developer archivos - Ghost Creative Studio

Beacon of Neyda Kickstarter now LIVE!

Hi everyone! Christian here! One of the big days has arrived, our Kickstarter campaign is now live!.

The campaign

First of all, from the following link you will be able to go to the Kickstarter campaign. Remember that if you share and spread the word, it also helps us a lot.

What about rewards?

Rewards range from Early Bird discounts! to access to our previous versions of the game or the current versions with exclusive access.
You can also leave your mark or messages within the game among other rewards.

Why Kickstarter?

If our Kickstarter is successful, we will be able to carry out the base vision we have for Beacon of Neyda, without major worries. But once our base funding goal is reached, any additional funds will be used to expand upon the base game through stretch goals. These come in the form of additional features that will enrich the gameplay, giving players more to experience, expanded lore, enhanced art and sound design, and additional modes that we wouldn’t have the means to create otherwise.

If the kickstarter fails, the game will still be made but with less content, reducing the players’ experience to a certain extent and we cannot guarantee its presence on consoles other than Xbox.

Kickstarter campaign

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Understanding video game development: Wishlists

In a world governed by algorithms, the success or failure of a game can depend on a simple numerical value.

This article seeks to explain to both developers and players the importance of the accumulated amount of wishlists on Steam and other similar platforms.

An sea of games

With the number of games available growing year by year, having a good game is no longer enough and standing out from the crowd becomes a priority for all developers. There are many variables that influence the success of a game (as well as its failure) but we are going to try to understand one of the most basic ones.

Wishlists

What does this mean for the player? In simple terms, it is a means that allows you to make a reminder about a game that you visited and were interested in, which you could add to a list of possible games to buy in the future, either because that game has not yet been released or it is simply waiting for a better time to buy it (discounts, seasonal events, etc.) and you don’t want to lose it among this sea of games.

You can find this feature not only on Steam but also on other platforms.

What does this mean for the developer? It is a preview of the interest that your game can generate, a statistic that can be used to calculate possible future sales or even a number that allows you to negotiate with publishers. The number of wishlist that a game has can influence its launch and is a highly valued number.

It also has effects on the different platforms, but we are going to focus on Steam, a high number of wishlists ensure that the platform promotes the game in a “natural” way, it also allows it to be positioned more frontally at events when it is shown on the platform. “If you have many wishlists it is because many are interested and if many are interested, it will be shown to more people.”

The logic seems simple, but it isn’t all that matters, the moment and how those wishlists are achieved also affect, it should be noted that this is between “myth and reality”, because Steam assures that it is not a real factor, but according to the experience of many developers it seems so.

Let’s take a practical example, an indie game may have “100.000 wishlists” but they were collected over 5 years and during the last 3 months before launching, only “5.000 wishlists” were added, the “momentum” of the game was lost and most of those wishlists are “cold…” as a result the launch may not be as effective and that game is in danger of not having much scope.

In the next video Steam explains a little more how it handles the visibility of games.

The reality

As we saw, for developers the importance of players wishlists becomes essential and they are affected much more by their use.

As players, I believe there is a certain responsibility to help the games we like or are interested in by clicking a simple button, the cost is free and we can help make that game a success.

As developers we have to understand that “wishlists” are important, but it is only one factor among many, being aware that possibly only between 10% to 30% of those wishlists become sales (with a good launch) and that hopefully throughout the life of the game we cover 50% of the total of those wishlists. There are always special cases that break with these statistics and sell much more or the conversion rate is higher but they are just that… special cases.

But then, does having many wishlists ensure success, yes or no?

No, but it does give a good base and opportunities to each game that is presented on the platform, let’s say that the greater the number of wishlists, this becomes a beacon of light in this sea of games to stand out, if they are more recent the light It will be strong, if they are very old the light will be much dimmer…

And speaking of beacon, have you already added our game Beacon of Neyda to your wishlist? No? Well, this is your chance.

Yes, I know, it was a very smooth transition, I hope you found this article of interest, I invite you to follow us on our social networks and be sure to see what other things we have on our blog, until the next article!

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Dev Diary 1 – Road Map – Pixi Poxi

Hi everyone, welcome to the first Dev Diary of Pixi Poxi, my name is Christian and I will be in charge of telling you about this game.

To begin with, Pixi Poxi Autorunner Lab is a game that was born several years ago in the past when Ghost Creative Studio was just starting out, but it was forgotten after the studio focused on other projects. But personally, for me, it was always a small passion project that I knew I would revive at some point…

Road Map

And that moment has come during this year, first with a proof of concept built for mobile and then with an improved version, designed for PC with a demo to see what the public thought. In general, the feedback was good, which reignited my interest in bringing to life the game that I had imagined back in 2019.

This roadmap shows what I have planned for the game. Please note that the entire studio is currently working full-time on our main game, Beacon of Neyda, a side-scrolling strategy game where you have to survive waves of enemies while creating your base and exploring a post-apocalyptic world. Therefore, I am developing Pixi Poxi in my free time. My idea is to slowly add the missing test chambers and conversations between levels to add a narrative guide to the game.

Early Access

For the reasons mentioned above, I will start with an early access, which will be available in the coming weeks, as I am finalizing the last details such as achievements and Steam integrated elements in the game.

Test Chamber 4

After the release of the early access, I will start working on the new test chamber, 10 new “electrifying” levels with a more industrial setting. At the current pace of work, it will probably take me a couple of month for each new update depending on various factors. Ideally, I would have more time to work on this project and add someone else to help. Therefore, I am announcing that I generated a Patreon for the studio is available. The focus is simple: to complement our studio maintenance expenses and concentrate more on having time to develop our games. Everyone who joins will have their names in the game credits and a game key when it is released.

And that’s all for this first dev diary. If you want to talk about ideas for the game or see more things about the development, I invite you to our community!

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

Follow us in our Discord community for news and development progress.

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Beacon of Neyda Dev Diary #4

Christian here! Hi! Today I bring you a summary of how development is coming and what has happened in these couple of months since our last dev diary.

Development Status

Our last dev diary was in December where we announced that we were going to stop development during the holidays and that we would return in 2023.

But what has happened since then? the answer is a bit complicated, we have returned to the development of the game but very slowly, we are still dealing with some funding issues but the biggest problem has been the bureaucracy. I’m not going to bore you, but in the last month and a half we’ve had to deal with a ton of paperwork, taxes, and other things to get our studio to accept funding for game development.

We’re optimistic about how the game will progress from now on but putting that aside, where have we progressed in the game?
Well, we have made progress in the creation of more underground sections, while we have improved our lighting system (the day and night cycle) that we had to deactivate for a while. Among other minor design tweaks and tweaks to the pre alpha build we have on sample. And speaking of pre-alpha…

Thank you so much!

Thanks to a fellow indie developer we had a great validation moment for our game. We know the concept is good, but other than a few closed tests or small event shows up to now the game hadn’t been shown to the general public, and that changed with the Splatter Cat video. Despite having several bugs and being Such an early version of the game, he played our pre alpha version and we had very good feedback both from him and from his community, something that has helped us a lot. But since then he has not been the only youtuber interested in trying our game and we also thank Dan Field and Only Indies among others for showing interest.

So thank you very much everyone!

Public demo?

After getting some extra attention and many questions, we still can’t secure a public demo, yes we are going to work towards that goal but we can’t announce a date yet, thanks also to the support of the new followers, the people who joined to the community and that he has added the game to his wishlist. It honestly means a lot to us…

And that’s all for this month.