Thanks to everyone who voted for Abby's Song, but this one just wasn't meant to get through. Maybe once I figure out marketing stuff I'll have a better chance! Peace!

A few people have downloaded Abby's Song from itch.io, which is pretty cool. I hope they enjoy it!

Here's the breakdown of the Abby's Song Steam Greenlight campaign on day 16. In the past 2 weeks, we've had 150 new visitors to the greenlight page (thanks!) resulting in 21 new yes votes (double thanks!). The yes vote percentage seems locked in at 22%, which I'm still pretty happy about considering that this is the first game I've ever made. The number of followers has almost doubled (triple thanks!), so that's a good sign, too. Comments continue to be positive, and we continue to tackle updating the character animations in anticipation of a new trailer.

It seems that Abby's Song's journey through Steam Greenlight will be a long, slow one, but that is definitely not a problem for me. The game is finished overall, minus the tweaks we plan on making, and I'm happy to keep working to spread the word about the game. I'm also excited to begin my next game. I'm just in the idea stage for that right now, though. Anyway, thanks as always to anyone who believes in this project. Go vote please if you haven't already! Leave a comment! Anything helps. If you want to play the game for free right now, you totally can. It's on itch.io for free and has a Humble Page ($0.99 or Pay What You Want). Peace!

Here are the new numbers on the Abby's Song Steam Greenlight campaign after two days. Abby's Song is no longer being featured on the "recent submissions" page, so views and votes have slowed to a crawl already, and things are not looking super great. The 22% yes vote ratio isn't much better than it was the first few hours despite a very quick revamp of the official trailer, but the game has managed to secure nearly 100 yes votes overall so far. The silver lining here is that comments have been supportive and encouraging, with a few downright positive ones, and very little negativity. So, while voters are not currently willing to push Abby's Song through Steam quite yet, they are not driven to speak poorly about it either. To me, this might mean that Abby's Song is not really causing a strong reaction in people, positive or negative, but it's just negative enough for the average person to click "no" instead of "yes."

The past two days have been illuminating for me, and I am pushing forward despite the lukewarm launch. I plan to address voters' concerns regarding character animations and porting Abby's Song to Linux and Mac as soon as I can. I have also recently launched Abby's Song on itch.io for a very reasonable price to see how things go there as well. If nothing else, this has been a valuable experience that I have learned a lot from, which will better prepare me for next time. Peace!

Check it out! I figure complete transparency is a pretty good policy, so here's the first Greenlight update. First, though, GO VOTE! Ok, now that you're back, let's take a look at these mystical numbers. We may even call them "metrics," but I don't know why we would.

I have to say that the campaign is off to a slow start. There have been some criticisms of the character animation, and at least one person found the trailer confusing so far. So, I will do my best to address those two issues as quickly as possible. Have a 21% yes vote ratio is a little disheartening as well. It seems that Abby's Song either A) has an ineffective trailer or B) does not look appealing or C) has a hard time communicating what makes the game interesting.

It'll be interesting to see if improving the animations and shooting a more communicative trailer helps the vote ratio. I hope it does!

Before you read this post, GO VOTE PLEASE!

Whoo! More articles to come over the coming weeks and months, but for now GO VOTE PLEASE!

Is it scary? Yes! Well I damn well hope so. I can't tell from here 'cause I'm too close to it, but my testers say it's pretty creepy. I think it has an excellent atmosphere and a few moments that will grab players by their whatevers and flail 'em a bit, yes. But this isn't your typical jump-scare-fest 2016, oh no. I'm banking that the narrative will fill the dread slot quite nicely. Audio, too, is important here, and I worked hard on that shit, lemme tell ya.

Is it fun? Now, there's the real question, and I believe Abby's Song will give you the value you pay for. End of story. But fun? That's a limiting term which rarely applies to horror, honestly. So we have to go with a more general definition of value. I think the bang for the buck is all over the place with Abby's Song. I strongly think you'll like it (again I'm biased, so take that for what it's worth).

Will it change your life? Maybe. Depends on the stories you've already consumed and what you're used to. It's a thematic twist on an old favorite, I'll say that much. Think about circles (which you should be doing, anyway, in your quest to become a better human, haha!). But seriously though, consider circles. Think about saving the one you love most. Think about sacrifice. Think about the possibility of regaining what was lost. Think about death, rock music, kids, medicine, demons, surgery, and you'll get the idea. It's a short game, so I mostly hope it'll just sucker punch ya wherever you fear the punch most.

So, again, here we are. A pretty big juncture for me. I'm supremely proud to add Abby's Song to my repertoire. I hope you like what I've created :)

-OCL OUT!

First, I bought nothing. Sounds dumb, but it helped a lot at first. I scoured the internet for resources and stumbled across Python and, more importantly for me, Pygame. Both are free and easily installed given a quick Google search, and Python/Pygame is healthily easy to learn. I started from extreme scratch here in terms of programming. In short, I knew nothing at all aside from a CS1010 class I'd taken years ago which focused mainly on a Java based pseudo script which frankly didn't help me at all. I'm an English major, after all, and these computer things are largely dark magic from that standpoint. Ok.

So, after poking around with Pygame for 7 months I finally felt familiar enough to start a serious small-scale project. Thus, Abby's Song was born. It's a short 2D horror adventure game designed to deliver a linear narrative (can you feel the limitations? Well, get used to it if you can't spend that sweet, sweet dough, man). I began development by investing in a $60 scanner/printer combo from Walmart. It's suitable enough and oddly I didn't use it as much as I imagined I would. Anyway, that was my portal between my comp and my terrible drawings. I already had Paint.net, an old (and I mean OLD) version of Cool Edit Pro for my audio tasks, so I was set to go!

Abby's Song development was 100% a learning experience. Everything I wanted to do I learned while on task. I learned the limits of Pygame and worked within those constraints (don't try to layer too much, it'll bog down in a hurry). I relearned the basics of programming logic (if/then/else, while, for, and all that jazz). But before long, I had a playable prototype all to the tune of $60. It wasn't pretty, but that came later without any extra cost. I just had to learn my free tools better. And that's the main thing. Learn your tools. Make the absolute best use of them as you can without adding extra cost. In a world of expensive 3rd party software and whatnot, I couldn't imagine risking my day-job earnings on Abby's Song too much. It's my first game after all, and I had no idea how it would turn out or how long the whole thing would take.

I still haven't spend that last $100 on Steam Greenlight, but I'm about to in less than a week. Cross your fingers, folks, 'cause here comes the last crafty ways I cut down on dev costs. I did actually speak with an art contractor for the art. It was far too expensive (think over $5,000 and you get an idea of it), so I decided to reach out into the gamedev community instead. Luckily for me, two people came to my rescue. One, a certain David Szymanski (who developed Finger Bones, The Moon Sliver, The Music Machine, and A Wolf in Autumn) gave me sage advice and helped with the art direction. Another contact of mine, Dulvlu Spa, offered to create the character animations. This was the hopeful help I was looking for, since art is my weakest skill. So, lesson here: find competent help in any field where your skill is not enough. Try to find this help as free as you can. Good people are out there, and they just might believe in your project as those two fine individuals believed in Abby's Song.

Now, the home stretch! Writing is HARD, MAN. But do it anyway. Write your heart out, kill your darlings, cut all unnecessary words from your game. Even if it's a text adventure or MUD. Cut 'em. Strip it down to its bare essentials. This is standard writing advice and it doesn't stop being useful in gamedev. Next? Get your sound in order, man. Do NOT settle for less. Sound is one of those things that gamers don't think about...because they shouldn't have to. If anything sounds out of place, then your world is literally falling apart. Especially in a low-action game like Abby's Song. So, get it right once, preferably before launch day, eh?

This may sound like a lot of pomp and circumstance from a dude who has shipped zero, count 'em , ZERO games, right? I grant you that, 'cause I have to. Can't argue with a fact. I'll grant you that one all day long. But! These are simply the lessons I have learned developing a no-name, near-no-budget, linear, narrative horror game like Abby's Song. Use my experience how you like, man. Peace!

Big update! I can't believe how far this little project has come in less than 6 months. I've been getting a lot of help and feedback lately. My cousin, Donald, has contributed to the soundtrack. My long-time youtube buddy Dulvluspa is contributing to character animations (forthcoming), and another game developer, David Szymanski (Fingerbones, The Music Machine, A Wolf in Autumn), has been offering really great general advice along the way. So, 2/3 of Abby's Song is in beta, and 1/3 is in Alpha still. Check out the vblog below for a more detailed breakdown: