Looking Forward and Looking Back, 2022-2023

It’s that time once more, a quick retrospective on how last year went and what’s on the docket for the upcoming year!

2022

On this post last year, I was hoping to have had release the paid version of Mythlink, start a “fierce” marketing campaign, enter competitions, conventions, and so on.

The big win here was that Mythlink was successfully released. Maybe not in 2022, but at least before this post was made, so I get partial credit. Mythlink has now been out for 11 days and it’s a great weight lifted to at least have it out in the wild.

As for the fierce marketing campaign and entering competitions/conventions? Well…not so much. Although I did try marketing, it wasn’t as fierce as I had hoped because it’s extremely expensive. On top of that, I’ll be the first to admit that Mythlink is not the most stylish game. People will always tend to judge first on appearances and unfortunately it is probably the weakest part of Mythlink. As such, marketing has been a challenge.

The competitions kind of happened. Mythlink recently took 10th place in the Indie DB Indie of the Year competition for upcoming games. That was a huge surprise and I am eternally grateful for all who participated. That was pretty much it for competitions.

Conventions didn’t happen at all. With the release date delay there was quite a bit of focus on other aspects of the game instead of planning for conventions. On top of that, the cost is quite high. Nevertheless, I would still like to do this at least once in 2023.

Speaking of which…

2023

Well now, what to do this year? If you read the release blog, you saw that there is a healthy backlog of items Mythlink related that could keep me busy for years. Rather than repeat those, I’ll just set one other goal for this year.

1) Plan for the future of Mythlink based on player feedback and sales

It is what it is. If Mythlink has no future, then so be it. I will move on to future projects. If it does and the fanbase is there, they can help decide the direction. Of course, a major one would be Oculus native support, but what would the point of that be if player sentiment is low?

Getting a “slow burn” or “cult classic” type community is possible, but not what you can plan for and certainly not what you want to rely on. The release of the game is still fresh, so it’s too early to tell where to go from here.

I wish you all a bright 2023 and year of the rabbit Urusagi!