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Butterscotch in 2015
bscotchAdam
Administrator, Moderator, Tester Posts: 399 Developer
Hey everyone! It's awfully damn quiet around here, which is no surprise since y'all have just recovered from the holidays and we haven't done ANYTHING INTERESTING. Well, nothing new, anyway. So I thought I'd take a moment to let you know what we'll be up to this year.
New Payment Model
I wrote up a well-received post on the shittiness that is free-to-play, the in-house discussion of which led us to decide on a different financial model for all upcoming games. For mobile, at least, we'll be doing Free-to-try (even with Crashlands) with a single in-app purchase (the "ButterUp") to unlock the full game. We plan to release Crashlands on PC as well, and exactly how this model will work with e.g. Steam is unknown, but if possible we'll be doing the same thing there.
BscotchID and iOS
A mere week before the end of the year we finished BscotchID version 0.1.0 and published it in our Android games. This included changing the payment model of all games (save Quadropus) to the free-to-try model. Our first task for the year is to port our four major titles (Quadropus, Towelfight, Roid Rage, and Flop Rocket) + BscotchID over to iOS. That platform has never done well for us, but we love our players too much to leave them out, so this is still top priority. With BscotchID (and ButterUp), synced game progress will be accessible on both platforms, so you could leave your Droid at home and pick up right where you were on your friend's iPhone! We're still making improvements to BscotchID to make it a more usable and useful thing, so expect to see some of those in a few weeks.
Crashlands
We've made it into several "Most-anticipated games of 2015" lists for this thing, and we have changed our dev schedule to make this the next thing we do. Seth has already been implementing TONS of changes and bugfixes, many suggested by you all during the alpha test, and the game has changed a lot. The major missing component right now is story, but we're designing that system RIGHT NOW and will start developing it soon. We're still hoping to launch the game around March, but we won't launch it until it's ready. The beta test will be coming soon, and will be much larger than the closed alpha. Expect a continuous stream of updates on Crashlands over the coming weeks and months.
Narwhal Online
BscotchID fills a major hole in our studio, which is that we needed something to link our games together in a useful and interesting way. But there is still something missing that is even more important: actual multiplayer games. Many of you tried out our 48hr prototype of Narwhal Online (NO) and enjoyed it a lot, as simple as it was. After Crashlands, we'll be building out this game as the bridge to true multiplayer (as currently envisioned, NO will still be a single-player game with community-level features). Sam began writing out the background story for NO a few weeks ago, and the game started to turn into something epic. This caused us to abandon the plan to develop it before Crashlands, but also means that it will be a way cooler and more expansive game when we get to it. As another bridge to multiplayer, we're entertaining the idea of game-jamming an asynchronous multiplayer game at the end of the month. We'll see what happens there, but we'll make it available for BscotchID players for a while if we can pull it off.
THE FUTURE
So what happens after that? WHO KNOWS! The development, launch, and post-launch patching of Crashlands and Narwhal Online will easily take us into the middle of next year. We have no idea what those game launches will bring, but we're extremely excited about this coming year of Butterscotch. We believe it will be the thing that gets us into the spotlight and, if we're lucky, shows that we can make this operation a financially stable one for the next few years. All we know is that we want to keep moving towards more multiplayer game mechanics, but we have a ton of game prototypes and half-formed ideas sitting on the backburner waiting for action. So I suppose we'll decide when the time comes!
New Payment Model
I wrote up a well-received post on the shittiness that is free-to-play, the in-house discussion of which led us to decide on a different financial model for all upcoming games. For mobile, at least, we'll be doing Free-to-try (even with Crashlands) with a single in-app purchase (the "ButterUp") to unlock the full game. We plan to release Crashlands on PC as well, and exactly how this model will work with e.g. Steam is unknown, but if possible we'll be doing the same thing there.
BscotchID and iOS
A mere week before the end of the year we finished BscotchID version 0.1.0 and published it in our Android games. This included changing the payment model of all games (save Quadropus) to the free-to-try model. Our first task for the year is to port our four major titles (Quadropus, Towelfight, Roid Rage, and Flop Rocket) + BscotchID over to iOS. That platform has never done well for us, but we love our players too much to leave them out, so this is still top priority. With BscotchID (and ButterUp), synced game progress will be accessible on both platforms, so you could leave your Droid at home and pick up right where you were on your friend's iPhone! We're still making improvements to BscotchID to make it a more usable and useful thing, so expect to see some of those in a few weeks.
Crashlands
We've made it into several "Most-anticipated games of 2015" lists for this thing, and we have changed our dev schedule to make this the next thing we do. Seth has already been implementing TONS of changes and bugfixes, many suggested by you all during the alpha test, and the game has changed a lot. The major missing component right now is story, but we're designing that system RIGHT NOW and will start developing it soon. We're still hoping to launch the game around March, but we won't launch it until it's ready. The beta test will be coming soon, and will be much larger than the closed alpha. Expect a continuous stream of updates on Crashlands over the coming weeks and months.
Narwhal Online
BscotchID fills a major hole in our studio, which is that we needed something to link our games together in a useful and interesting way. But there is still something missing that is even more important: actual multiplayer games. Many of you tried out our 48hr prototype of Narwhal Online (NO) and enjoyed it a lot, as simple as it was. After Crashlands, we'll be building out this game as the bridge to true multiplayer (as currently envisioned, NO will still be a single-player game with community-level features). Sam began writing out the background story for NO a few weeks ago, and the game started to turn into something epic. This caused us to abandon the plan to develop it before Crashlands, but also means that it will be a way cooler and more expansive game when we get to it. As another bridge to multiplayer, we're entertaining the idea of game-jamming an asynchronous multiplayer game at the end of the month. We'll see what happens there, but we'll make it available for BscotchID players for a while if we can pull it off.
THE FUTURE
So what happens after that? WHO KNOWS! The development, launch, and post-launch patching of Crashlands and Narwhal Online will easily take us into the middle of next year. We have no idea what those game launches will bring, but we're extremely excited about this coming year of Butterscotch. We believe it will be the thing that gets us into the spotlight and, if we're lucky, shows that we can make this operation a financially stable one for the next few years. All we know is that we want to keep moving towards more multiplayer game mechanics, but we have a ton of game prototypes and half-formed ideas sitting on the backburner waiting for action. So I suppose we'll decide when the time comes!
0
Comments
I only managed to play a little bit of NO due to schedule conflicts, but it was awesome, and I can't wait to see it blossom into something massive. It's one of those silly little games with so much potential (like most of what you make, actually) and I really am hoping to see it take off this year.
So much excitement, hoping everything comes to fruition for y'all.
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News, EVEN BETTER NEWS.
Good luck to you guys!
I also spend my time editing my own posts because it's a nice community here.
I also spend my time editing my own posts because it's a nice community here.