The launch of my Katamari inspired game Long Puppy
My game for Playdate Season 2 has finally come out!
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
I started writing today’s Indie Notebook from the train station at the airport in France on my way back home from Sweden.
It was two very eventful weeks: I got engaged to the sweetest person in the world (at the location in the picture above), we stayed at my bestie’s place in Göteborg, saw a Håkan Hellström concert and then we took a train ride across half of Sweden to visit my family for a week.
And in the midst of all that I launched my latest game!
The launch of Long Puppy!
One week ago my game Long Puppy came out as part of Playdate’s Season 2! It’s a bundle of 12 games, delivered directly to the Playdate console, 2 games per week.
My game launched in week 3 along with Otto’s Galactic Groove!!
The games of the previous two weeks are amazing so I was unsure whether people would think my game holds up. I didn’t feel particularly nervous or stressed. But I did feel some imposter syndrome building up as the launch day approached.
When it dropped I kept an eye on the Playdate subreddit and another eye on the Playdate Squad discord channel. It took over an hour for people to get my game because Otto’s Galactic Groove dropped at the same time, since it’s a rhythm game with a lot of music files the download time became long.
“a loooooong download for a Looooooong puppy.” - discord user
I refreshed every web page and checked every discord channel constantly, eager to hear people’s reactions. It was silent for quite a while, then posts and messages started to bubble up.
“i was really hyped about this game from the title alone but when i played the tutorial it was better than i ever thought”
“This has me cracking up lol. I can't believe someone's brain created this”
“it's such a simple concept and I love the (gameplay spoiler) wario race to the finish at the end too”
“There's a lot to love on this one but I wanna say the sound design is incredible, the puppy stretching sfx really makes it. Also I adore the art direction”
“God I love this puppy”
And someone posted this picture. Not sure what it means but I like the vagueness of it.
Along with these comments some players reported glitching through walls in a few specific spots. I thought I had already fixed this bug completely before launch, but apparently there were still some ways left to trigger it. It seemed like quite a rare occurrence but I couldn’t leave it in there. So I put on my Customer Support Hat and started telling people I would fix it. I worried that it would be REALLY hard to fix because we had a similar persistent problem in my previous game Surmount. So I thought, ”ok let’s be super methodical about this.” I then put a Detective Hat on top of my Customer Support Hat and patiently reread my player-code. I wrote down any theories about the cause and ideas of what might fix it. I managed to fix it in 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Another recurring bug report took me a bit by surprise. One of the collectables on the second last level was just out of reach. I didn’t expect much to anyone going for 100% completion. So I was actually quite happy in a way to hear about this bug from so many people - because it meant a lot people made it this far!
I’ve fixed and improved some other stuff too but those were the most dramatic things so far.
I worried a bit that people wouldn’t get the controls (because the way you move Long Puppy is unusual). Whenever I showed the game to people in person it was a bit of a pain to watch them struggle in the beginning. There is still a little struggle right when someone picks it up. But I think that’s part of what makes this game fun. It’s a bit like the game throws you into a world where you are a baby (or puppy) again and you have to crawl before you learn to walk. That’s something I love about games in general and especially when they have weird movement controls.
There was a time during development where I felt like I had done a mistake by going with a weird movement mechanic again (after doing that with Surmount too). It felt like the game was overly complicated and difficult. And I didn’t know if I would really be able to do anything to better that. So it feels amazing that I managed to get it to where it is today. There are lots of big and small decisions about the player behavior I could talk about, but I will save that for another day. The progress I made in this regard only really occurred to me now as I sat down and reflected on it. I never seize to be amazed by how quickly I can start to take aspects of the things I’ve made for granted, even though it took a lot of effort to get there.
So in general it seems like people are having a good time with Long Puppy. They enjoy both the gameplay and the presentation of it.
Engadget is writing reviews for each of the Season 2 games as they come out. I was really happy to read the one for Long Puppy.
“I'm convinced that Playdate developers are a different breed. This console has led me to some of the oddest games I've played in a while, and Long Puppy is yet another ridiculous but charming entry to the canon.”
I even appeared on the Playdate Podcast to talk about the game! The production quality of this show is so high. I’ve been a fan for a long time so it feels nuts to be on it.
I think that’s all about Long Puppy for today. I’ve got some more stuff to write down but I will save that for the post mortem.
This project has been such a wonderful and fun experience from start to finish. I’m so glad I got to do this. I hope you enjoyed the game if you had the chance to play it!
Mini Notes
🎤 Talk - How To Win The Lottery (as a creative person)
Hilarious talk that has been circling around in game dev circles a bit recently. It captures perfectly how inspiring talks from creative people in any creative industry talks about their success.
⬜️ Software - Anytype
I’m a huge Notion user, I use it for nearly everything. But I am a bit afraid that it will become unusable to me some day if Notion decides to change what is possible to do on their free plan. Or if they became completely unreasonable with their AI implementation. For now it is possible to disable it. But I might give this open source alternative a go to see how it compares.
Would love to know your thoughts on it if you’ve tried it!
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! I’d love to hear what today’s issue made you think about.
Take care and have a creative week.
Congrats on all the things, Jonas!! What a joyous time.