Daily Report - 07/02/2024 (Patreon)

New walls, Next Fest, Tutorials

New walls

We already had updated our interactables, and as part of that same order, we got new walls and torch sprites as well, which we implemented yesterday. These new, chonky walls are definitely an improvement in terms of our overall art style as well.

Tutorials

After our first day of Next Fest, the biggest issue was the uncertainty from our players on what to do, and what everything is. We were able to solve this pretty quickly by adding more tutorial triggers related to the different interactables.

Next Fest

Fest And then the thing we were all very much looking forward to, the numbers of Next Fest. I’m going to be honest. They suck. No better way to say it, we got 36 wishlists from our first day of Next Fest. This is less than if we upload a devlog. This is 7x less as the first day performance of Forge Industry.

Are we doomed? No, but it definitely shows us what our focus should be, and more importantly, how it shouldn’t be on too much on SoE.

As for why we have this low score, I am actually not entirely certain. It could be the genre, weaker main capsule, lackluster store page (although I think that’s ok), or simply the Steam algorithm not showing us as much. This is something we just have to wait and see, how will the next days of Next Fest go, and is there anything we can still do improve this.

What’s next?
Now that we’ve done all the panic updates for Next Fest, I think it’s important we take a step back for a day or. Hell, I need one at least, focusing on other parts of the BiteMe business, letting the feedback come in, and then regrouping after the Next Fest. We still have plenty of stuff to prepare anyway with the interns coming soon and Guild Architect gaining more focus.

“Desperation fuels determination, and determination fuels success.”

Marnix Wyns

Producer & Creative Director @ BiteMe Games