Introduction to My Release Plans for the Retail Release of Soulful Slide

Hey all, this is probably coming out of nowhere for most of you but I'm on Steam now, as a game developer. Soulful Slide is going to be the first game I release on Steam. Frankly, this wasn't my original plan. I was working on creating a Steam page for Firebrand Dash, the game that I am actively developing. But due to a combination of wanting to give Soulful Slide a spotlight on a bigger platform and deciding that I should start with a smaller game for my first Steam game; (yes, something even smaller than Firebrand Dash, which was already being made as a warm-up for making games on a more official level), I decided to shift gears slightly and push for getting Soulful Slide up on Steam first.

Firebrand Dash will still be coming at some point, you might even see the Steam page for that go up during the process of releasing Soulful Slide. But I decided to post-pone development of Firebrand Dash in order to focus on making this a reality. For anyone who was looking forward to Firebrand Dash, never fret. My goal is to only spend a few months on this side project before shifting development focus back to Firebrand Dash.

As crazy as it might sound to “make and release a game” in that short of a window, I feel confident that I will be able to keep to stick to this goal. For one, Soulful Slide is technically already a fully developed game. It was a game I made for a game jam back in January and went back to once or twice throughout the year to smooth out some of the rough edges of being a game-jam game. In fact, you can try it for yourself right now on itch if you are really curious. Feel free to leave feedback if you do decide to play it, it'll be useful for something I'll talk about later in the video.

https://jackitk.itch.io/soulful-slide

The main reason I need a few months before releasing the game is because I do intend to charge for the game on Steam, as Steam is a bit more costly of a platform than something like itch. At the same time though, I don't want to charge people for something that they can already play for free elsewhere. Therefore, my middle ground is to expand the game with new levels and other content to justify whatever price I end up charging for the game. The price may vary depending on how much new material I end up making for the game, but will very likely be on the cheaper end to reflect the fact that at the end of the day this will still be a small game. After all this likely will only get a couple additional months of development.

As my grand goal is to have this game release on Steam before the end of the year. A time-frame that I'm sure will go by faster than it seems due to juggling game development and other hobbies on top of my 9-5 day job. I do also intend to release my “retail version” of Soulful Slide over on Itch by the way. Just in case anyone would prefer to buy the game there for whatever reason.

I am currently in the works of writing out my “four phase plan” for this expansion project, which I will share with you all once I finish drafting out the details. But to summarize, here are the three phases for this project.

• Phase 1: Fix existing issues and expand on the available options in Settings

  • This would include any accessibility options I can add into the game within a reasonable amount of time.

  • This is getting prioritized over new levels only so I can push out an update to the free version to better reflect the level of quality I'm pushing for the Steam release. (Not to mention that I'm almost already done with this phase, at least for what I initially intended to do.)

• Phase 2: Adding new Levels and Game Modes

  • I've already well in the works of one of these game modes, but that won't be able to be fully realized until I finish making any new levels for the main game. This will make more sense when I explain what the new game mode is later.

• Phase 3: Adding Collectibles and Other Rewards for Playing New Levels

• Around here would also be the around the point I start considering Steam specific features that I haven't already implemented. It's partly a phase 3 thing, partly a phase 4 thing. Sort of a low/medium prioirty depending on the feature as I think most of us can agree that making sure the game functions and there being enough game-play to enjoy should get a bit of priority over if the game has Achievements or not.

• Phase 4: Round 2 of Debugging

  • This would include any bugs or non-bug related issues that came up over the course of Phase 2 and 3. Along with anything I ignored during Phase 1 for whatever reason.

Despite the formality, this is a loose format; so I could see myself taking skipping ahead to phase 2 if I need a break from phase 1 or quickly jumping back to phase 1 if someone reports something important I missed while in the middle of phase 3.

I will do my best to keep you all updated on my development progress and I'll share more details of when it will be released once I've gotten deep enough to begin to better gauge how much time I'll need. I think I'll eventually release the free version of the game as a demo on Steam to allow more people to play it, get an idea what sort of game they're getting, and leave feedback of anything they like to see expanded on. I just rather to wait until I finish my first pass of Phase 1 and get a better idea of the scope of the new version so the demo can give you the best indication of what I have to offer while still giving you reason to buy and play the full game.

Not to mention this is my first time navigating Steam as a developer so things like setting up demos I'll need time to learn how to do anyways.

But if you do play the free version of the game on itch, feel free to share your feedback with me. I make no promises, since I'll be working with a fairly tight development window. But any feedback I get will be useful for narrowing down what features I should prioritize or possibly even give me new ideas to work with.

I have been working on expanding my Discord server to include a channel specifically for to leaving feedback on the games I'm currently developing, but email or posting directly here on Steam/Itch works for me too. I am available on other socials like Bluesky, but those platforms are a bit harder to write and save long form feedback due to the nature of social media. (Besides, my social media presence on X is spotty at best, so it might take days if not longer for me to see your message if you exclusively try to reach out to me there.)

So for now, feel free to wishlist the game on steam if you wish to support my endeavors and I hope to reach out to you all again in a week or two once I'm ready to share more details on the 3 Phase plan with expanding Soulful Slide for Steam. I got to eventually stop writing about what I'm gonna do and start actually doing it after all. lol