The ScreenSpace Development Journey

Hey, there!

I'm the sole developer for ScreenSpace, and I'd like to thank you for checking my game out. A fair bit of time has passed since the game's release, so I figured I'd post an update about it. It's not right to just make a Steam release then go radio silent, so let's talk about the game for a bit.

I've got two things to cover, starting with the project's origin story, and finishing with a small preview of an upcoming update that I'm working on. If you've got some spare time, give this a read!

Project Origin

I had originally made this game as a hobby project. I had never developed a game before this one, and had no formal schooling or prior game releases either. As a result, the earliest version of ScreenSpace was very rudimentary and plain. Check out screenshots from the May 2020 test build:

You could probably tell by seeing that cheeky, nonfunctional "no ads" button, that it was initially developed for mobile devices, and you're exactly right! I figured mobile would be the easiest platform to develop on for my first game, especially if it's not too big a project.

The very first thing that needed to be built was the random button selector. It was definitely easy to do, but I needed to account for the possibility of colorblind players getting confused. Therefore, I changed the color scheme and added arrows to the center circle.

It started to come together nicely! From there, I added a small series of graphical touch-ups and visual effects until I got a final product. The game was ready for launch!

PC Version

It's such a good feeling to successfully release a product out to the wild.

Imagine the thought

your game is on someone's storefront! It's so awesome, yet terrifying at the same time. It convinced me that more can be done to improve the game even further. Better performance, cleaning up code, etc.

But then it hit me

the best thing to do for the game's longevity is to bring it to the wide PC audience. So I got to work, and surely enough, I managed to bring it to you here!

With all that said, I cannot thank you enough for joining me on this bizarre, terrifying-yet-interesting journey! Now, let's wrap this up with a little info on the game's first update.

Version 1.1 Inbound

The first major update for the game is mostly quality of life additions and visual adjustments, with one major change to the gameplay. The biggest takeaway from this update, at least to me, is an adjustment to the clickable areas in the game space. That change in particular reduces the overall size of each clickable area, but increases their visibility. This fixes the possibility of cheesing both Normal and Hard mode by clicking near the center of the screen to minimize the effort in playing. Make use of it while you can!

I'll release a dedicated patch preview separately from this post, but for now, here's what to expect:

• Core gameplay change - clickable area reduced, but visibility increased.

• Starting timer delay - in both Normal and Hard modes, the timer won't start until you click a button!

• Graphics options (resolution, fullscreen, VSync)

• Adjustable FPS Cap (sorry this wasn't already added!)

• Reduction of visual effect intensity.

• Reduction of color intensity/contrast.

• Other visual updates to the menus, fonts, and timer.

I currently don't have an exact release date for this update, but the target is currently some time in April. Keep an eye out for the full patch preview for more info.

That's it from me! Make sure to post some screenshots of your highest scores to the community hub, I'm very interested to see how far you can go. If you have any questions, feel free to ask or post a discussion! Until next time, take care!