November Dev Log

Hi everyone; hope you’re all well!

November has been a crazy month with many good things happening for Phaedra Games Ltd and our first commercial game “The Isle of Bobbin”!

Before we get to the celebrations at the end of October we announced the game and attended GameCon Middle East in Abu Dhabi. We got some great feedback from staff at Ubisoft and Zenimax which was very helpful but most importantly we met some very enthusiastic members of the public who played the game and gave us very useful feedback. A lot of our visitors signed up to our monthly newsletter and will be getting exclusive updates on the game sent personally to their inbox! Maybe you can join too? Just check the bottom of this page or on the side bar and sign up. It's safe and spam free - we only send worthy updates on the game.

We then went on a trip to the UK for some much needed rest which was great. I even managed to fit in a little development and finally finished up the basis of the chat system for the game.

Basically I don’t want everyone you speak to, to say the same few things over and over and so I’ve gone all out and made a system in which everyone you speak to has multiple unique things to say and they are based on gameplay choice the player makes. In addition to this they may even comment on your outfit, the weather or maybe the season you’re in! Hopefully this will add some extra playability to the game for everyone. However, with every extension to gameplay it creates a ton of work... literally thousands of lines of dialogue are needed... but we really think this will form a big part of the game and so it’s well worth the effort. 

I drew up the artwork for the bird species in which last months newsletter signees have already got a sneak peek of. When we were in the UK we saw THOUSANDS of Pheasants who are in mating season; which inspired me to add our feathered friends to the game. 

Do you have any suggestions for more species? Leave a comment or send us an email and I’ll consider it! 

Just to explain how I manage a full time job and a busy game dev workload a little bit, I wanted to introduce you or at least inform you of Hacknplan . It’s been a really useful tool to track and plan the game development in which we are using our own version of agile (sprints) to get through the work! This is not sponsored and the site is free to most users; but just to give you a tip it might be worth checking out maybe? 

Basically I make sprints covering the upcoming two weeks and input the workload I hope to achieve in that particular timeframe. Then once I have them in progress I work on them, move them into testing to make sure they work and then complete them. It’s great to see how / what I’ve done but it is also a stark reminder just how much I have to do! 

You can also track what type of work you have on your plate - like bugs, art, programming etc which is cool for times which I’m bored of doing one type of thing and what to pick something different to do! 

Anyhow... This isn’t sponsored so maybe you can try trello or some other type of tool; but personally I’ve found this very useful.

What do you use? Any tips? 

So what was the biggest thing that happened in November?!?!?!?! 

We were invited to attend On.DXB - a multi media event in Dubai to showcase our game in the indie dev section. It was another fantastic chance to show the game to an audience but in addition to this I also entered the game in the “Call for content” competition at the same event.

Basically we had 5mins to present our work (there were categories for film, music and games) to a panel of judges and in front of a live audience.

Fortunately I don’t get nervous - I never have, it’s just a good trait of mine and on the second day I presented my work. I was up against around 17 or so other games. I’m friends with a lot of the indie game scene in the UAE but I was also surprised to see a lot of entry’s from either people I didn’t know or from overseas who had made the trip! It was a nice chance to see what the other devs outside of my friendship group are working on.

So on the final day of the event we were all called into a room with all of the other entries in each category to being the announcements of the winners. However they also told us the prizes... and wow! I was surprised to hear that 3rd place was 2500 USD, 2nd place 5000 USD and 1st place a whopping 10’000 USD!!!!!! All of a sudden those non-existent nerves caught up with me lol. 

All of the other indie devs looked at each other... we had no idea it would be quite a prize of that magnitude. So film catergory was first and they gave the prizes on stage with an announcer and music then the game category was next and announcer said ... 

“In third place... The Isle of Bobbin” !!!!  

We were was so happy! I went up and collected the obligatory oversized cheque (which is still in my bedroom haha) My wife was cheering and the press were taking photos! 

So happy and big thanks to Dubai Media City and Informa ME

Even more than that, my friend who has released the excellent “Grimms Hollow” won first place! We were over the moon for her. 2nd place was our new friend who is working on an upcoming puzzle game called “Corners”. Please check out their work, I was honestly more happy to see such young talented female game devs win in this region than me taking third place.

So what to do with the money? I’m actually going to upgrade my computer from my wife’s old Mac Book Pro 2014 to a newer model. I’m hoping to be able to get much better screen recordings  for YouTube content and who knows, maybe I can finally record my screen and voice at the same time lol... 

It’s also an investment for the future because who knows, maybe I’ll try Godot or Unity to make my next 2D adventure! 

Oh and by the way! We now have our own sub reddit - feel free to join here

So that was the end of another happy month of developing “The Isle of Bobbin”! 

December is set to be a busy time but more to do with the fact we are moving house; and so this should impact the amount of Dev time I get. But still, I’m sure I’ll have more news in the next update! 

Thanks and take care, hope to see you back next month! & Follow us on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram