🍄🎁Happy First birthday Mycelium Heaven! 🎁🍄

It’s been a year since the release of Mycelium Heaven. This is my first commercial game, and it has been a great adventure developing and publishing it. I would like to use this occasion to make a small retrospective on the process and what I’ve learned.

🎁 A Birthday gift! 🎁

But before that! I made a small PnP duel interpretation of Mycelium Heaven. Each of you plays as a zombie-eating mushroom. You compete to be the fungus that decomposes the most corpses. Use your wit and strategy to outsmart your opponent and earn those nutritious points.

You can download it for free here.

🍄Year of Spores🍄

During the month of release, I was a bit burnt out from the project. All the game design had been done months before, and all that was left was the porting and things like the trailer. My uni final exams are in early January, so I was also super busy with that. Once the game was out, I felt relieved. I had to make a small patch for Nintendo, but no big deal.

For release week, I made six puzzles as a small gimmick for social media, but it ended up becoming a print-and-play mini puzzle book. You can get it for free here. I really love game and puzzle design, and this felt like a natural move. That’s also why I’m making this small PnP.

This year I’ve been working on a lot of different projects. It has been the year in which I’ve done the most game jams. I’ve been developing a new big video game, and I presented it as my Final Degree project in Computer Science and Mathematics. I also designed a card game and I’m moving forward with the crowdfunding campaign. But I have not forgotten about my mushrooms.

In numbers, Mycelium Heaven has surprised me. I had zero economic expectations, and although it hasn’t sold a huge amount, I’m more than happy with what I’ve achieved with it.

The coolest part, however, has been seeing my friends (and people who don’t know me at all!) enjoy the game, get into the puzzle-solving mood, and have fun. I’ve taken the game to every event I’ve been able to attend, and that allowed me to see many different kinds of players interacting with it.

Speaking of events, that has been one of the coolest experiences as well. I’ve met a ton of new people in the gamedev industry. I’ve also given a few talks on puzzle design, and it has been wonderful. I’ve truly learned a lot during the process, and it’s amazing to be able to share a little bit of my experience.

On the technical gamedev side, I’m taking many lessons with me. I now know that I shouldn’t make the main character the game manager, and that Unreal has signals (although you apparently don’t need them to make a functional, cool game). I think I also have a better understanding of how Steam works and how I should approach the tiny bit of marketing I’m able to do as a solodev.

I’ve also learned that a game’s genre is a crucial factor in the visibility and impact it will have. And it turns out puzzles are quite niche. My next video game is going to be an experimental narrative roguelike deckbuilder about bards telling stories. You can probably tell I wanted to break away from niche at least a little bit.

To sum up, Mycelium Heaven will always be my firstborn, and it will have a special place in my heart for launching my journey as a dev with a real place in the industry (whatever that means). As I love game design and mushrooms, don’t be surprised if I keep publishing weird little fungi-related things, but I’m moving on to new big projects.

I will also be forever grateful that I get to celebrate this on El Día de Andalucía 💚🤍💚. This date now has a double special meaning in my heart.

Take care! See you!