It’s been a little over a month since Gearbits launched. And I'm very happy to say that the reception from players has been positive. A small but passionate group of players seems to have found the game. And luckily for me, the release of Armored core 6 brought some new interest towards mecha games. So the amount of players who will discover Gearbits will likely keep increasing.
But I feel like I should clear up, that Gearbits was not an attempt to cash in on the success of Armored core. Gearbits was in development before the first (reliable) rumors of a new Armored core even appeared. It’s undeniable that older Armored core games had and influence on Gearbits but they weren’t the only influence. Some have correctly fingered the Earth defense force series as an inspiration. But there is one more game that only few have managed to point out. Ace combat! There isn’t and obvious overlap, since you don’t pilot planes in my game. But the influence is there. The way the campaign and missions are structured was inspired by Ace combat. Likewise, the way the weapon selection works is more Ace combat than Armored core.
I started working on the game about two years ago. Before then, I had no experience with Unity or much experience with game development in general. Gearbits started as a 3D demo, where I tested importing 3D models and animations to the engine. Then I started looking into adding more features and eventually I had enough pieces to start putting them together into a real game.
I wanted Gearbits to be an arcadey mecha game. A game where you wouldn’t have to rely on, or be restricted by a lock-on system. Where the controls would have some complexity without being so obtuse that a new player couldn’t figure them out in a few minutes. I felt that there weren’t any mecha games that would give the kind of experience I wanted, or if there were, I didn’t know about them. So I set out to make that game myself.
Now, anyone who knows anything about projects like these, knows that the #1 thing you should never ever do, is to make your first game your dream game. I’ve learned a lot in the two years since I started working on the game. I’ve learned about programming, 3D modeling, the Unity editor and much much more. Right now I’d be much better equipped to make ”The dream game”.
If I were to make Gearbits from scratch now, with everything I’ve learned since I started, there would be a lot of things I’d do differently. First of all, the game would be programmed better. I still feel quite ashamed about how there were bugs in the game at launch. Even worse, when I hurried to fix them I ended up making more. This isn’t as much a programming problem, as it is a planning problem. It was dumb of me to still add new features so close to launch. I should have focused on QA more. The game needed a period before launch, where no new features are added and all the effort is spent on testing the game diligently to sniff out any bugs. No matter how tempting the new features may be.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can come up with a lot of criticism for the game design. I’m quite happy with the pace at which the story progresses, but I feel that I could have done better with the mission layout and introducing the gameplay elements.
For example, I think that starting mission 2 with an escort section was a misstep. By that point, most players hadn’t really picked up the game yet, so asking them to pay attention and protect a target other than themselves might have been too much. I also feel that mission 3 could have happened later. That mission has a risk of the player getting lost and frustrated, which some players are not willing to tolerate so early in the game.
Another big sticking point was mission 17. A lot of people had trouble with this mission. I don’t personally have a problem with it. But after reading the player feedback, I realised that I made some mistakes. I feel like I should have really driven home how important it is to ignore the enemies and focus on collecting the crates. If I would change the mission dialogue now, I would also make sure that the player understands that the transmitter has to be destroyed. Because the previous mission has the player destroying an identical transmitter, I was expecting the players to figure it out. But I didn’t account for the fact that everyone might not play those two missions back to back.
Another thing that came up with player feedback was the wave survival mode. Survival mode really should have been in the game on day one. I didn’t really consider it, because I wanted the game to have a single player campaign and I felt that an endless mode would be just filler. What I failed to consider, was that having an optional wave mode would have zero negative influence on the main campaign. I only really realised that a wave mode would be good addition when the first players started asking for it. But I’m very glad that they did, because I think that it was a great addition. I thought it was so great, that I worked like crazy to get it out as soon as possible.
There were actually many features that were added due to player feedback. The game has been publicly available for almost the entirety of the two year development. And during that time I got a lot of good feedback and some really good feature suggestions. The testers have been very helpful. But above all. I’m most grateful to the testers for not sending me bug reports that are screenshots of the bug enemies, with a message saying ”I found some bugs in the game”. Thank you for managing to restrain yourself and not go for such an obvious joke.
Bout the games storyline. I wasn’t really aiming high with the story. I knew it was necessary for the game to have have a story and characters. I wanted the player to feel like their actions actually have meaning and consequences. But I hadn’t actually ever written a long form story before. That’s why I went for a very basic plot and used various stock archetypes for the characters. My main priority was that the player likes the heroes, hates the villains and understands the whole way through, what their ultimate end goal is. I structured the story largely around what I wanted in the game. Meaning that I thought ”I want the player to fight giant insects and enemy robots. What kind of story would facilitate that?” And I just went from there.
The story was meant to be a way to string together the set pieces I wanted in the game. Nothing groundbreaking but not unbearably terrible. The reception seem to have been that the story is ok, which is pretty much what I was aiming for.
The story performed its task, but still I feel like the dialogue itself could have been written better. I’m not an experienced writer and English is not my first language, so there would inevitably be some awkward lines in the dialogue. Sometimes I intentionally chose to write a piece of dialogue in a way that came off as weird, in the hopes that it would come off feeling like a fansub for an old robot anime. I can't even begin to explain why I did that. If you get it you get it.
However, what was not intentional, were the typos. I’ve read the dialogue so many times that it’s basically white noise. I failed to spot many typos. Luckily, my eagle eyed test pilots did report some typos, but
even so, many of them made it in. Maybe I should have gotten some dedicated proofreaders on top of the gameplay testers. And since I'm thinking about what I should have done, I really should have looked into localising the game. Turns out that it was pretty popular in Japan and many people expressed disappointment that the game only had english text.
The one aspect of the game that I would have the hardest time improving, even with everything I’ve learned now, would be the games visuals. There’s a limit to how good a 3D game made by a solo developer can look, but with the right artstyle, even low fidelity graphics can look very appealing. I now understand the engine better, so I could spend more time on considering the art. When I started learning the engine, I was too caught up with getting things to work, to pay attention to making them look good. As a result, the graphics have rightly been criticised for being primitive. The menu UI especially could use an update. Compare the main menu that has been in the game since the beginning, to the extra missions menu I added after launch. And if you want to compare some more visuals, turn off the new dialogue sprites to see the original sprites I drew for the game by myself. I feel like I could draw them better now, but still, it’s better to leave it to the professionals.
I feel that the only visual part I really managed to put attention to, was the mechanical design. Each unit was designed, modeled and textured from the ground up. The intention was to design units that fit a wide array of mecha archetypes and design inspirations, while still being consistent with the Gearbits ”artstyle”. While it was definitely worth it to put effort into the playable robots, it was pretty ridiculous to model and texture every single weapon. Since almost none of the weapons appear in closeups and most of them are only ever seen from behind the playermodel.
There’s a lot I would change about the game If I were to do it over, but there’s also a lot I would still like to add to the game. I have ideas for new maps, playable units, enemies, missions and story events. I’ve actually already modeled three new player characters! I’ve also got another game that I made as a quick side project. I’m thinking that I want to polish it to completion and release it properly. I’ve got big plans for Gearbits and I’m not the only one. Various people have come to me and offered to help with the game. I’m blown away that the game has generated such interest and I hope that I can find a way to move forward in a way that satisfies the most amount of people.
I haven’t gotten the first sales report yet, but no matter how much money the game will make, I know the time I spent making the game didn’t go to waste. Gearbits hasn’t become a smash hit (Yet!) But the ones who have played the game have liked it. Some have even loved it. Gearbits was made, because it was the kind of game I wanted to play and I’m beyond happy that it turned into a game that other people also want to play.
When I first played Super Mario galaxy, I thought that Mario was just being polite when he said ”Thank-a you so much for-a playing-a my game!” But now, more than a decade later, I’ve made my own game and I really understand, that the developers really meant every word. Thank you to everyone who played Gearbits. I hope that you’ll like whatever I make next even half as much.