I'm just about ready to tag in the next 2 developers for the penultimate week of Season 2 on Playdate so thought I'd take a few minutes to scribble down some things I learned from the last week!

You can't please everybody

This one might come across as arrogant or unsympathetic but bear with me... I'm the kind of developer that wants to answer every message on every platform and I'd say that constant checking and reading has been a bit draining over the past week (I also recognise it's a privilege too to have so many people playing that care!). I have taken a lot of feedback into consideration and rolled out two patches so far with some bug fixes and tweaks to the game.

But at some stage I came to the conclusion that whilst I will listen to all feedback, I can't please everybody...and that's ok! Feedback is a blessing (It's so much worse when it's silent) but there are some things that I will disagree with (also ok) and some changes I will be reluctant to make (this is ok too...) and whilst it's easy to concentrate on the negative feedback, there has been so much support which I'm very grateful for! For now, I will keep looking and listening and taking feedback into consideration but I want to find a balance between this game being faithful whilst obviously being playable/enjoyable...I think we're pretty much there!

Testing is really important

For the release of Shadowgate PD I sent a build out about half way through the process to a few close colleagues in the community. I took a bunch of feedback into consideration and it was really helpful! I then had some feedback from Panic at various points near the end of the process which again, super helpful!

But I can't help but have some regrets that I could have (and probably should have) taken more time to run more testing (even some in person). Mostly it would have pointed to the fact that the very first puzzle is an absolute stinker and I would have relented a bit in the authenticity to the original and put a hint in earlier.

For future developments, you better believe I'm going to get people to play whilst eagerly watching over their shoulder! It's a good learning.

This community is the best

I say this all the time but it's so true. This feels like launching something to a huge group of your buddies and so many people have been so kind, patient and supportive. Maybe one day I'll launch games for "bigger" platforms and I know for a fact I will feel far more alone than I do when I launch Playdate games. 

I'll be honest, I have saved screengrabs of some of the nicest feedback on the Discord and I will really genuinely cherish this forever. It's been such a whirlwind week but the chat on the Discord channel has been so constructive and positive and I'm always grateful to be part of it.

Maybe I'll just make Playdate games forever...

This is a dream come true

Gratitude is always key and I never want to forget that I always dreamed about making games...and now I am!

The Playdate has allowed me to become a real life game developer and taking time to pause and reflect makes me realise that this is sort of like immortality...we've made an official remake for one of the best known and original point-and-click adventures and that's really an amazing thing to say!

I'm looking forward to working on some new stuff (And some more remakes of old stuff to learn new platforms) but the last two years have been such a cool learning and growth journey and I never want to take this for granted!

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the next two games! 

Peace and love,

PG