Mr Nibbles Alpha 8

Well its been exactly 95 days since my last Alpha release of my mobile game Mr Nibbles Forever which is far too long. I apologise to people who have been asking me for a new version. I took on a few paid freelance projects a few months ago and they took up a whole bunch of time then I decided to take a full time position up in Perth a month ago which drastically cut down my Mr Nibbles development time sadly.

If you follow my public Trello development board however you can see that I have been working in the intervening time, just not as fast as the earlier development:

In total there is something like 70 hours worth of my time that has gone into this release:

Although 70 hours doesnt sound like all that much I think that this release contains more changes than any other. As hinted in the last release and other posts, I now have an artist on the project, Woody Stables who has helped totally transform the in-game backgrounds, the outfits, the effects and many other aspects of the game:

So now there are 13 different outfits in the game which you can win by spinning the wheel. They all look different and awesome but still stick to the same cutesy Mr Nibbles art style. Some of them come with cool and interesting effects as the below video shows:

You will also notice (if you have your sound turned on) that the game also now has a whole bunch more sound effects. That's entirely thanks to Joe Watkins who I recruited to help out with the audio on the game. I think the audio really lifts the game up and adds so much more value to the different outfits and is often an overlooked but valuable part of games making.

The game really has started to take its final shape in my opinion but there is the problem. At the moment it has mostly only been my opinion of the game which has shaped its development. I have had a few testers play the game throughout its development and im very grateful for that but now its getting to the point where I need to test in earnest.

I am also very aware of the fact that I need to concentrate on marketing the game much more. At the moment the game is only really visible to a small number of people, people who read this blog, people who are members of the facebook page and people who I have met and talked to about the game. If I want the game to succeed and not get swallowed on the App Store then I need to step up my game in that department.

I have been doing a lot of reading about indie game marketing and have discovered some valuable resources. Its a massive daunting task but I have spoken to some other people who have done it and they have given me some great advice which has helped immensely.

So the next few weeks for me will be less about development and more about testing the game and building the things to help promote the game (websites, trailers, presskit etc).

If you would like to try the game out then as usual just send me an email if you are on iOS or send a request to join this google group if you are on Android and ill hook you up!