Hey rockstars and washed-up-has-been rockstars! Today we would like to take a moment to celebrate/discuss how far this game has come.
Tycoon games have always been held to a pretty high standard in regards to balance and pacing. The truth to it is that no game will be perfect for everyone and Rock God Tycoon is no exception. We've read reviews praising the game for being the very best tycoon game they've ever played! But we have also read reviews stating that this is the absolute worst game they've ever played. Neither side is wrong, they just enjoy different games.
With that out of the way... We are proud of how far this game has come and now we will go on a short journey following the development of Rock God Tycoon.
Many years ago Panos (the artist) and I met through a website called IndieDB in its job section. He had made a post requesting to team up with a programmer to create some musical tycoon game. I had never wanted to work with anyone but for some reason this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a shot. We got together in a Skype call and before we knew it we had worked the entire day on our prototype "Metalhead Tycoon". I still have the original executable and let me tell you it was a horrible game.
We then posted the game on Steam greenlight where it sat for quite a while with little to no votes or recognition and reasonably so. I went on to create another game after splitting up with Panos.
The game I had been working on had been approved on Greenlight and coincidentally so had Metalhead Tycoon. Panos rebranded the game at some point as "Rock God Tycoon" with all new artwork. He and I talked for the first time in a LONG time where he told me that he wanted to recreate what we had started a year prior. Again without a real reason I said, "Sure!"
Days later we were both working on Rock God Tycoon! During this time I was working 40 hour weeks at a retail job and was still developing my other game (which was early access at the time) while Panos was still going to college full-time. It was only by sheer luck that we managed to get the game all the way to early access 1.5 years later.
Panos and I are usually pretty cynical people and so we expected the game to flop once we entered Early Access. We were absolutely blown away when the game sold well enough for us to pay bills and all the meanwhile we were maintaining 95%+ in Steam reviews. Never before did we feel so motivated to work on this game. There were regular posts with pages of feedback and suggestions, and just so much positive/encouraging energy all around.
I don't think either of us had been that happy with ourselves before.
The game went into full release in February of 2017 and we again were surprised by how many people had been waiting on the game to leave Early Access. It was shortly after that time that Panos was getting a job in another country and I had to move forward with a new project. Many people felt we had abandoned the game so we came back and did a massive overhaul.
We implemented an expanded tension system that took away a lot of the normal "busk 24/7" grind that people had told us was ruining the experience. It took about a week if I recall and when we pushed it out we got mixed results. It seemed that nobody was bothered or impressed so we just left it at that. The core of the game isn't going to change with tweaks and new features.
Panos is working for a game company in Germany now doing what he loves and paying bills like an adult. I'm working on my 4th game whilst finishing putting my previous title onto consoles. Both of us are proud of how far we've come and with the overall experience of Rock God Tycoon (from a developer's point of view). We started with nothing, no help, and no recognition. We had to claw our way here and every inch of it was gruesome but worth it.
There is the occasional review/comment that Rock God Tycoon is dead. Saying a game is dead puts out a very negative idea that a game is completely broken and abandoned. This is obviously not the case and we wanted to clear the air. No we are no longer working on Rock God Tycoon (actively) and we have both since moved on to new projects/jobs. We have to make bills, grow as people, and progress in our careers.
To say this game is dead is to say that we didn't put 1.5 years (and additionally updates/patches for 5 months, not mentioning minor fixes even recently) and that just sucks to hear. Especially from users with 40+ hours put into the game.
I hope this post was an interesting read!
Seabass's Twitter (programmer)
Panos's Twitter (artist)
Keep rockin' on! :RockSign: