amadeusgame

[amadeusgame]

Development Sidequest: The Mystery Game Jam

Back in February, I planned out my next several months to help stay on track for Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~Waltz to release this Fall. I had a good chunk of work planned for April:

Mechanics - prototype + implement all "Must-Have" new mechanics for the full game

Background Art - finish 1-2 new backgrounds (to avoid screwing up my wrists again drawing all of them at the last minute) (also because I learned that how I draw the backgrounds impacts how I write the scenes)

Sprite Art - finish 1-2 new sprites

Music - fully flesh out a placeholder track for 1-2 BGM pieces

Narrative - write first draft of all scenes through a certain point in the game (naturally these scenes will change when it comes time to implement, that's just how this goes)

Marketing - prepare + announce 100 Wishlists celebration; make + publish press kit

Which is a lot, but doable if I'm working at it consistently. I'm only working part-time, and Amadeus is  my "real" job, so to speak. Right?

Wellllllllll...... there's this little thing called the Mystery Game Jam.

Suffice it to say that I did not accomplish all of the above, but I DID write an entire mystery game. More below. Stay updated here: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

I heard about the jam, and thought back to my previous devlog where I discussed at length how doing other random projects when I was "supposed" to be working on Amadeus has been so valuable for me. I also felt that it would be wise to get more mystery writing experience doing something low-stakes and small-scope, to pull away from this single massive project for a bit and just work on the craft of writing. It would help me learn more about my own process. Also, it would be fun!

So I got a group of people together and gave myself the role of writing our game. I've had a ton of help brainstorming, solving plot issues, and generally improving things thanks to my teammates; the whole process has been collaborative (which is what makes game jams fun). However, I've been responsible for actually writing all of it.

As a result Amadeus had to get put on the backburner, because it turns out that brainstorming + outlining + coordinating + finalizing + writing-with-full-implementation-directions, a complete mystery story- that doesn't have a thousand plotholes- in a month, is a ton of work. Fun work! But a lot of it. As a result, what I actually accomplished from my April to-do list for Amadeus is closer to...

Prototyped "save/load" mechanic

Implemented mechanic that can create pauses mid-text-appearance for dramatic effect

Researched and sketched 1 new point-and-click background

Have sketches for 2 BGM pieces (but both need to be more fleshed out to be usable as placeholders)

Outlined draft of narrative for 1 new scene in the intro (but needs a lot more detail/workshopping)

Planned 100 Wishlists celebration (but didn't get everything ready to announce)

Made draft + format of press kit

Which is, honestly, still a decent chunk! I'll have to do some work readjusting next month's to-do list to account for the fact I'm a little behind, but it's reassuring to see that even in a month where most of my energy was dedicated to a side project, I still got a lot done.

This is where the portion of the devlog directly relevant to the game Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee draws to a close. That 100 wishlists celebration announcement will be coming next month, along with a separate announcement. Lots of news coming in May!

As always, all relevant links here: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame - I will also add our Mystery Jam game here for a bit when it comes out, so you all have something new to play! Check back after May 5, 10PM Pacific!

For the remainder of this log, I want to discuss the process of writing our Mystery Jam game. I have learned so much from it and it's been an incredibly rewarding (if, at times, difficult) process. Collaborations are such a completely different beast from solo projects.

Mystery Game Jam Retrospective

It's a bit strange to write a retrospective when the game jam isn't actually over yet, but my role is mostly finished and I've handed it off to our implementation guy who is hard at work. You're doing great, S1x. Keep it up!

I've done a ton of game jams in the past, but they were always weekend-long jams and I was always just doing audio for them. I've never done a month-long jam before, and I've never taken on a primary role that wasn't as a musician. This was a lot of firsts for me.

I truly believe that game jams don't teach you as much about game development as they teach you about project management. To actually finish a game, so many things have to happen that are all interdependent, and you have to figure out what to do first and who to talk to at what stage so it all somehow comes together on a super-strict deadline. This interdependency is even more apparent for mystery games, where it's fully expected that the player will be paying attention to clues all across text, visuals, and interface. You can't give a completely finalized asset list to artists until you know exactly what every aspect of your mystery will be, otherwise you'll end up forcing your icon artist to re-draw the same asset a bunch of times to match the tweaks you made to the story.

So the biggest obstacle in making this game was that we didn't reach the "details of mystery are completely finalized" stage until over halfway through the month, mostly because I kept putting it off (I'd overwhelmed myself by giving myself all this and also Amadeus homework). We also had to coordinate across time zones and work schedules which introduced additional delays. We got to that point eventually though! Notably, once I had figured out some important things...

This is a collaboration. I was trying to do too much big braining on my own at times when what I really needed to do was schedule a voice call with teammates and bounce ideas. Talking things out with our background artist in particular helped a lot with getting past some hurdles that were really not working.

I am not a writer who can design a mystery puzzle in a vacuum and then add characters as set dressing on top. Once I realized I was stuck, I decided to just start writing out the prologue scene to get a feel for the characters and setting; this forced me to create unique characters who had a reason to be there, and those reasons gave me ideas for the mystery. It turns out that designing a puzzle is a lot like solving a puzzle: if one angle isn't working, take a break and try another angle. You'll learn more about the puzzle, how it works, and eventually all that knowledge will come together and you'll figure it out.

This is a game jam game. This is (probably) not going to be anyone's magnum opus. This is going to be a very fun silly knockoff Ace Attorney game with a robot detective. I'm generally good at keeping a chill attitude for weekend-long game jams, but because we had a month I was taking it way too seriously at first.

Most importantly... it's not reasonable to write an entire new mystery from start to end in a month while also doing a ton of work on Amadeus and working part-time. So I eventually told myself it was OK to ignore everything else except work and the game jam for a while, and focus on this.

(...I also spent about 20 hours obsessively working on my Very Spoilery Ghost Trick ROMhack when I was overwhelmed, as a sort of escape. It was obvious that my brain was refusing to work on the game jam so I just let it do what it wanted for a few days. Sometimes the ADHD wins.)

Reaching that key point-- the point where all of the details were finalized and everyone knew exactly what needed to get done-- was a huge milestone. But even after that, I still had to actually write the words for all of it. Writing in the sense of "mapping out the major plot beats and details of the mystery," and writing in the sense of "actually writing, line-by-line, the text of the game along with implementation instructions" are completely different skillsets. I already knew this from my experience working on Amadeus, but I had to re-learn it here.

Fortunately, by the time I was sitting down writing words, our musician had written some total bangers for the game and I was able to listen to those to really set the tone for what I was writing. If a certain dialogue box cues the "totally-not-objection" theme, then the energy for those next few dialogue entries should be VERY high energy. Listening to that theme while writing made sure it matched! And once our player character artist had designed the MC, I was able to find that character's "voice" much more easily to match the energy of that character. The work of other teammates helped inspire me to do my own work, and have more fun doing it.

I really like doing these collaborations because it's fun to make something completely different than what I would make alone. I also like collaborating because there are certain changes I'm forced to make to my workflow in order to make life easier for my teammates. It forces me to be more organized. I have to do more pre-planning so I'm not forcing artists to revise their work 20 times, and so the implementation engineer only has to implement once with a few exceptions, and can easily swap out placeholder assets when those come in. Thinking ahead like this is a really good habit to get into in general! Even as a solo dev if I learn to make my own life easier in this way I will save myself the headache.

Will I learn that lesson? Most definitely not. But hopefully I'll take something away from this. For example, the awesome beautiful spreadsheet I made to format my scripts for implementation:

(I'm still not the easiest person to work with, though. I'm kind of bossy. While I do try to at least not be every artist's worst nightmare, it's definitely in everyone's best interest that my big major long-term project is a solo work.)

I'm excited to see how it all comes together in the very end. I'm excited to see what people think of it. Where, on the spectrum of "too obvious" to "moon logic," am I landing on average? Just how weird is the pacing of reveals? These are questions that a non-game-jam game would be able to answer in a playtesting/beta phase, but this is a game jam game, so you get what you get. Making it has been really fun. Look forward to it when it comes out! It will be posted by S1xplus, our implementation engineer. It should end up on my itch page as well.

Look out for ROBOT DETECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE AUTOMURDERATED INTERN (working title)!!

#Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #devlog #indie game dev #mystery game jam #mystery game writing

[amadeusgame]

April 22 Amadeus Progress Update

Last week's accomplishments:

Finalized mechanic that induces pauses mid-text-appearance. Now fully works and can be used for varying pause lengths.

(non-Amadeus) Did a ton of dialogue + narrative work for my team's Mystery Jam game. May mention this in the month's devlog because I've learned a lot about my writing process from it.

Progress on Amadeus was briefly paused because I was suddenly, violently possessed by the need to work more on my (extremely spoilery do not click unless you have beaten the game) ROMhack of Ghost Trick Phantom Detective. I started this hack 3 years ago, and it's now actually almost completely finished. Ghost Trick is a huge influence on Amadeus's mechanics--doing this hack actually informed how I built my text/portrait sprite system. It's also a banger so if you haven't already, you should play it.

(If this sounds like "I procrastinated," that's because I did, but I just wrote a devlog last month about how letting myself do random shit has helped in the long run. So I'm leaning into it.)

I will continue to post updates here at least weekly, in addition to a monthly longer development log.

Demo, discord server, and more: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

#misc updates #Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #indie game development #indie dev #indie game dev

[amadeusgame]

April 15 Amadeus Progress Update

Last week's accomplishments:

Sketched out new point-and-click background art

Prototyped mechanic that induces pauses mid-text-appearance (for dramatic pacing purposes) (currently works, but needs fine-tuning)

Narrative outline/first draft dialogue for 1 new scene

And made some more progress on the Mystery Jam game I'm working on with some friends, which is necessarily taking some time/energy away from Amadeus but is a very fun little collaboration.

I will continue to post updates here at least weekly, in addition to a monthly longer development log.

Demo, discord server, and more: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

#misc updates #Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #indie game development #indie dev #indie game dev

[amadeusgame]

April 9 Amadeus Progress Update

As my focus shifts back to development of the full game, now that the new demo release is behind me (and went much better than I expected) I'll be posting weekly short updates on how things are going.

From last week:

Implemented prototype of a Save+Load mechanic (works, but as-is, on load you must replay from the start of the scene you saved in) - this was the big "must-accomplish" for the week.

Started on 3 more BGM pieces.

Formatted & finished rough draft of press kit.

I also started work on a small group project for the Mystery Game Jam, which is not directly related to Amadeus but will give me more practice writing mystery. Development for Amadeus may take a slight backseat in the short term due to this, but in the long term it will greatly benefit from the extra experience in game development and writing.

Thanks for following the project! I will continue to post updates here at least weekly, in addition to a monthly longer development log.

Demo, discord server, and more: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

#misc updates #Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #indie game development #indie dev #indie game dev

[amadeusgame]

It seems Twitch clip embeds on Tumblr have some issues, as the videos don't appear to show up on mobile at all. I will try to put together a compilation YouTube upload at some point that will be easier to share across platforms.

In the meantime here are some screenshots:

And direct links:

Clip 1 | Clip 2 | Clip 3 | Clip 4

Transcription: "All of the art assets in [the game] are hand-drawn, and so for example, this-" [holds hand-drawn image up to the camera] "-is the background that you see here".

Recap of the Amadeus demo livestream:

Showed the hand-drawn art used as assets in game (see above clip; more below readmore!)

Full playthrough of the demo start-to-finish

Discussion of the development/writing process, and plans for the full episode

Talked at length about inspirations (Umineko, Higurashi, Ghost Trick)

No, that is not an overlay, I really did use an old MiniDV camcorder from 2004 hooked up to an A/V capture card as my webcam. I had to rewind it whenever I got to the end of the tape.

Missed the stream? Watch it here - Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee Demo Livestream & Art Expo

Play the demo - linktr.ee/amadeusgame

More clips below the cut!

Transcription: "Ta-da! In the flesh. But yeah, this notebook also has—I think it has my big braining theories... it does! It has my theories from my Umineko playthrough as well."

Transcription: "I think this was actually the first [sprite] that I inked. Yes, this was the first one that I inked. 'Cuz originally Amadeus's sprites were all just pencil—originally, everything was just pencil. And then what happened was I inked, I made the poster, and I inked the poster; and I inked that self-indulgent Fata Morgana-Castlevania-Amadeus crossover fanart; and then I remembered just how much I really actually love inking and I love how my art looks when it's inked. And I was like... [sigh] uuuuuuugghhh..... I need to ink some talksprites..."

Transcription: "Tada~! Do—do you want to know where it's located in my extremely well-organized notebook? The page before it is, uh, my doodles of how I envision the Higurashi characters with legs... because they don't have legs in the game."

#added screenshots and direct links to address twitch clip embed issues #misc updates #making of

[amadeusgame]

Transcription: "All of the art assets in [the game] are hand-drawn, and so for example, this-" [holds hand-drawn image up to the camera] "-is the background that you see here".

Recap of the Amadeus demo livestream:

Showed the hand-drawn art used as assets in game (see above clip; more below readmore!)

Full playthrough of the demo start-to-finish

Discussion of the development/writing process, and plans for the full episode

Talked at length about inspirations (Umineko, Higurashi, Ghost Trick)

No, that is not an overlay, I really did use an old MiniDV camcorder from 2004 hooked up to an A/V capture card as my webcam. I had to rewind it whenever I got to the end of the tape.

Missed the stream? Watch it here - Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee Demo Livestream & Art Expo

Play the demo - linktr.ee/amadeusgame

More clips below the cut!

Transcription: "Ta-da! In the flesh. But yeah, this notebook also has—I think it has my big braining theories... it does! It has my theories from my Umineko playthrough as well."

Transcription: "I think this was actually the first [sprite] that I inked. Yes, this was the first one that I inked. 'Cuz originally Amadeus's sprites were all just pencil—originally, everything was just pencil. And then what happened was I inked, I made the poster, and I inked the poster; and I inked that self-indulgent Fata Morgana-Castlevania-Amadeus crossover fanart; and then I remembered just how much I really actually love inking and I love how my art looks when it's inked. And I was like... [sigh] uuuuuuugghhh..... I need to ink some talksprites..."

Transcription: "Tada~! Do—do you want to know where it's located in my extremely well-organized notebook? The page before it is, uh, my doodles of how I envision the Higurashi characters with legs... because they don't have legs in the game."

#Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #indie game dev #visual novel #narrative game #adventure game #livestream #making of #misc updates

[amadeusgame]

The World's Longest And Most Sentimental Development Log (Marketing Retrospective)

It's been a month since the demo release, and Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~  Episode 1 ~ Waltz has just reached 100 wishlists on Steam. I'm incredibly grateful for the support and interest.

Because this has been the month following a major release, most of my efforts have been focused on communications as opposed to development. I still want to discuss these efforts, both as a retrospective for my own reference, and in case anyone else finds it enlightening. This was meant to be a short and to-the-point marketing discussion, but it accidentally... and inevitably... transformed into something incredibly long and sentimental.

The long and short of it is that I've had an overwhelmingly successful month by my standards. Discussing marketing means I have been analyzing why that is. In doing so, I slowly became aware of just how much of my entire life has been building up to this.

I originally planned to mention other things in this update... discuss the recent demo livestream, announce an upcoming "100 wishlists" celebration... but those no longer really suit the tone of this update. I will post about them another time. I wasn't prepared to celebrate 100 wishlists this quickly, anyway! I had no idea I would get that much in the first month! I'm not ready to make that announcement! I would like to do something appropriate for this milestone, so please give me some more time to put proper thought into it.

You can reference here for the livestream video and other resources: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame

I don't expect very many people to read the rest of this. But I am writing it anyway because it's important for me to express. And if you got anything out of the Amadeus demo, you probably got the fact that I am a bit of a long-winded and sentimental person. Bearing that in mind...

On Marketing Amadeus

Overall, I tried a lot of different things—many of which flopped—based on the question "what kind of communications would I like to see, as an audience?" Some combination of all of these somehow worked. I don't think it is particularly useful to try and pinpoint what specific individual things made Number Go Up the most, because the real takeaway was that I put enough messages out in enough places that over 100 real actual human beings came across them and were interested in what I am making. That number is probably tiny to people trying to earn a living in games, but as someone just hoping to get my art out there... the number 100 is significant and motivating.

I am happy to share the things that I've tried, and my impressions of how well they worked for my situation and purposes. Before that, though, I must stress that having assets to share in these communications in the first place was an invaluable step, especially since visuals and aesthetics are a very core part of my game.

Creating Marketing Assets

(When uploading a game to Steam, there are approximately 8 million different aspect ratios and dimensions you need to create branding assets for, so I chopped that source poster up into different pieces and spent about a week just making different combinations of them to suit various needs.)

Again: I was not thinking ahead to the Steam page when I drew this in October, not really. I was just drawing something that I wanted to draw, inspired by art that inspired me. If I hadn't indulged that desire and "procrastinated" a bit, I wouldn't have the assets to advertise the game when it came time for launch! This is something that I've experienced again and again throughout the process of development: making things for fun, doing things on impulse, taking breaks and indulging whims... many of these activities somehow end up being essential for the game. If I had refused that self-indulgence to focus on Important Development Stuff, I wouldn't have the cool piece of art I needed to successfully advertise the finished game on launch. Moreover, the final art in the game would not be as good, because I wouldn't have gotten ideas about art direction from making this poster.

(Also... I wouldn't have had as much fun making the game. Since this game's budget is $0 and all of my free time, it REALLY matters that I am having fun while making it.)

Even more important than these visual assets, though, was the trailer. How many games have I checked out just based on the trailer? I recently purchased Raging Loop on Steam, a game I have been considering for months, because I finally watched the trailer and realized "okay, this game is me-core." The trailer is so important. It's not about how pretty the trailer is; it's about whether the trailer shows me a game that I, in particular, want to play. I don't know who my audience is, but considering my goals and inspirations, I think it is something along the lines of "hipsters who love some combination of Umineko, werewolves, and unique aesthetics." So I needed a trailer that would connect with those people. A trailer that, if I watched it, would make me realize hey, this game is me-core.

Making a trailer is its own skillset, though! Completely separate from game development. Communicating something in video form is different than communicating it in another medium.

Fortunately... I have actually done a lot of just-for-fun video editing projects very recently! I edited together a "trilogy" out of roadtrip camcorder footage I took, and also put together the video for an audio-visual collab album. I already have tools and a workflow that I like to use.

I am developing a game, but it has helped me so much to have experience making a stupid trilogy of camcorder footage roadtrip videos.

I worked on those video editing projects because they were fun. I had absolutely no ulterior motive. In doing so, I still gained an important skill that transferred directly to marketing Amadeus. As someone who has always struggled to focus on just One Thing, it's incredibly affirming to realize that having done a lot of random stuff is actually really helping me as a solo game developer. I feel like I've finally found an art form where this is an important skill, and not a hindrance or distraction.

So... well, I suppose this means that I have no useful advice for other developers. I want to be honest about my experiences, and my experiences are that I only was able to prepare good marketing assets for Amadeus because I did a lot of for-fun art projects outside of game development. From my perspective, this is amazing news: it tells me that allowing myself space to be an artist and a person outside of this project has actually helped make the project itself better. It tells me that there are no downsides to being experimental and giving time to other projects too. But to anyone reading this hoping for some advice on putting together marketing assets, I'm sure it's the least helpful or relatable thing in the world. I'm sorry about that.

Getting the Word Out

Once the demo released, it became a matter of presenting the materials I had in the right ways, and in the right places. This is what I have been spending most of my waking hours doing this month. A non-exhaustive list of everything I've tried:

E-mailed all of my professors from grad school whose courses influenced my compositions for the game in some way. (This wasn't so much about the numbers, it was just motivating to get nice comments back. :D)

Joined a few Discord servers for communities dedicated to indie game developent; tried to engage in meaningful conversations there and check out other games while also sharing my own work. (I'm asking others for a favor, to take a look at my work, so I try to check out theirs too in return.)

Posted the trailer on the Visual Novels subreddit. (This flopped.)

Posted weekly* on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and a few other places. (This has been the bulk of my ongoing communications; see below!)

Posted on a forum I joined last year to discuss music composition.

Found and followed a lot of other indie game devs making things that interested or excited me.

Shared it in a Discord server I moderate** as a "creative mod." (I host monthly art-focused events, curate spaces for sharing art, etc.; see below.)

Shared it with basically all of my friends! Especially friends who are also artists and creators!

To sum, I used every single available avenue to talk about it. But I really need to expand on the two points bolded and asterisked above. I have something additional to say about them, and I cannot overstate how much it matters.

*Weekly Posts

As indicated, ongoing weekly posts on various platforms are the meat of my marketing. I post regularly, but it's really important to me to not just post the same stuff all the time and annoy everybody. I try to highlight different aspects of the game each time, use different framing, and do a variety of weird and silly stuff. Some things perform unexpectedly well and others are complete flops. But I think it's been key to not be afraid of failure and just try things. That way it's still interesting to the people who already checked out the game, while hopefully reaching new eyes too!

(Full disclosure, however: sometimes I will do something that has 0 chance of doing numbers, just because I think it would be a fun thing to post. Since I am completely self-motivating on this project, I have to do things that are self-indulgent, or I will burn out. So, hypothetically, I might be compelled to, say, post a photo taken on an Instax analog camera of the game hooked up to a CRT TV.)

(Step 1 of marketing is to have fun and be yourself?)

BUT ALSO!

AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST!!

I only have any sort of audience on these platforms because of other, unrelated things I've been doing for years. I met a LOT of people on Twitter and Instagram through cosplay and Tales of Symphonia speedrunning, who stuck around somehow. I met some people on Tumblr from recent Ghost Trick ROMhacking, and others from Homestuck meetups in 2012. I met people on Discord from a forum about video games I joined in 2006. I was already connected with a lot of like-minded people to share my game with! I know—I KNOW—that this is something that is only easy to say in retrospect, but: doing stuff and meeting people over the course of a lifetime has added up. I hope that this will continue to be true, and maybe some people who find me through Amadeus will stick around for whatever comes after, once I've fully completed the 5-episode story I have to tell here. And I will see it through.

So, please bear this in mind when reading about how I promote my self-indulgent game every week on Instagram. I did not attend Anime Expo 2015 in order to build an audience for the visual novel I would make 9 years later. I was just meeting and connecting with other cosplayers, because I thought I would still be doing cosplay indefinitely. But many of those connections have persisted over the years, and some of those people are interested in my game. None of this seemingly-unrelated life experience is wasted. In the words of one of my teachers from grad school, "it's an accumulated life." I have ended up somewhere unexpected, and I did not plan to end up here, but all of those past experiences were still a part of getting me to where I currently am.

**Discord Server Mod

I want to highlight this particular place where I've promoted my game, because it's important in a way that connects with basically all of my rambling above. I want to make it clear that absolutely everything that went well this past month started so much longer ago than that.

In this point, I am not saying "step 1 of indie game promotion: simply have been a creative events moderator on a Discord server for years first!" as this is incredibly useless advice. Hear me out for a moment.

About 2 years ago, there was no "creative events" moderator on this particular Discord server. It was mostly a space to talk about video games with friends. You could also post art there if you wanted, and you might have gleaned a react or two.

Also about 2 years ago, I began to think very deeply about my relationship with art and the internet. When I was a tweenager, there was this video game forum—a forum that migrated to the Discord server in question recently—where you could post your art (usually video game fanart, but could be anything), and the moderator would always engage with it and provide meaningful, thoughtful feedback. That space is one of the biggest reasons I drew so much when I was younger, and worked so hard trying to learn how to draw and shade and color better, because I wanted to have my efforts praised, and I knew they would be.

2 years ago, I desperately needed a space like that again. Lacking one, I decided to pick up the torch left behind by the moderator from my tweenage years, and become the person who would always, always provide thoughtful engaging feedback when people posted their work there. Literally some "be the change you want to see in the world" shit. I knew that someone else doing that for me fundamentally altered the course of my life, so I wanted to try and be that for others if possible. More selfishly, I hoped that this would also create the much-needed space for me to share my work and get feedback and responses, too.

Now, about 2 years later, that channel is pretty active. People regularly share their creative works, and it is one of my favorite places to post my own stuff because people are really good about engaging with each other's stuff there. It's been one of the most important places for me to share progress on Amadeus, because that external motivation helps a lot. And once the demo came out, I have absolutely no doubt that this server was a significant proportion of the initial support and momentum it received on launch.

I did not even have so much as a delusion of being a game developer when I made these changes in the Discord server. I was working in IT and considering applying to music school. I just wanted to build a community around art.

So, why am I writing about my 2-year journey as a Discord mod in my development update about marketing? Hopefully it makes a bit more sense now. I'm really trying to emphasize that the marketing I did this past month didn't start last month. It started 2 years ago on this Discord server, it started in 2006 when I joined that video game forum. Really, my marketing efforts have gone as well as they have because—whoops, I am tearing up writing this—I have made a lot of incredible connections in a lot of communities over the years, and now that I have something very important to me that I want to share, they have really helped support it. I've had some friends go so far above and beyond what I would ever ask them to do in sharing my game, and that kind of support just... I can't put a number on it; it's invaluable.

In Conclusion

Go to conventions and meet cosplayers. Speedrun a 6-and-a-half-hour-long JRPG from 2003 on Twitch. Join a forum and when it migrates to Discord, organize art events and comment on other people's work. Draw self-indulgent stuff and make silly roadtrip videos scored with Logic Loops. Make 90% of a ROMhack of a Nintendo DS game. Get completely obsessed with other visual novels on itch.io and write essays in their comments.

My name is Leo, and my marketing advice is You Only Live Once. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful evening and I look forward to presenting you with a more coherent update next month.

#amadeus: a riddle for thee #indie game marketing #devlog #indie game dev #visual novel

[amadeusgame]

Tomorrow, March 23, at 6pm Pacific I'm going to dust off my Twitch channel that I used to use to speedrun Tales of Symphonia to stream the Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee demo.

This will be an opportunity to:

Show the demo, in full, to anyone who hasn't had the time or energy to play it themselves but wants to see what it's like

Show the physical pencil and ink drawings that were scanned as assets for the game on camera, side-by-side with the game itself

Talk a little about the game's code

If you're interested please stop by! It'll be linked in the linktree, but direct link is twitch.tv/arcanaxix

See you there! If you miss it, I'll post the video on YouTube, and link that in the linktree as well.

#amadeus: a riddle for thee #new indie game #indie dev #narrative game #visual novel #adventure game #livestream #misc updates

[amadeusgame]

mods are asleep, post the worst promotional image you've ever seen

(OVER 90 WISHLISTS HOLY SMOKES!!! Planning something fun for this coming Saturday, March 23, to celebrate~ stay tuned!)

links here

#amadeus: a riddle for thee #visual novel #narrative game #adventure game #thank you for 90 wishlists!!!! #misc updates

[amadeusgame]

Analog photo of the "Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~ Waltz" demo played on my CRT TV, which is actually the optimal way to play it.*

You too can do stupid things like play the demo on a CRT: links here! (CRT not included)

*This is clickbait. The game actually does not currently support CRTs as it is hard-coded to a 4:3 aspect ratio for square pixels on modern displays, and thus the act of converting digital pixels back to analog causes the game to be squashed. Text also illegible:

I want nothing more in the world than to build proper CRT TV support for the game but that will probably have to go somewhere on the to-do list after "make a 3DS port" (also vitally important).

#crt tv #analog photography #visual novel #narrative game #indie dev #amadeus: a riddle for thee #retro aesthetic #analog video

[amadeusgame]

Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~ Waltz now has over *80* wishlists on Steam!

I'm working on a little something special to celebrate if we make it to 100; I'll let you know if we reach it.

Amadeus is a visual novel + point-and-click blend about werewolves, witches, and memories. Play the demo and/or wishlist here!

#new indie game #visual novel #narrative game #indie dev #adventure game #amadeus: a riddle for thee #amadeus game #misc updates

[amadeusgame]

also, on a more casual note, wow. Over 70?!?!?!?!? This number is so much bigger than I dared to hope, I'm feeling a little insane.

(play the demo or become the 73rd here BTW)

#amadeusgame #amadeus: a riddle for thee #misc updates

[amadeusgame]

Open secret: the epilogue of the Amadeus demo is directly ripped off of Higurashi's All-Cast Review Sessions. The role of this space in the actual story will be revealed in time... but for now, I decided to have a little fun with it.

Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee is a visual novel/point-and-click I'm developing, and 07th Expansion is among its largest direct influences. There's a demo out now you can play for free if you're so inclined.

Check it out here! (MacOS | PC | Linux)

#Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee #Higurashi When They Cry #Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni #visual novel #indie dev #teaser #making of #the developer and author of Amadeus cannot stop thinking about Higurashi so may as well talk about that in an Amadeus related way

[amadeusgame]

The demo for Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~ Waltz launched last Friday. Its first weekend saw 55 wishlists (22 installs) on Steam, and 2 donations* (18 downloads) on itch!!  I really didn't dare to dream it would get such a positive reception—my very stubborn approach to development has been "make the game for ME, stick to MY vision and MY priorities, be open about MY influences," so I was reaching a point where I somewhat doubted if the game would appeal to anyone else at all. I've never been more thrilled to be wrong.

Some of my favorite things people have said about it:

"I feel the influence of Umineko here." - I love this comment because while Umineko is the #1 no-questions-asked hugest direct influence in the narrative, I didn't think that would become obvious until Episode 3 or so. Silly me to not recognize that a game coded on a laptop with Beatrice hand-painted on it** would have the influence clear from the get-go.

"music fucks deliciously"

"I want to punt him [Amadeus] across the room (affectionate)" - me too, reader. Me too. (affectionate)

Every single expression of support has been incredibly motivating. I'll be spending the next month defining benchmarks & deadlines through the finish line of Episode 1's release this Fall, and while it's been important to me to make something I'm passionate enough about to completely self-motivate, the encouragement I've received from this new demo's release has given me a massive boost of extra momentum. I'm incredibly excited to get started on what's next.

Communications will return to monthly progress devlogs on itch/Steam, and more frequent updates on Tumblr/Discord.

Stay updated on your preferred platform: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

If you'd like a sooner date than "this fall" for major news, there just might be something to look forward to in the summer. There's also an archive of devlogs on developing this demo in the linktree above if you'd like more to read. In the meantime, check out lots of other cool indie game projects and tell all of your friends about them! So long as you're following on itch or have the game wishlisted on Steam, you won't miss when Episode 1 of Amadeus officially launches.

Thank you so much for playing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

*Note on donations: these will be automatically deducted from the price of the full game on itch when it releases for those who donated. There was one donation for the original prototype, however, that can't be automatically deducted by itch. To that donator—if you email me with a receipt showing that was you, I am more than happy to just give you a free download key when the game launches, considering you supported the project from so early on.

**pic related:

#next day reblog

[amadeusgame]

He looks INCREDIBLE, thank you so much!

A friend of mine is developing a visual novel, so I thought I'd do some fan art of the main character, a werewolf named Amadeus.

It's called Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee, made by @sibyl-of-space. There's a demo out on Steam and itch.io, go check it out!

#yes im putting this on the amadeus blog #it's BEAUTIFUL it needs to be SEEN

[amadeusgame]

The demo for Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~ Episode 1 ~ Waltz launched last Friday. Its first weekend saw 55 wishlists (22 installs) on Steam, and 2 donations* (18 downloads) on itch!!  I really didn't dare to dream it would get such a positive reception—my very stubborn approach to development has been "make the game for ME, stick to MY vision and MY priorities, be open about MY influences," so I was reaching a point where I somewhat doubted if the game would appeal to anyone else at all. I've never been more thrilled to be wrong.

Some of my favorite things people have said about it:

"I feel the influence of Umineko here." - I love this comment because while Umineko is the #1 no-questions-asked hugest direct influence in the narrative, I didn't think that would become obvious until Episode 3 or so. Silly me to not recognize that a game coded on a laptop with Beatrice hand-painted on it** would have the influence clear from the get-go.

"music fucks deliciously"

"I want to punt him [Amadeus] across the room (affectionate)" - me too, reader. Me too. (affectionate)

Every single expression of support has been incredibly motivating. I'll be spending the next month defining benchmarks & deadlines through the finish line of Episode 1's release this Fall, and while it's been important to me to make something I'm passionate enough about to completely self-motivate, the encouragement I've received from this new demo's release has given me a massive boost of extra momentum. I'm incredibly excited to get started on what's next.

Communications will return to monthly progress devlogs on itch/Steam, and more frequent updates on Tumblr/Discord.

Stay updated on your preferred platform: linktr.ee/amadeusgame

If you'd like a sooner date than "this fall" for major news, there just might be something to look forward to in the summer. There's also an archive of devlogs on developing this demo in the linktree above if you'd like more to read. In the meantime, check out lots of other cool indie game projects and tell all of your friends about them! So long as you're following on itch or have the game wishlisted on Steam, you won't miss when Episode 1 of Amadeus officially launches.

Thank you so much for playing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

*Note on donations: these will be automatically deducted from the price of the full game on itch when it releases for those who donated. There was one donation for the original prototype, however, that can't be automatically deducted by itch. To that donator—if you email me with a receipt showing that was you, I am more than happy to just give you a free download key when the game launches, considering you supported the project from so early on.

**pic related:

#visual novel #narrative game #adventure game #indie dev #devlog #amadeus: a riddle for thee #amadeus game

[amadeusgame]

I've been citing the Steam wishlist numbers a lot, but I am also incredibly grateful for all of the downloads on itch (and donations!!!!!!!!)—rest assured to those folks, those will count directly towards the price of the full game for you when it launches. Every form of support on whatever platform is deeply felt and appreciated. This game is SUCH a self-indulgent little passion project that I was starting to wonder if it would appeal to anyone except "literally just me," but seeing so much external support is incredibly motivating. I'm excited for what's next.

Expect a more "proper" post soon! For now, enjoy the demo and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

linktree

#amadeus: a riddle for thee #amadeus game