[SynthLaser] Devlog #4 - First look of the game

Hello!

This is the first look of the game so far. I finally have a functional build, although I have not developed much. I am simply following a tutorial for this project until now. I have much more extensively worked on market research and game design, which I can share here.

The last devlog was on 17th November, 215 days, or 7 months ago. A lot has been happening under the surface since. I have decided to make this a steam game, and after researching the steam market, this will now be a rhythm game instead of a maze game. This way the lasers can be directly involved in the gameplay rather than be a visualization/reskin of existing games. With my team, we have worked on and refined the new design of the game.

The game is also being developed in Godot now, as Unreal is overkill for this type of game. (I know, I am switching boats too rapidly to specialize. I had hoped to specialize in Unreal or Unity, but both are too heavy, and other developers were recommending Godot. Ironically, I am still looking for jobs in Unreal instead.)

I have discussed a design draft here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rhythmgames/comments/1kouo73/design_survey_rhythm_mania...

During this time, I also continued building my community presence, and studied more things. For instance, I took a production course by HomeTeamGameDev after which I was able to outline the project in Trello, and built a team. I have not been able to stay up to date on Trello, as despite trying to build slack time into it, it was a very idealistic view of the situation.

I joined a lot of subreddits and discord servers for developers, marketers, and the potential audience for this game. However, I am more of a lurker, and still need to interact with these communities I have hoarded.

For roughly 4 of these months, I was doing an internship in marketing, where I got to refine my marketing workflow and learn outreach. I also did my first collaboration since my graduation - https://sajjad-chandio.itch.io/bereft-home, a game made in one week, and optimized in one more week.

This project is taking much longer than I had hoped, I already missed the previous NextFest, and it looks like I won't make it to the coming one either. I have yet to make a steam page, as I have nothing to show on it, and its cost is pretty high in my local currency. I do have the funds now, but its really risky to purchase a page for a project that is going at a snail pace.

I have also actually mapped notes for this song in the current prototype, however, the web build is not friends with files, hence a map file cannot be used for now. Therefore I have uploaded a build of an older version where I am using randomly generated notes.

I intend to keep updating builds on this page to have test "screenings" to see if the design works until a steam page is up. Then I can continue testing here as well as steam for technical tests, bugs etc until a polished demo is ready. The demo will be both here on itch page as well as steam, but that will be the last share on itch. I intend for the remaining game to only be on steam, and at most, steam keys can be sold on this itch page.

I also finally watch the drama on game development that others had recommended: Kabhi Me Kabhi Tum. While it is more of a family drama, I suppose it does mention parts of the industry, including game jams, e-sports championships, jobs, businesses, investors, idea theft etc. It does sting that I have been "sitting" for what is now a year since graduation, with no real results until now. Even though, there are real results. I have uploaded 13 projects on itch since I started, and learnt a great deal about the industry, did an internship and have a well researched project.

This project is still going. Slowly, but I am still working on it here and there. I still don't know what will become of it.