment if this sounds like something you'd like to play!