Development Update #2: Wishlist Tsunami and an Alpha Build Push, Oh My news

Greetings all! I reckon it's time for a development update.

But first, the development adjacent big news. In October and November there was a massive wishlist spike for Innkeep!

Earlier this year, Innkeep wishlists were sitting at a respectable 7k, mostly thanks to coverage through the annual Realms Deep events. I had made a new gameplay-centric trailer for the 2023 event, which went down pretty well! But when things really took off was after my partner localized the steam page into Mandarin (I am offering mandarin as a supported language on release). Within weeks this lead to coverage by a big indie game streamer in China with a million plus subs, and a giant wishlist boost. Here's a visualization of steam page visits during the past three months.

That first spike was Realms Deep 2023. But it was dwarfed by views coming from China after a certain streamer gave me a shout-out.

During this post-RD2023, post-streamer mention boom period, a bunch of videos also started appearing on Bilibili (kind of like Chinese youtube) by content creators (as well as IGN China as part of their RD2023 coverage). As I commented over on 'Twitter', it was pretty cool to see multiple content creators in China cover the game, followed by huge volumes of views and comments. The comparison with youtube is pretty stark.

As of today I think we are probably at over a quarter of a million views now on those videos. Kind of mind blowing. Anyway, before moving on, I think there's some important take-aways here for other indie devs out there.

#1. Chinese language steam users are about half (or more?) of the total market. And a lot of them are into indie games! You really probably should localize your game into mandarin if you can.

#2. There's a lot of content creators and streamers, and relatively fewer indie games with Chinese language steam pages. This means (I think!) that you have a much better chance of getting attention (a lot of attention) if you get yourself visible with a localized steam page.

Over the past few months I've also seen a bit of coverage on TikTok, in English, German, Brazillian Portugese, and Vietnamese. Nice!

Anway, so what does this mean? Well. In terms of wishlist numbers, we are over 24k, and are going to reach 25k in a matter of days. In terms of where Innkeep now ranks in terms of upcoming games on Steam, it is now sitting at #916 of today, and climbing.

That's pretty amazing for a game made (so far) on a shoestring budget. I want take a second here to thank everyone who has helped me get to this point. My amazing collaborators, John, Torgeir, and Ben. My awesome Patreon supporters! And of course, my incredible partner Xin who has supported me in so many ways, and had to listen to me ramble about this game so many times.

Getting more concrete here for a bit, but what this boost in attention means is that I've had a lot more attention from publishers. I've had quite a few zoom meetings with different companies over the past month or so (almost more than I can count on my hands). At this point it's early days, meet-and-greet stuff. But it's been great getting to talk to so many people about Innkeep. At this stage it seems likely to me that early next year I'll be signing up with somebody.

Before moving on, I better quickly answer this question...

Q: Why do you need a publisher anyway?

A: Yeah, ideally, I'd love to be entirely independent, and then just get a bit of extra help here and there directly for localization and marketing. Ultimately, though, this game will simply take too long to complete if I'm only working on it in my spare time. There's still too much to do. That means going full time for a year, plus. And on top of that, I'd still need funding for other elements (art, music, marketing, localization, etc.) I'm not in the kind of financial position that would make that possible. Kickstarter is one route, but that is also quite time intensive to do successfully (meaning more time away from the game).

So, what I'm hoping to do, is get a deal with a team that I can collaborate with in different ways, who understands and values the game, and wants to help me realize it properly (by giving me actual funding). After the past two months I'm now feeling very optimistic that this can happen in the near future.

The next step is to get an alpha build ready.

So, how's that going?

First, let me explain what the alpha build is.

The Alpha build (v0.1) is like a vertical slice of the core game experience. As the core game experience includes quite a bit of narrative, that means not only mechanics but dialogue, serving as a kind of introduction to the world of Innkeep. What I've gone and made though really is an early demo, an experience that in the full release will function like a tutorial and prologue.

On the narrative side, the past month or two of work has meant that everything is now basically done. We have scripted conversations and animations that set up who the character is, what kind of world they are in, and how they get into this situation of running an inn. There's even a montage (with temp grey sketched art) set to a track by John that I'm pretty excited about.

I made a lot of progress on narrative design in 2023, and it's great to now see this reflected in the game itself. There's a few extra stretch goals here, that involve a certain demon character visible towards the end of the recent trailer. But it's not essential.

On the gameplay side, a lot of the mechanics are there (serving, cooking), but the core eavesdropping experience still needs work. Part of this task is the master's book that I have also done a fair bit of work on. What remains are a few other things:

• Dialogue for 3 tables of mercenaries for real time eavesdropping.
• Dialogue for each individual mercenary (8 total) for paused time talking.
• Spy system (art now prepared) where you can learn things (stored in the book) about people by watching them.
• Eavesdropping system (partially coded), where you can listen to the dialogue mentioned above. This system needs to include a few other sub-items. Tracking of trust / suspicion in a visible meter. Tracking of when a player has learned a new fact or charm by hearing it. And some interaction with these mechanics in the form of lowering suspicion by clearing tables, etc.
• Some more art for the masters book.
• Scripting tutorials that explain these mechanics.

With everything else out of the way I'll be tackling these items through December and into early January. I'm hoping to hit that 0.1 build then, and get it out. I have been a bit slowed down by catching Covid for the first time in November (the moment I stopped masking up in public!) I had to rest up for a few weeks (and still have a sore throat bothering me intermittently 6 weeks later). And of course some day job work for clients has continued as it always does. But I'm in a situation now where the PM hours of each day are free for Gamedev for the first time in ages. The path is clear! The wind is at my back! Forward to the Innkeep alpha!

(Oh, in case you were wondering: I may be sending out copies of the alpha to some of my long time patreon supporters who are interested in trying it, but it will be a pretty small number to start with. Eventually, this alpha will get polished up into the Innkeep Demo, which I want to release during Steam Next Fest, hopefully in 2024!)

As always, I want to give a special thanks to my Patreon supporters. They really help make this project possible.

Thank you!

Until next time.

Best,

Daniel