In this blog post, we go over the development process from when it started in February to when it finished in July, and we additionally go over follow-up development in the weeks after release.
The Pre-Beginning
Postbound! originally started as a solo game-jam project for the OSU Game Creation Club in 2022. The club’s game jam overlapped exactly with Ludum Dare 51, which ran from September 30 to October 3 of 2022. The core game was made in 72 hours. After the game jam ended, it was put on the back burner and nearly forgotten about.
Development Begins
Adelheid Software started on January 1, 2024 with a developer, an artist, and a composer. Development started in late February with an original release date of May 27. Postbound! was not originally intended to be the studio’s first game; we actually planned to start work on a medium-sized pixel art Metroidvania project. However, because we had not worked together before, we wanted to see how we worked together on a smaller project.
Unfortunately, development did not quite go as expected. The development period from February to April was fairly sporadic due to life events taking precedence. Nobody was at fault here—life just happens sometimes. Early April is when full-time development really began.
Due to the beginning of development being slow, we had to push the release date back. We chose July 22 because our research showed us that Monday was one of the best days of the week to release a game, and we also wanted a buffer in case we ended up going over our internal finish line of July 7.
Scope
We had a very limited scope and did not want to add anything outside of our game design document during development. This was a massive boon for us because it kept us very focused. Having a limited scope kind of ended up biting us in other ways, though; after testing certain mechanics, we found they just weren’t very fun. This required us to quickly come up with alternative mechanics to replace some of the ones that didn’t work.
This was stressful with a tight deadline. We had to cut certain content and didn’t have much time to replace it. We do think this ultimately led to a better outcome; the game is more fun than it would be with the mechanics that ended up not working. The downside is that this meant there would be increased post-release work required to get the game into a spot that was as fun as originally intended.
In general, we believe that keeping your scope as small as possible is a good thing. However, what we have learned from this experience is that when your scope is small and something doesn’t work, you do genuinely need more time to fill in that gap. The entire development experience also taught us that even with permissive deadlines that factor in lots of extra development time, other factors can crop up that end up meaning you need to extend your deadline anyway. Some of those other factors we came across included lack of communication and life events.
Working in a Team
Working with others on a team is a really great experience, even if everything does not go to plan. We weren’t a perfect team, but we can all say that we made a game, and that’s something to be proud of, without a doubt.
Before development started, I created a full game design document that we then broke up into actionable tasks. We kept track of these tasks using GitHub Projects (which we definitely recommend!). It was easy to add new tasks, modify existing ones, create views specific to each individual team member, and allow team members to keep track of their own task progress.
The artist we worked with made great assets that we are very happy with. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, our artist could not always get us assets on time and did not always communicate that they would be late, despite being asked explicitly to do so. This was impossible to plan around and resulted in our composer having to make some art assets for the game in order to release on time.
Working with our composer, Charlie Dempsey, was an absolutely phenomenal experience, and we cannot say enough good things about him. Not only did he make a great soundtrack and great sound effects, but the quality of his art assets was absolutely phenomenal as well. Charlie also always followed up very quickly on feedback and clearly has a love for what he does. He clearly showed a passion for the project and wanted it to be as good a product as it could be. We hope to continue working with him on future titles.
Release
We chronicled our demo release experience in a previous blog post so we won’t rehash that here. The full release of the game itself was fairly smooth with no technical issues to speak of. However, our sales have been pretty weak. I wouldn’t say they fell below expectations, as our expectations were that it would not really sell at all—but it is disappointing nonetheless.
During the course of development, we garnered approximately 250 wishlists with no marketing whatsoever. We simply did not have the budget to spend any money on marketing, so we didn’t. Approximately 230 of our wishlists were gathered during the June Steam Next Fest of 2024. We had a demo out at that time, and we did receive feedback on the demo, which we quickly acted on and implemented prior to release.
It is now a little over a month after release. As of this writing, we can trace back approximately 85% of sales to individuals who are in our network. This is certainly due to a lack of marketing, as our impressions are quite low as well, but it may also be possible that our game is priced too high for what it is. Pricing is difficult, and we are as of yet unsure how this will impact the title’s long-term prospects. However, the price of $3.99 does give us more leeway to discount heavily during seasonal sales.
All things considered, we are still fundamentally happy with how everything turned out in the end, especially given our shoestring budget. It was a great learning experience and positions us well for future development. We are also committed to continually updating Postbound! going forward without asking for anything more from our customers.
Post-Release Goals
We still have more we want to do with Postbound! post-release. This includes (but is not limited to):
- Full controller support
- Full Steamdeck support
- Native Linux build
- Additional 7 days of story
- More options for the Arcade Modes
- Additional mechanics
- Soundtrack release
We hope to get to these in the near future.
What’s Next?
Right now, our main focus is on creating a vertical slice of our next title, codenamed Project Artemis. Project Artemis is a 2D pixel art quasi-medieval Metroidvania, so make sure to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on social media if that sounds interesting to you!
As it stands, I am currently training myself in both traditional and pixel art in order to accomplish this goal without bringing on another artist. However, if you are a pixel artist who is interested in helping out, then contact us, because we’re certainly interested in hearing you out.
Thanks for reading!