Riftsletter 7 - Next Fest and Next Plans

Hi! I'm Vikku, or Mahou Boshi if you prefer to be official. If you stumbled onto this randomly, first, thank god the algorithms are working for me for once, and secondly, welcome! What you're currently seeing is a Devlog/Newsletter for Riftaway, a 3D platformer focused on narrative and exploration of spaces in space, and my love letter to, like, a good half of all 3D Mario games. Learn more about it here!

Now let's get to business!

Heya! Hope you all enjoyed Chapter 5- Wait, wrong game... Ahem, greetings once again, hopefully-more-than-usual-everyone! With Next Fest concluding I'd like to share some information on how the event went for Riftaway, as well as what my plan is going forward while I kick my gears back into action. It'll also help me focus on what to do so, let's just do it!

These numbers sure are spiky- Ouch!

Let's quickly get the numeric results out of the way. During next fest, nearly 400 people got to play Riftaway's demo and the game itself gathered almost 800 wishlists! To visually put things into perspective, the previously biggest spike in wishlists (The original game page release) was of just 20, nearly a fourth of the lowest day of Neft Fest, take a look for yourself!

Thank you now nearly 1000 people who saw the game and decided you wanted to see more of it <3 If you haven't played the demo yet I won't be shutting it down as you may have already seen, so please do check it out!

Patching up the Knowledge

Perhaps more important than numbers are the insights I've taken from getting random people to play the game. Here's some key things I've noted in no particular order:

• People seem to enjoy the movement system, which was the main showcase of this demo, so a big success on that end.

• No matter how hard you try to fix the game before launch you cannot predict how hundreds of different people play, so you gotta be ready to patch stuff.

• I need to make things overall more explicit and clear, since a good group of people got lost or confused on what they had to do where.

• Everyone loves the silly hat forme.

So, with what we've learned, what are my plans moving forward? Well...

Shrimp with a Plan

First and foremost, I'll continue developing World 1. Obviously, like, what, did you think that even if the results were bad I was gonna just stop at that? Not now, especially after this huge boost of motivation from Next Fest (And the latest chapter of that Fox-owned game tbh, it always gets me inspired...). It may take me a bit longer than I expected since I want to rethink some areas and there's mechanics I still got to add, but I am sure you'll really enjoy it.

Then, I need to find a way to fund this. To fund me especially. I am running out of the money I had saved to start working on this and I'd like to keep working on this full-time, so I have to find some way to inject money into this project. It would also help me commission people for certain things in the game as well, like the memory arts for example. (Reminder that I do have a Patreon if you want to support me directly!)

Sort of related to the last one I want to find a publisher as well! I am lacking some reach and it would be nice to count with that kind of support. I've been working on a Pitch Deck presentation for some time now that I'll try showing to some publishers, wish me luck!

And that's it for this month! Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a lotta work left to be done. Got really hooked into that Chapter 5 yea... Cya!

• Vikku (Mahou Boshi)