Hello, everyone!

This is going to be a post-mortem about YBit, my first completed game on Steam.

How it started

The game was originally based on a previous flash game I made called Cubito (small cube in spanish). I originally made that game as my first proyect where I studied. It was the first game I made coding in AS3 (before this, all my games where made in AS2). The logic behind it, was to try to make a clean level design and a simple way to add lots of levels using a matrix.

Years after, as I always want to work on more than one project at once, I decided to start working on a new prototype based on the principles Cubito had. In a few minutes, I already had a cube moving around as in the old game.

Early development

Once I had the prototype, I already found myself liking the idea of working in this game, making it bigger. So I decided to give it a shot and started making more levels with more different platforms. At first I started with all the platforms I had used on Cubito that I liked. Included the green, now brown, square that made the character float. In less than a week, I had around 30 playable levels.

Also, I decided to include a small background story for the game, so it wouldn’t be just a square jumping around from one point to another. This is where I created a dialogue system using Linq that would adapt to how the player played the levels.

Itch.io and Remute’s Adventurous Bundle

Once I had a playable game, I decided to upload it to itch.io as an Early Access game for a very low price which I would raise once the game got more and more content. So far, as the game didn’t have any marketing, wasn’t a masterpiece and also it was at the same price now at Steam. It didn’t sell a single copy.

This would have been a huge downfall for the game since the goal of uploading it to itch.io was to get enough money to publish it through Steam Direct system. But…Remute contacted me and asked if YBit could appear in his next bundle, the Remute’s Adventurous Bundle. I never had had a game in a bundle before, and I had almost nothing to lose, so I accepted. A few months later, while I kept working on the game and uploaded regular content, I got paid more than enough to pay the Steam Direct fare.

Getting to Steam, initial feedback and original OST

So with the money of the bundle, I decided to pay the fare and got the game as Early Access on Steam. This helped me a lot with making people test the game because it was easier to update the build of every user at once from Steam than asking them to download it again from itch.io (most people don’t use the desktop version yet, sadly…) With this new feedback I got to make many additions and changes to the game. Most of this feedback came only from my close friends, but I also got some feedback from random people on the internet. One even added me on Facebook and told me that I understood the meaning of life and I wrote it in the form of game (yeah… right… I though. Funny thing to tell people when they ask me about the feedback I got, because it did actually happen).

Meanwhile, I made more and more content for the game, I also added two musicians to the team. Ivan, the creator of Wasting Bullets music, and Martín. They both made a lot of tracks that you can get on Steam on the YBit Soundtrack downloadable content. All the earnings of it are going to them, plus a % of the total sales, so please consider supporting them!

Final release and IndieGala Bundle

After months of works, we finally finished the complete game. Levels, art, story, music, mechaincs, everything! The game didn’t receive much attention, though we got some reviews like DaikonMedia review ““YBit” is a full-fledged retro adventure, that can keep up with the best games of its genre”. Though the main goal was reached. The game paid for itself and got more than enough to pay for the next game. This was thanks to a second bundle, this time on IndieGala.

As Witchcraft had been in an IndieGala bundle, I got the contact from one of the team leaders and I asked him if he was interested in adding YBit to a bundle. He said yes, so once the game got its final release it was already in the IndieFabric Bundle. All the earnings from this, will probably help develop my next game, so even though it is a small start, it wasn’t a bad one!

Can’t wait to have something with as solid a start as this one for a second project, or third…

Thanks for reading and please consider buying a copy of YBit on one of the following websites!