A rocky road to Highrook

So "The Horror At Highrook" has been out for five months now and I am in that in-between-projects-phase where I am trying out various prototypes and putting together demos in order to test out ideas. While scribbling down design notes and trying out new art styles I thought it might be useful to write a short post-mortem of the game. If you are interested in taking a look at HIghrook after reading this you can find it at. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2836860/The_Horror_at_Highrook/

The Horror at Highrook wasn't the game I expected to be making in 2024, it only became my main project as a result of a dramatic downturn in games industry financing that happened around 2023/3. Things became much more difficult to fund and unfortunately this is still largely the case.

Before this shift I was working on a deep systems rich tactical strategy game called Void Warden (In 2022/23). I had a substantial demo and I had started pitching around to try and get the money to finish the project. I had already spent a big chunk of my own cash on the prototype and I knew that I didn't have enough in the company accounts to finish making the game without support. Unfortunately, after almost 6 months of pitching and negotiations with various publishers It became clear that something was going on behind the scenes. 

Industry Woes

Games were still being signed in 2023/24, but publishers had become a lot more wary and seemed to be increasingly interested in only 2 types of proposal.

Smaller publishers were looking for low cost breakout types of projects (think vampire survivors-likes, roguelikes deckbuilders etc). Whereas larger publishers were funding triple I projects that required larger teams, with budgets over over a million.

Mid range projects were not being funded or at least the opportunities for that scale of game had shrunk massively compared to a few years before. In addition to this a number of publishers and studios were beginning to close down. There was less money and opportunity around in general. Things weren't looking great for the industry.

Faced with this situation, I could have carried on pitching Void Warden in the hope of eventually getting a deal that worked (I had already turned down a few deals that I wasn't happy with) OR I needed to pivot to something else. If I was going to change track it had to be to a project I could finish with my own skills and my own money.

Amongst my many prototypes there was one game that fitted this requirements - Highrook. It was a game I'd wanted to make for years, and I'd already worked on various iterations of the idea. I had chosen Void Warden as my "next game" because at the time, I felt that the audience for Highrook was smaller and the game was harder to explain. But now I was looking to self publish I didn't have to worry about selling the idea to publishers. However, I did have to work out how I could produce the entire project myself.

One man workshop

Highrook was primarily a solo project, I wrote 100% of the code, wrote 90% of the narrative, drew 100% of the character art. I contracted folk to help with editing, QA, music, and community. But for most of the project it was just me labouring away. I enjoy my work so that in itself wasn't a problem, but as time went on I realised that I had put very little into my budget to deal with promotion, testing and community work. I can do those tasks myself, but I was already overloaded with the main work of the project. I didn't need money to finish the game, but I realised that having an extra source of funding would allow me to polish and promote Highrook properly.

Back on the pitching train

Reluctantly I started to pitch the project again, but this time I was effectively looking for what is usually called "finishing funds". I had a game that was about 80% complete and I wanted to release within around 6 months. I just needed a way to pay for marketing, QA, editing and some custom art.

I didn't really want a publisher to provide to-market services... I felt the project was so close to release that it would have been too hard for a 3rd party to get the right approach for what is quite a strange game. What I needed was funding to help me self publish. Eventually I found that support in Outersloth, who are without a doubt the best publishers I've ever worked with (Caveat, this is partly because they provide no services other than financial investment and I was pretty confident running the rest of the show myself).

So how did I take the game to 1.0 and release from here?

Production Details

Playtesting.

I ran a few playtests via my discord and they were invaluable. It cannot be said enough times, playtest as soon as you can and as often as you can! I managed the process via handing out override steam keys to people who signed up via a google form. (To be fair the community manager I hired at the time handled most of this - thanks Connor!). We set up a forum inside discord to allow users to post detailed bugs, and during each playtest (which ran for around 2 weeks at a time) I tried to do 2 or so rounds of fixes.

Demo

Having a demo out is also an amazing way to get feedback, fix bugs and gather interest. I had a demo up on steam for a year before launch and I updated the demo multiple times. Its often also a pre-requisite for getting your game features in steam festivals or even physical ones. Finally, it forces you to fix up and test the FTUE stuff you might normally avoid until much later!

Festivals

The game was in around 5, 6 festivals/showcases from the demo launch to the 1.0 release (a year). These had mixed results. Basically if a steam festival doesn't have front page feature it's not going to move the needle too much. In addition different festivals carry different weight, have more or less avid audiences etc. But normally they aren't much effort to do so its worth entering whatever you can.

I did one physical showcase, which I enjoyed doing and was an opportunity to connect with some publishers, industry peers and services. But I'm fairly sure that physical showcases (industry or commercial) have little effect on Wishlists or visibility.

I also firmly believe that Next fest is no longer the boon it once was, and its not necessarily worth planning around anymore. Sure you might get a boost, but with 1000s of games participating you need to also have your own visibility mechanisms running in parallel or you are just going to get lost in the crowd. Do at least one NextFest (usually just before release) but I think you get better results by appearing in showcases with more curation and a clearer audience.

Press

A lot has been said about the demise of traditional press, but I found that the few features I did get were valuable. In addition to just spreading the word its useful to be able to have pullquotes from reputable outlets to add to your page and marketing. I hired a freelancer to help push out the press releases on three main beats. Release date announcement, next fest and then release.

Content Creators

I got virtually no coverage from youtubers or streamers. The game is a slow, detailed narrative puzzle with a lot of reading and no voice acting, so its really not suited to that kind of media. I reached out to a few folk and my favourite youtuber did review it (Splattercat), his feature did get me some Wishlists so that was much appreciated.

Community and Socials

I think way too many developers fail to talk to their audience while making a game. It's easy to assume that because you like puzzle games, your puzzle game will be loved by the puzzle audience. This is simply not true, and the amount of wisdom and design feedback you can get from talking to your audience is brilliant. Playtesting doesn't count, because it still keeps you at arms length with a virtual clipboard. You should be excited enough about the game you are making to want to talk to other fans of the genre.

I spent a lot of time researching similar games to Highrook, and talking to their players. I did this less as a marketing ploy (in many cases I hardly mentioned it) but more as a way to understand the community and involve myself in the discourse. As a result I learned a whole load of things that made my game better.

Social media is a mess. I have no idea how effective it was for my game, I suspect not a lot. But as with all these things you should do it. Trying to get visibility is like throwing a die and hoping to land on a 6, the more dice you roll the more chance you have of that happening.

Wishlists and stats

Its easy to become obsessed with watching the stats, but that can get really stressful. I didn't announce my wishlist count on social media at all, despite being pretty happy with the figures close to launch. In the end Highrook launched at around 40k wishlists and has remained at around 80k outstanding wishlists since the end of the launch week. (this means as many new wishlists occur as sales/deletions)

Wishlist numbers are clung to because we don't have anything better to use. They are very variable in quality and the constant shifting nature of the industry and audience means that their predictive ability is also constantly shifting. Use them to help guide your projections but don't rely on those projections too heavily. Demo stats/community engagement are probably more useful, if a lot of folk are playing your demo for a long time or talking about the game in forums then you can usually take that as a good sign!

Release

Highrook ended up being delayed by a couple of months, this was mainly due to being offered an opportunity to launch during a prominent steam festival (Ludonarracon). But the delay also coincided with two unexpected and difficult events. My dad died three months before release and I also ended up in hospital with kidney stones. Despite these circumstances the game came out on time and I've been really happy with the performance. It was well received by player and critics (New York times, The Guardian) and has made enough profit for me to plan another game. That's all most developers want really, to be able to keep on making things.

So what next? I'm not sure. The industry is still in a fragile state and funding is equally unstable. There is lots of noise about certain types of games or certain ways to develop. But I suspect that I will end up doing what I always do and following my nose, concentrating on things that I enjoy playing and making. Hopefully I can find a way to support that!