Was Steam Next Fest worth it? (Developing 14)

Getting my game ready for the demo showcase

Hi, my name's Mark and I am making Mind Over Magnet, a cute puzzle platformer about, yes, it's true, magnets.

Okay, so in the previous episode of Developing, I talked about getting my game ready for the Steam Next Fest, which is a week-long showcase of demos for upcoming indie games.

So I put together a polished demo featuring the first world of my game, and also a Steam store page with screenshots and animated gifs, and a snazzy teaser trailer.

However, with just two months to go before Next Fest kicked off, I realised that there was a pretty big problem with each of these things. Both the demo and the store page featured a massive placeholder - an unfinished asset that really needed to be changed before I could confidently show Mind Over Magnet to the world.

However, there's a good reason why those assets were still placeholders, and it's because I could not make the final asset myself. And so, for the first time in my game dev career, it was time to hire someone to help me out.

Here's how that went.

Okay, so basically everything in Mind Over Magnet is made by me. I've done all the writing and programming code, all the artwork and animation, and all of the game design and level design.

Okay, sure, some stuff has been made by other people. Some super smart folk on the GMTK Discord have contributed chunks of code when I've gotten stuck on a programming problem. I got my dad to create a 3D animation of a giant robot arm so I could trace over it in pixel art and pop it in the background of World 4. Oh, and all of the sound effects are from - still not a sponsor - Epidemic Sound.

Plus, I could not make this game without the help, advice, feedback, and bug reports from my many playtesters, nor the financial backing of my Patrons.

But everything else is made by me. But please do not take this as some gross brag about me being a multi-talented auteur genius who can turn his hand to anything.

In truth, I'm a pretty average programmer, writer, designer, and artist. And the game would frankly be much better if I hired someone to make, well, pretty much every part of the game.

Which makes me wonder why I exist. What am I contributing to this? Uh, let's park that existential crisis to one side.

Anyway, the whole point of developing was for me to see every part of this process up close and first hand. To see what it's like to code a jump arc, or to draw out a tile map, or to film and edit a trailer, or to design a bunch of puzzles. All so that I can share that experience with you fine folk.

However, there are two major things that I just do not have the skills to make, and they are way too important for me to muddle on through, or to cobble something crap together. I need to hire someone to make these things.

And that starts with the soundtrack.

Making Music

Because yes, music is so important to a game. Music can be the beating heart, or the soul, of a game. Some of my favourite titles, my memory of that game is as much tied to the music as it is to the storyline, or the gameplay. Music can elevate an experience.

But I do not have any musical ability or talent whatsoever. I cannot string together a single line of notes. So I'm going to need someone else to make this music.

Now, sure, I could use some pre-existing tracks from a music library, or an album. And in fact, some amazing games like Braid, Her Story, and Hotline Miami use pre-existing music rather than getting a wholly original soundtrack. But that can be a little bit risky.

You run the risk of your audience getting a copyright strike if they stream your game. And your music can just show up in the weirdest places imaginable. So I decided that I wanted to get all new music for Mind Over Magnet, to hire someone to make original tracks.

But I had one hesitation. Because I know so little about music - I mean, I don't know the difference between an octave and a treble clef. I thought quavers were just really delicious crisps. So how do I even talk to a composer? Do I have to hum the music I want them to make? Do I tell them what tempo or BPM the music should be?

I really needed some advice. So I called upon probably the biggest expert in this field, Austin Wintory. Austin is an award-winning composer behind the soundtracks for games like Journey, The Pathless, and Stray Gods, plus loads of other games and movies.

And I asked Austin, "Does it matter that I don't know how to talk about music?"

He said: "It's all good. None of your cohorts in the directing side of the table know how to talk about music.

The common response to that has become, 'Just try to articulate the emotion that you're interested in. Don't question how we get there. That's my job to figure out. That's the burden I'm taking off of your shoulders by being part of the project. That's the whole idea.'"

Ah, that really put my mind at ease, to be honest. I realised that I don't need to talk in the language of music. I just need to talk about the creative vision for my game. The feeling, the emotion, the vibe I'm going for, and then let the composer translate that into beeps and boops.

And so it was time to hire a composer.

Now in a previous episode of Developing, I put out a call for composers and received over 850 submissions to my form. Which is amazing, but also completely overwhelming, and let's be honest, it was impossible for me to look at every single one. But I did read through a lot of bios, I listened to a lot of samples, and I looked at a lot of proposed fees.

Though, let's talk about money in a future episode of Developing.

Now among all of those people, one person really did catch my eye. Zach Jones is a game designer and composer living in New York. And not only did he give me lots of great samples, but he picked out some specific songs that he thought would fit my game. And so I was able to grab them from Bandcamp, chuck them into the game itself, and just see how it felt.

It wasn't perfect, but definitely along the right lines. And it gave me confidence that Zach would be able to make great music for Mind Over Magnet.

Now I'll fast forward through the next bit. We got on Zoom, we decided to work together, and then I had to write a contract. Comment down below if you want a three hour spin-off video about the exhilarating fun of writing a legal document. And then we were finally able to work on the project together.

And I started by telling Zach what I wanted for the music for World 1. I said...

"World 1 is a sewer system. The vibe is slightly mysterious and spooky, but with an air of hope and excitement. Perhaps you could incorporate or take inspiration from sounds of running water, dripping water, rats, chains, etc."

And then, a little while later, he came back with the first song. I liked it, but it wasn't quite right.

But then I remembered something else that Austin told me. That making music is actually a very iterative process.

He said: "I often will say, 'Assume that what I send you first is not going to be it.' Because how we'll get it is in the iterative process of you reacting to a piece of music. And I just come up with literally anything, and then that becomes our flag on the map that you can go, 'Actually, two clicks west and one south.' So we start to build up data on what that means. That's the iterative process."

So with that in mind, I wrote back to Zach and told him exactly what I didn't like about that song. I told him that it was a bit too clubby, like high tempo and energetic with these loud and harsh drums. Those are kind of distracting and cognitively overwhelming, which is not good when you're trying to learn game mechanics or solve puzzles.

I also thought it was still a bit too dark and moody, and I wanted something more light and optimistic to fit the cartoony characters and kid-friendly gameplay.

And so Zach said, "Okay, on it," and came back a little while later with a second piece.

This was perfect. It was exactly what I was looking for. It's moody and evocative, but there's still an air of hope and fun and playfulness. And it has a great beat, but that blends into the background, letting you focus your mind on the puzzles.

This version was just great.

I had, as they say, no notes, and so it just went straight into the game. And now I simply could not imagine this game without this wonderful music. I feel like this music makes the game better than it actually is, if that makes sense.

And so this process was a huge lesson for me. I learnt so much about collaborating with other people.

I mean, for one, I realised that I don't have to make everything myself. It's okay to let other people into the creative process, and they will surely contribute something better than I could ever make for myself.

Number two, I don't need to be able to speak the same creative language as an artist. I can just tell them what vibe I'm going for, and it's up to them to translate that into music or artwork or whatever.

And three, they're probably not going to get it perfect the first time they do it, and that is just okay. Make sure you bake revisions into your contract, give as clear feedback as possible about what you don't like, and then hope that they'll get it on the second, third, fourth, or fifth time.

And so this experience was invaluable, and it really helped me when I was trying to commission something for my other placeholder, the Steam Capsule Art.

The Artwork

Yes, I am more of an artist than I am a musician, but the Steam Capsule Art is so important to get right. This is the YouTube thumbnail of game development. It has to stand out in a crowd of other games. It has to look fantastic and appealing and exciting, and I just didn't feel like I could do that myself.

This time I called upon a great 3D artist called Grayson Evans, who makes these utterly adorable, toy-like, Funko Pop models in Blender. And he's also done promo artwork for Devolver and box arts for games like Love 3 and Skatebird.

So I reached out and we agreed to work together.

This time I had a much clearer vision of what I wanted. I wanted the cover to be exciting and dynamic, and to show off the two main characters, Uni and Magnus. And I was also able to share some things that were inspirational to me, including the box art for Super Mario Bros. 2, the Fez box by Brian Lee O'Malley, and the box for the new Braid remaster.

Just like before, the first stab wasn't quite right for me. The proportions felt off and the design wasn't quite right. Uni's head is supposed to be like an old CRT monitor, and Magnus is supposed to be a real chunky boy.

But as I learnt from my dealing with Zack, all I had to do was offer my feedback and ask for another stab. And so we went through a few different iterations, with Grayson making drafts in Blender and me pointing out changes, until we got something I was pretty happy with.

Now unlike the music, I was able to take the artwork and kind of work on it myself. There were things I wanted to change just to put my own personal spin on it.

So I pulled the character away from the background with some more contrasting colours, I moved some elements around and I added some smoke and sparks to Uni's wheel to make it look a bit more dynamic and exciting.

These are all things that Grayson could totally have done, but I was happy to do them myself to put my own personal spin on it.

And so overall I think it turned out really nicely. Definitely a lot better than the original capsule art. I think it makes the game pop, it makes it stand out, and I'm excited to put it on the Steam store page and have it shown to the world.

Demo Time

So now I really am ready for Steam Next Fest. I've got a demo with some professional music, and a store page with a professional capsule art.

Now I wanted to make sure the demo was all grand before putting it on Steam, so about a month before the Next Fest I put it on itch.io to get it in front of a few people. Unfortunately itch decided to feature the game on the home page for about a week, and so the game received 10,000 downloads. Which is definitely more than I was bargaining for. Oopsie!

So I got a lot of feedback and bugs before Next Fest even began, but crucially I found out that the Mac version just did not work and crashed in all sorts of bizarre ways. I don't quite know how to fix it and so decided to just focus exclusively on Windows for the Next Fest launch, and I'll look into Mac and Linux versions for the actual game launch. Sorry about that.

And so now I really am ready, and with four weeks to go before Next Fest I submitted the game to Steam and Valve... rejected it.

Okay so there are game files in the depot, but they're not live on the default branch. Right. Sorry. Confusing.Let me try again.

Three weeks to go, I submitted the game again, and Valve rejected it again. Okay this time I accidentally uploaded the Mac version instead of the Windows build. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Okay let me change that.

Two weeks to go, I submitted the build again, and... failed. Again. Three times in a row? Is Valve gonna send me a t-shirt or something for that?

Okay so this time I had set the launch option to be mindovermagnet.exe, but I didn't mention that the exe is in a subfolder called momdemo and so the Steam client can't find it. Urgh. Okay.

One week to go. Holy moly this is getting close. I submitted for the fourth time and this time it was accepted. Thank god. That was a bit squeaky bum time there.

Phew, I'm not messing with that thing again. Even though there are things I would like to change in the demo, I'm just keeping it as it is. I'm not changing that again. And so now all I have to do is wait for Next Fest to begin.

Next Fest Begins

So it's a week later, June 10th at 6pm. Next Fest has officially started. I loaded up the website, hit refresh, and then found a massive list of games. I scrolled down, and down, and down. Okay, where is my game? Let me check the puzzle tab. Okay, puzzle platformers? Not here. Nope.

Ah, finally. Magnus, hello.

Yes, this is the thing about Next Fest. I mean, for June's event there were around 1,800 demos to play, and more than 300 of them were tagged as puzzle games. And so in a crowd of Tactical Breach Wizards, I Am Your Beast, a Riven remake, Arranger, and a new Crashlands game, it's pretty hard to stand out. And it can feel pretty demoralising to see your game hidden underneath a massive stack of, let's be honest, much, much better games.

So did anyone play my game? Well, actually, yes.

Despite all of the competition, a whopping 9,640 people played the demo, which I'm really pleased with, and that resulted in an extra 3,961 wishlists, which is fantastic. I'm now heading into launch with over 40,000 wishlists, mostly thanks to all of you.

The game even got picked up by some websites and YouTube videos, which was really cool to see. But even more important than all of that, I got loads of feedback.

Across Twitter, YouTube comments, emails, Discord messages, Steam forum posts, and itch.io comments, I received hundreds of pieces of feedback, as well as bug reports, and ideas, and feature requests.

The overall sentiment is that people generally liked the game, but just felt like the demo was a bit too short, and the puzzles on offer were overall a bit too easy.

But I'm fine with that, because I know that the full game will just naturally address both of those problems.

Feedback

Now in terms of the more nitty gritty feedback, well, I created a spreadsheet where I could list every piece of feedback that I received. I could then file it into a category like bug, or idea, or accessibility. I could give it a description. I could decide how much I agreed with the feedback from one to five. And then, perhaps most importantly of all, I counted the number of instances of seeing this feedback.

Now, sure, there were probably much better ways to do this, like a form or a subreddit where people can vote things up and down. But the one thing I did like about this is that people were generally not biased by seeing feedback from other people. So if twenty people told me the exact same thing, they were saying it independently of each other. So I kinda knew that it was something worth addressing.

So what were the most common pieces of feedback? Well, the number one piece of feedback is that Uni, the main character, moves too slowly. In some levels that require running back and forth across the screen, it can be pretty boring to just slowly perambulate from left to right and back again.

And you know what? I do agree.

I mean, it's no coincidence that I have a secret run button when playing in debug mode. I've just hesitated to change it because changing Uni's speed would break several puzzles. But I learnt this lesson in the previous video. Sometimes you just have to take the difficult decision, put in the work, and fix the thing.

So I upped Uni's max speed from nine to about eleven. That's pixels per second, maybe? I don't actually know what that number is. But that's a 20% speed increase, and I think it does the job. I just now need to go through the whole game and tweak things to stop you from breaking puzzles with your new max speed.

Up next, a large number of people were confused about whether or not they needed to take Magnus with them at the end of this puzzle. Fair enough.

So I changed his dialogue and had Uni squeeze through a small gap, which I've previously telegraphed as being too tight to take Magnus through.

So this level, which I've talked about a lot in a previous video, actually just does not make sense anymore, I don't think. It has gone from being surprisingly difficult to being so simple that multiple people said it breaks the flow of the game.

So I'm gonna either move it, or just pull it from the game entirely.

But then, you know what the next most common piece of feedback was about? A completely trivial, unimportant, background water dropping animation. So many people thought that the low framerate animation looked off.

Like a lot of people.

Same with the completely pointless nuts and bolts. I got a lot of feedback about them, like how they should make a sound when they hit things.

And while both of these would normally be extremely low down on my list of things to fix, go on then. I've changed the water dropping animation, and now the nuts and bolts make sound.

And look, maybe this is because when you ask people to provide feedback, it's sometimes just a lot easier to point at and describe trivial background things like water dropping rather than more general high concept stuff like level flow or difficulty.

Or maybe it's because the demo is just at a level where it is overall fine, maybe even kinda good, and that the only thing to really talk about now is tiny trivial background animations. I will happily take that.

My Next Fest Experience

And so, with that said, that was my Steam Next Fest experience.

And the question is, would I recommend it? Yes. Because even though it was pretty demoralising to see my game hidden under a pile of hundreds and hundreds of amazing indie games - and let's be honest, my game would be hidden even more if I wasn't a YouTube guy with a million subscribers - despite that, Next Fest still was worth it.

Because for one thing, I got loads of fantastic feedback from a wide range of people, all of which will help improve the game. Plus submitting the game to Next Fest felt like a practice launch for the actual game. I got to figure out all of the weird quirks of Steamworks, and so the actual real launch should be a lot more smooth.

And perhaps most importantly of all, it just gave me a really strict deadline to hit. It forced me to get a big chunk of the game ready, polished, and presentable.

And so I'm actually in a pretty good place. I'm not going to hit the July or August deadline I mentioned in the previous video, sorry, but the game really will be done in the next few months.

So hopefully on the next episode of Developing we will talk about the final, final stages of game development. I hope you will join me.