Origin Story: Midnight Edition

Here’s a brief year one retrospective, an origin story if you will, written past midnight, with little sleep:

Kingdom Bash: Origin Story: Midnight Edition

I used to tinker with Game Maker back in high school, sketching up game ideas while ignoring my Calculus teacher. Typical. I saw that Game Maker games were becoming successful. Finally, in March 2015, I bought a professional license, and began developing! It wasn’t until August 2nd last year that I officially started working on an idea that I felt was actually feasible. Kingdom Bash was born.

I had friends play a tacky little demo of characters shooting each other with fireballs and arrows, and it was fun! I would always (and still do) ask “What do you want to see next?”. Every weekend I would try to add something new, so that our usual group hangout session would have something new to play. In the true spirit of couch multiplayer, I am succeeding at bringing friends together to have fun. I aim to end every development cycle with a zero-bug build, before adding a new feature. It might take longer, but at the moment I’m not too worried about it. The code just. Bloody. Works. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I showed the game off using video off my phone, word of mouth, and finally built the website, marking an official announcement before my birthday this year. I showed it off “publicly” first at Angry Erik’s (a local brewery) on my birthday, once again at The Dragon’s Lair (my friends’ local comic shop), and took it to Playcrafting NYC near the end of July.

So, after a year of development, I’ve finally started gaining some traction with social media. If you’re reading this as a fresh post, consider yourself an OG Kingdom Bash fan. You showed enough interest in my work to like it before it (hopefully) becomes cool. Go you.

We’re almost reaching the end of the road to A Video Game Con, and I have so many plans in store… Possibly a public beta release? Stay tuned.

Detour! Playcrafting NYC Summer Expo

A wonderful friend of mine showed me an email for an upcoming event for playtesting video games a few weeks ago. The tag line for Playcrafting NYC was certainly appealing!

100 games. 700 players. 1 night. And pizza.

“How do I sign up?” I think to myself. Fast-forward a couple weeks, I found the wind in my sails, and I built some long-awaited features, including:

  • Extra lives for co-op survival
  • Co-op players respawn with an EXPLOSION
  • Rebalanced monster spawn rates
  • The leader(s) of versus round-based matches wear a crown!
  • Stat tracking code cleaned up
  • Stat screen updated to reflect all characters

Playcrafting NYC Summer Expo

Two of my closest friends joined me, and we survived the biggest show this game (and I) have been to yet. I learned quite a few things about expos, namely:

  • Don’t set up in the hallway unless you’re okay with less traffic, as counterintuitive as that sounds
  • Especially don’t set up next to the hip-hop drinking game, hosted by someone who shouldn’t be allowed to have an airhorn
  • If you do set up in the hallway, snag a table and as many chairs as possible
  • Bring a big screen, possibly even a projector
  • Bring takeaway trinkets, people will ask for them
  • If you don’t have takeaways, improvise.
  • Having simple 8.5 x 11″ signs with game and media details was extremely handy
  • Inform your helpers with the answers to common questions
  • Take lots of pictures and videos, and as the developer, be in those photos

Here’s the photos from the event we did manage to snag:

I will definitely show the game at the next Playcrafting NYC event, which I believe close to Halloween! Perhaps by then I’ll have added some more spooky monsters and environments. Until then, this was a great stepping stone, and my next goal is to take what I’ve learned to A Video Game Con in September. See you there!

P.S. Happy one year anniversary of Kingdom Bash development! I’ll write a proper post about that soon I swear…