Hello guys,
In the previous blog post, I narrated my thought process behind the making of Knight Estate and what inspired the design of the game. Those events took place around May to June last year. At that point, nobody outside of my family knew I was making a game, and they couldn’t really care less. They are not gamers, and they definitely wouldn’t play a game like Knight Estate.
Fast forward to July, I had created a Discord account, an X account, and I already had a Reddit account. So I started sharing early screenshots of the game, hoping someone would say something positive about it, or even be willing to try it out. This is where the troubles began.
I hadn’t thought about how I would actually get people to test the game if they wanted to. The initial screenshots were just in-engine shots. A few people showed interest and started joining the Discord server and following the game’s Twitter account. They began asking how they could test the game. At the time, I was still too preoccupied with trying to make the game playable. Remember when I mentioned in my last blog that I was too focused on making graphics instead of coding? Well, that was now catching up with me. I had also overlooked something just as important: distribution.
When people started showing interest in testing, I couldn’t simply send them APKs of the game. Not only because the game was barely playable, but also because I didn’t have a proper way to distribute it. I started thinking hard about what to do. The only real option was Google Play, but I didn’t have a developer account yet.
Realizing I had made a serious miscalculation, I had to reach out to the interested players and let them know there would be a delay. I knew I would lose some of them because they now had to wait months for the game to become playable.
However, that entire sequence of events turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It made me aware of how many things were wrong with the game. The constant questions from the early followers helped me understand what kind of expectations people had. That feedback made me overhaul many of the design choices I had initially thought were brilliant.
Here’s an example of a change I made. In the screenshot below, you can see the original armor design I was using. It didn’t match the time period of the game’s setting at all.
I also interacted with Reddit communities focused on heraldry, knighthood, and medieval history. They corrected me on a lot of details, and I’m grateful for that. Then the long wait to November began.
In Part 3, I’ll share how I had to learn digital painting specifically for the game. Yes, I was already an artist, but my art style at the time was not going to deliver the results I had envisioned. I’ll also talk about how my fate was in Google Play’s hands for an entire month, and how I genuinely thought it was all over for me.