We released Dawnmaker 18 days ago, and I'm due for a report on numbers. Everybody loves numbers, right? Here are ours!

When I was 13, my mom bought me Civilization III from a retail shop, then went on to do some more shopping. I stayed in the car, with this elegant box in my hands, craving to play the game it contained. I opened the box, and there discovered something magical: the Civilization III Manual. Having nothing better to do, I started reading it…

Dawnmaker, le jeu sur lequel je travaille dans le cadre d'Arpentor Studio, depuis plus de deux ans, a désormais une page Steam et un trailer. Je vous laisse découvrir ça :

Ça vous a plu ? N'hésitez pas à ajouter le jeu à votre liste de souhaits sur Steam !

Today we are releasing a new version of Dawnmaker, with two big changes. The first one is the 2D board, which I talked about in my previous blog post. The second one is a new feature called "Ruins and Rewards". That feature… adds ruins and… changes rewards. Yeah. Pretty good name, right?

Over the last few months we've had the opportunity to show Dawnmaker to a lot of people, and notably a few publishers. We had the good fortune of receiving very valuable feedback on the game, which allowed us to identify two important problems with it, or at least, with its demo. The first problem is that our artistic direction isn't compelling enough, but that will not be today's topic — though we are, of course, working on it.

The problem we're going to discuss today it that of replayability. Some of our players, and most of the publishers we talked to, have expressed that they do not feel inclined to restart a game after they lose. Once you've understood the patterns of the game, restarting a new game feels like doing the same thing again, and it is boring. That feeling was especially pronounced for players losing in the 2nd or 3rd region of the demo: you have to restart at level one, a level that you have already mastered and don't feel like going through again.

This is a pretty big problem for a game that wants to have a high replay value, which is what we're aiming for. So today, I'm going to tell you about the key thing we're currently adding to the game as a first step to solve this issue.

Il est l'heure, tardive, de faire le point sur mon année 2022 ! Vous allez le lire, l'année a été chargée, ce qui explique que j'ai un peu de retard dans la rédaction de ce billet… Mais pour me faire pardonner, je vous ai mis quelques recommandations culturelles à la fin !

Voici donc un résumé de ce que j'ai fait en 2022…

Late last year, my associate Alexis and I started working on our next commercial game. Our goal being not only to make games, but also to build a company and make it financially sustainable, we did market research very early in the process. Today I want to walk you through how we did that specific market research.

My goals with this article are, of course, to share my current knowledge with others, but also, hopefully, to learn from people who know better than I do. You see, this was my very first market research, and I've used what tools and knowledge I have to make it as solid as I could. But I'm just a beginner in this field, and I'm sure there are tons of things I've missed.

So, fellow junior game developer: here's how you can get started doing your market research. And dear senior developer: please share your tips and criticisms about my method! :)

I am very proud to present the trailer for our first commercial game! Phytomancer will be released on October 6, 2021 on itch.io, for 3€. It's a small strategy game about restoring the balance between nature and humanity. Plant magical seeds on an automatically moving board, remove pollution, surround human factories and bring back harmony!

This year, for the first time, I took part in the annual jam organized by Mark Brown from the YouTube channel Game Maker's Toolkit, aka GMTK. It's a game jam that is focused on gameplay and trying out new mechanics, it's had more entries every year since its creation, and it has fierce competition. So, together with a team of excellent people, we rolled up our sleeves and made a game!

[This is part 5 of my Study of Digital Card Games series.]

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, I have been working on a digital CCG for several years now. As a lover of the genre — I've been playing Magic for about 20 years, and I tried as many other CCGs as I could — I want to create a game that is truly special, and different from its competition. Time will tell if I can succeed at that! Until then, here are some lessons that I've learned working on my game.