I’m getting the app ready for the Play Store! I heard the Independent Games Festival, or IGF, submissions were open and thought, why not go for it? I missed the IndieCade deadline earlier this year, and while I wasn’t planning on submitting to IGF, I don’t see why I shouldn’t try.
So, what is IGF? IGF is a yearly competition of Indie games for sweet sweet glory (and money if you win big). They also have a huge Indie Megabooth set up at the Game Developer’s Conference which is one of the best booths each year. Submitting the game for others to check out is a big milestone for me.
The game has come really far in the past few months. I added some polish and tuned the tutorial based on the limited play test feedback I’ve conducted.
I do have tons of concerns still:
All the art is my own shitty pixel art (with the exception of a few assets such as the mining minigame’s monsters which I purchased from an itch.io artist). I know my game will be compared to games that are extremely pretty. I’ve tried to keep the aesthetic “minimalist-ish pixel” but there’s tons of room for improvement.
I am concerned that I haven’t tested it with a wide enough audience. One of my playtesters throughly broke the tutorial within the first two minutes. I think I’ve patched up those holes but I know there’s more. There are always more.
I’m scared by all the horror stories I’ve heard of people’s apps being plagiarized off the Google Play Store. This might be a premature concern, but the idea that someone could take what I’ve spent years working on and pimp it out makes me sick.
There’s a million things I want to add that I’ve had to delegate to future updates. Oh and there’s also..Am I a huge idiot for thinking anyone would want to play this? Could I have spent the last few years becoming fluent in Spanish or working through my bookshelf’s backlog instead? Have I done everything wrong? I’ve done everything wrong! I waited too long to release it! They’re all gonna laugh at me! You know, all the usual self doubt suspects.
So that’s where I’m at. But I’m still going. I gotta put those fears behind me and soldier onward. To Valhalla!