Developer Diaries: The Unknown (#4)

Within the framework of the “developer diaries” format, we publish the fourth note of the ComonGames team. In it, ComonGames Chief Operating Officer Sergey Ermolov told about how the team was preparing for the release of the quest The Unknown, as well as about the first results of the project.

Our debut project, or rather its first episode, we launched on two platforms at once — Steam and NVIDIA SHIELD — on September 22, 2016.

The release was originally scheduled for summer 2016 — July. Then it was postponed to August, but eventually postponed until September.

The main reason for the delay is the work on one of the most important parts of the project — the voice acting of the characters. It took a very long time. We sawed it together with the whole team — from the CEO to the producer. Some of the guys read and translated the texts, someone sent them for recording, then the sound engineer processed and then gave them to the engine for screwing.

Without voice acting, we could not have a release trailer: a very important thing today, in fact, the cover of the project. The video was sawed “in the night” before launch.

The last days before the launch, we no longer worked remotely, but almost all together, in the same space. A couple of days before X-Day (we went out immediately not only on Steam, but also on NVIDIA SHIELD TV), our project manager, Artem Netyagin and our producer Alexey Surkov flew to the capital. We rented an apartment in one of the sleeping areas of the city for two weeks, where we organized a headquarters.

The last month of development was extremely stressful also because the team practically did not sleep, but the work was in full swing.

Before the launch, we constantly had something buggy in Unity, servers were falling, including the Unitikov Asset Server, which had to be raised three times a day, bugs in the game code were caught, but still not fixed, the voice acting was convulsively corrected … and time was running inexorably. The general state of consciousness painted the following picture:

Yes, it seemed that everything fell on us in an instant, normal postproduction, as we planned it — alas — did not work out. Calmly upload the game to Steam, prepare press materials and tune in to systematic work with media platforms and audiences (that is, calmly work on marketing), we have not been able to. The producer, of course, did something for this. But, you know, the efforts of one person were not enough. Everyone was engaged in producing and marketing again. Maybe it’s just a feature of indie?

Literally in the last days before the launch, it turned out that we completely forgot that the maximum weight of the application on Google Play (NVIDIA SHIELD is built on Android) cannot exceed 150 MB. Our distribution kit weighed 3 GB. I had to fix it in a hurry.

So on the last day they signed the source code and uploaded it to Google. I had to test it right there.

And so many things were done.

What is the outcome?

We did it! We made it!

At 20.00 Moscow time (as promised for the third time), the long-awaited game appeared on Steam. And it worked.

The RELEASE THE GAME button was pressed to general jubilation. The moment is witnessed by a couple of sips of champagne. Then the work continued.

Simultaneously with Steam, on which literally in the first minutes of sales we received the Featured status and got into “Popular” all over the world, sales have opened on 11 more digital retail sites, on NVIDIA SHIELD and in the new game store from Mail.ru .

The first reviews began to appear quite quickly. The best part is that the game was warmly welcomed. Now the project has an 86% rating on Steam.

The first reviews pleasantly surprised us, because for the first — debut — project, in which a particle of the soul of each of us was invested, the result in the form of praise from customers is the highest reward for work.

In the comments, of course, there were also questions about the bugs found, as well as questions about the release of the continuation of the game and future plans. We promptly raised the Support Center on our website to solve technical problems, created discussions on Steam and on some Internet sites where players could ask us their questions.

In the first days after the launch, we were engaged in bug fixing, marketing and, of course, communication with the players: this slightly diluted the daily routine, but the launch only added to our work. By the way, the game instantly appeared on torrent trackers. Success?

What are your immediate plans?

Release of a mobile version for Android and iOS versions, as well as optimization. Then release on Unix and Mac OS. We are considering the possibility of porting the game to the console.

The second part will be. Not as soon as I would like, but it will be. The plot will be reworked taking into account what was heard from the community. By the way, it will be written by the famous science fiction writer Sergey Chekmaev!

P.S. I would like to express my gratitude for the support and expectation of the community, which, despite the transfer, did not throw rotten tomatoes at us and waited for the release.

Special thanks to the editors of App2Top for their support and the opportunity to write this material. Huge respect to Leonid Sirotin, Serezha Babayev, Tanya Vikulova and, of course, Lesha Sobolev. Guys, you have laid the foundation, we hope, on the great successful path of our wonderful ComonGames team.

PS Today, October 28, at 20.00 Moscow time on Steam, we make a big discount on the project — 40%, and at the same time we fill in a new build with buns, or rather, with pumpkins.