Monday, 8 August 2022

Starting a Games Studio

Since we released Phytomancer in October 2021, my associate Alexis and I have been working on our next steps: building our second game, and building the company that will make it. Today, I want to share the process we went through to create that company, and explain why we went through each of those steps. I will not discuss administrative tasks, as that is quite specific to France. Instead, I want to focus on what makes our company unique: who we are, what we do, where we're going.

Oh, and, there's a little announcement at the end of this post… ;)

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Tuesday, 8 March 2022

How I did my market research on Steam

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! :)

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Tuesday, 28 December 2021

L'état de l'Adrian 2021

J'ai du mal à y croire, mais l'année 2021 se termine déjà. Voici donc le moment de faire le point sur cette période qui marque concrètement un tournant dans ma carrière : je suis désormais officiellement créateur de jeux vidéo. Pour preuve : des gens ont dépensé de l'argent pour jouer à un jeu que j'ai créé !

Au moment de faire le bilan de cette année, je me rends compte que ce premier jeu, et sa suite, m'ont pris toute mon énergie et tout mon temps. Si l'année dernière j'ai pu être créatif, prototyper des jeux, apprendre énormément sur la conception de jeux, en 2021 je me suis au contraire focalisé sur des choses beaucoup plus terre-à-terre. Voyons donc ensemble ce que j'ai fait ces douze derniers mois…

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Wednesday, 29 September 2021

Phytomancer's trailer is live!

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!

Thursday, 16 September 2021

Four Months of Horizontal Game Production

About 6 months ago, I posted a call on this blog to find folks who would be interested in building a game in a non-hierarchical organization [fr]. This led to the assembly of a team of 7 people, and to the creation of the game Phytomancer, soon to be released. This is a post-mortem of our production period, looking back on all the mistakes we made and rejoicing about the few things we did correctly!

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Friday, 30 July 2021

Your Soul has been Shattered [GMTK Jam 2021]

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!

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Tuesday, 23 March 2021

Le Phytomancien a besoin de vous !

Bonne nouvelle : la création de mon studio de jeux vidéo en coopérative va bon train ! Après de multiples péripéties que je raconterais peut-être ici, j'ai constitué un tout petit groupe de trois personnes : James, Mathieu et moi-même. Nous avons commencé par nous échauffer en créant un petit jeu sur deux jours — Q, l'As du volant — et nous passons maintenant à l'étape supérieure. Nous allons créer un jeu, commercialisation comprise, en trois mois.

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Tuesday, 23 February 2021

Lessons learned working on my card 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.

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