Hello. With project just hitting 1100 views and 250 downloads I decided it is time to talk about how it all came to be.

I think around September I developed really basic prototype. It featured card falling onto brown cube. That's it, but I enjoyed it because it worked without problems.

Then I added some textures, created a card creation system through Scriptable objects, I only used them for bad weapon list for unreleased roguelike that also used WFC and procedural walk generation at the same time.

At that point I added basic card placement and gameplay using just keyboard except selecting card. Then I just needed score that just required one integer to be modified with total card attack, that was the point of game releasing. I think that it gathered some views and downloads because the title was clickbait.

At that point I thought that I was done. Project gathered very little views. I moved on to developing game that is now used in the ARG here, I tried to make a 3D version of 2015 visual novel "Everlasting summer", it went horrible wrong. I spent time checking out some new and interesting games in hope to inspiration, build Minecraft city that now has barley any progress, the trailers still remain on my YouTube channel with less than 30 views to this date.

The project was doomed to fail because my second cousin who usually helps me out with all the testing really couldn't give much feedback. But at that point Deynum did a stream with Halloween game jam to scare him(he gets scared really easily), however the donations resulted him playing more games that were submitted to the jam so he made google form that I've sent this game to. It gotten chosen and I got a lot of valuable feedback. I had fun making the game again. I knew what I had to add. There were added custom cards and deck editor. I added card slots on the table and fully featured mouse interaction's. I did a playtest with awesome dude from stream's chat, he suggested the way deck works now, I ported to linux because of him and overall he was very helpful in his feedback. We did play together once or twice again since then.

At that point I decided to create a trailer. I recorded myself around 10 times. Most ended up unusable, I've spent around 10 hours in total of editing. Considering me not having a greenscreen I used "unscreen" which supports only 5 second GIFs for free. Overall it was a pain. But it was finally done, I released it to YouTube and made a post on reddit. Both were met positively. YouTube video got 356 views in less than 2 days, which was really a lot to me. But then it stopped. I put up finishing touches to my ideas at the time and left project again. It was November - December of 2023.

And here the final chapter of the story ad it is for now begins. 

On December 31 of 2023 I started developing a game inspired by Choo-Choo Charles and Snowpiercer. The idea was changed a few times but the main inspiration was a game I saw  on "VAV" YouTube channel, check it our if you are interested. I knew this game was doomed to fail so I planned making a small update for Inscryption featuring a button in menu with a link to this game to move some traffic and some more small changes that would improve the game. But than I've got a comment by Mysanity [stpdLOL]. I've got indescribable feeling that anyone experiences when their work makes people happy. That moment I decided to make a fully fletched update. The first day I rushed easier parts. Then in one week I had to do a lot. Really. So I pushed my other game back and gone fully on improving this one. I released a small teaser on YouTube of mask animation. Due to title being best for clickbait video now has over 700 views despite it being 7 seconds. Like really, this was perfect to algorithm. It would mostly be shown to Inscryption fans, they would already be interested in multiplayer, and "put on the mask" is just enough amount of mystery to hook potential viewer. Later I released 2 gameplay trailers along with unstable versions. Both trailers gained a few hundred views which really helped game to survive when it got unindexed by itch. I forgot to mention but his happened right when I announced the update. Getting unindexed means my game wouldn't show up in search results which brought most traffic to the game. But releasing YouTube vids I managed to keep page views and downloads above average. Later I finally got in contact with support casually replying to me that "game got indexed, new projects take some time to get indexed", like game was uploaded for 3+ month at that point. Also that meant game was added to "new" section. The first day it brought 90 views, from that point is slowly falls but still above what was earlier. For example earlier average was 15 views a day and 2 downloads. Now being 9:20 AM for me I already got 16 views and 11 downloads.

And that is where the story ends for now. Game again has been paused until I get some ideas or suggestions. 

Thanks for being with me on this journey. The best reward for developer is people being happy over his game.