Making Sun Stones has been (and continues to be!) a lot of work. Since this is the first game for our little company, we don't have the luxury of "regular income" during this development period. That has meant a lot of sacrifices for not only those of us on the Sun Stones team, but also for our families.
I personally have been neglecting my partner Kealy Barrow more than I should, so I've started building a new habit to help remind me to pay more attention to her - whenever I notice that the numbers on the clock line up (2:22, or 3:45, or 11:11, etc) I take a moment to write her a note reminding her how much I love and appreciate her.
I sat down to write this weekly blog post for Sunstone Games and notices that it was 1:23pm. So at the risk of confusing readers, I'm going to address the rest of this post directly to Kealy.
Kealy, I know that you're not anti-video games. We've talked about how you bought a NES as an adult and ran Super Mario Bros. into the ground. You've tried out some online games with me, and we've rocked our way through 4 Rock Band games. But I think you are just now, after more than two years together, realizing that video games are a huge part of my life, and that you will need to have more than just a passing interest in order for our lives to continue to mesh so well.
Relationships require work, and compromise, and change. We have both showed excellent understanding of those facts, but I think it's been hard on occasion (understandably so) to elevate "Play more Video Games" to the same level as "Make an effort to connect with my partner's friends" or "Prioritize the needs of the children."
Me being a developer certainly exacerbates this trend, because "creating" a video game requires far more focus and time than "playing" a video game ever does. We've been working on Sun Stones for 6 months, and the initial interest and pride you exhibited in month 3 has had the gloss worn off. Nobody would fault you for that. I saw a documentary about how people who are champion food-eaters train themselves to digest food slowly - because the digesting process contracts the muscles around the stomach. Adjusting to the long cycle of game development requires a similar shift - you can't build too much enthusiasm too quickly, because it is a test of endurance.
It is obvious to everyone who knows you, Kealy, that you are motivated by intelligence. You have passion, and you seek out ways to express that passion through your work, your lifestyle, and your interactions with others. I too have passion, but it expresses itself in an unusual fashion - though the development of video games. It is a leap of faith on both our parts to work together and support one another through both the endeavors we appreciate and those which don't speak to us directly.
I love you, Kealy.
The official blog for Sunstone Games. Check here for our artistic musings, press releases, community events, and game announcements.
Betas Away!
If you didn't already know from our Twitter feed, Sun Stones is officially in Beta as of December 31st, 2011. We've already sent out more than two dozen beta invites to our contributors, but we're looking for as many eyeballs as we can get while we try to finish the game, so anyone with an online Android or iOS device should send an e-mail to:
test@sunstone.co
Our able-bodied team will set you up with your very own pre-release build of the game!
We're using TestFlight for this process, at least for iOS users, because they make it easy for us to register devices and get things working smoothly. From the user's point of view, they just click on a link and our app installs on their phone - no messy ID numbers, or provisioning nonsense.
(All that "nonsense" still happens, of course, but TestFlight allows it to happen behind the scenes.)
Of course, getting the game into beta tester hands is only the first step - the second step is getting feedback about the game, bug reports, suggestions, etc. To streamline that process we've set up a series of google forms: one for each type of report. In our first 12 hours of beta we've already received more than a dozen responses to the forms, which is a great start. We have some analytics in place within the game, so we can see (for example) how many levels have been completed by all users - but that's a very rough look at the experience players are really having, so insightful well-written feedback is critical to the beta process.
Our team is absolutely looking over every report in detail (maybe a bit too much detail) so this is a great opportunity for folks to influence the game with their opinions.
We're funded!
There are still a few hours to go, but as of this morning our Kickstarter campaign is (exactly) 100% funded. But rather than bask in our own success, I'd like to take this time to draw attention to some other really worthy projects on Kickstarter. I know firsthand how important even $1 is for achieving success!
Hanafuda Cards:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sarahehthomas/modern-hanafuda
Oh, I remember many happy hours playing Kwa-Do with my sister using these cards. Is anyone outside of Japan familiar with these? Apparently at least one person is!
Exile Sun:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gameknightgames/exile-sun-multiplayer-conflict-redefined
I played this board game at BGG.con in November. They already have super-professional-quality components, so I don't really know what they need investment for. But if you can just buy a game through this campaign, it's probably money worth spending.
Tunnelers:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gejmerqo/tunnelers-an-action-game-most-girls-won-t-understa?
Wow - this one looks really amazing. They've already spent 2 years on it, and it looks like a real-time mix of Moonbase commander and Scorched Earth. SO AWESOME.
Auro:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dinofarmgames/auro-the-golden-prince?
By the team that made 100 Rogues. That game wasn't especially compelling, but their new idea sounds stronger, and actually shipping an iOS game has GOT to increase your chops significantly.
Hanafuda Cards:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sarahehthomas/modern-hanafuda
Oh, I remember many happy hours playing Kwa-Do with my sister using these cards. Is anyone outside of Japan familiar with these? Apparently at least one person is!
Exile Sun:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gameknightgames/exile-sun-multiplayer-conflict-redefined
I played this board game at BGG.con in November. They already have super-professional-quality components, so I don't really know what they need investment for. But if you can just buy a game through this campaign, it's probably money worth spending.
Tunnelers:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gejmerqo/tunnelers-an-action-game-most-girls-won-t-understa?
Wow - this one looks really amazing. They've already spent 2 years on it, and it looks like a real-time mix of Moonbase commander and Scorched Earth. SO AWESOME.
Auro:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dinofarmgames/auro-the-golden-prince?
By the team that made 100 Rogues. That game wasn't especially compelling, but their new idea sounds stronger, and actually shipping an iOS game has GOT to increase your chops significantly.
Grouping Levels
It is customary for level-based games on mobile devices to have three levels to their level selection process: a main menu where players select "load a level", a chapter-select, and then a list of levels within that chapter. This is a classic way to present lots of content in a clean, accessible format.
Within Sun Stones we change things up a bit - we don't put players on a menu screen at all. In fact, most of our playtesters never enter any sort of menu, because we just let them flow between "glyph walls" and individual puzzles. We do have a menu system, and you can load individual levels through a more traditional 3-layer system, but our "no menu" alternative has been so strong that I sometimes wonder if we needed to bother.
What are Glyph Walls?
The metaphor behind playing Sun Stones is that you are using a cache of magical stones to create art on the rocky surface of a cave. You close your eyes and receive a vision, which remains represented in abstract form when you open them again. Using that abstract guide, you place stones on the surface. Once the stones exactly match your vision, the stones disappear and the final artistic glyph is inscribed onto the surface. That's one puzzle, or level of the game.
But these glyphs don't just exist in a vacuum - between individual puzzles you view a "Glyph Wall" which shows groups of glyphs - finished and unfinished. These Glyph Walls generally have 8 glyphs or so, grouped by thematic elements and arranged to tell a story. As players move through the game and solve their visions, they are simultaneously revealing the story each Glyph Wall tells. For example, our second story is "The Hunt." It begins with a campfire, arrowheads, and then a series of deer prints. The prints lead to a deer, then an arrow in flight appears. The final puzzle is the deer's hide drying over the fire which began the sequence.
Glyph Walls = Story = Mechanics
An exciting challenge for the team has been to not only select thematic glyphs for each wall, but to simultaneously teach new mechanics and new types of goals within each story. In the hunt, you are learning to transmute orange sun stones into obsidian stones - a transformation which first happens with the fire and the arrowhead. Later we use Weaving as a metaphor to teach players how rows of black stones are transmuted into white stones, and so forth.
It has been an ongoing challenge to simultaneously develop our mechanics, aesthetics, and level progression. Various attempts by the team to separate these elements have resulted in some less-than-compelling experiences, so we've continued down this demanding path. I hope players enjoy the efforts we've put into making those relationships so seamless.
Within Sun Stones we change things up a bit - we don't put players on a menu screen at all. In fact, most of our playtesters never enter any sort of menu, because we just let them flow between "glyph walls" and individual puzzles. We do have a menu system, and you can load individual levels through a more traditional 3-layer system, but our "no menu" alternative has been so strong that I sometimes wonder if we needed to bother.
What are Glyph Walls?
The metaphor behind playing Sun Stones is that you are using a cache of magical stones to create art on the rocky surface of a cave. You close your eyes and receive a vision, which remains represented in abstract form when you open them again. Using that abstract guide, you place stones on the surface. Once the stones exactly match your vision, the stones disappear and the final artistic glyph is inscribed onto the surface. That's one puzzle, or level of the game.
But these glyphs don't just exist in a vacuum - between individual puzzles you view a "Glyph Wall" which shows groups of glyphs - finished and unfinished. These Glyph Walls generally have 8 glyphs or so, grouped by thematic elements and arranged to tell a story. As players move through the game and solve their visions, they are simultaneously revealing the story each Glyph Wall tells. For example, our second story is "The Hunt." It begins with a campfire, arrowheads, and then a series of deer prints. The prints lead to a deer, then an arrow in flight appears. The final puzzle is the deer's hide drying over the fire which began the sequence.
Glyph Walls = Story = Mechanics
An exciting challenge for the team has been to not only select thematic glyphs for each wall, but to simultaneously teach new mechanics and new types of goals within each story. In the hunt, you are learning to transmute orange sun stones into obsidian stones - a transformation which first happens with the fire and the arrowhead. Later we use Weaving as a metaphor to teach players how rows of black stones are transmuted into white stones, and so forth.
It has been an ongoing challenge to simultaneously develop our mechanics, aesthetics, and level progression. Various attempts by the team to separate these elements have resulted in some less-than-compelling experiences, so we've continued down this demanding path. I hope players enjoy the efforts we've put into making those relationships so seamless.
Our Secret Mechanics
We've been working hard to get the word out about Sun Stones the past few weeks - those of you in our social media spheres are doubtlessly inundated with tweets, blogs, posts, videos, and so forth. You could be forgiven for thinking that we're giving everything away.
But, in fact, our entire game has been conceived and developed with a sequence of secrets in its DNA. We have some awesome, awesome secrets which we hope will really ignite loyalty and interest from our players. Of course, since only a few people will actually have these secrets revealed through gameplay, we don't want to make the mistake of putting TOO much effort or energy into them. What use, after all, are secrets that nobody sees?
So this is our balancing act - to build a game which thrives on secret information, and to still put most of our time and energy into the forward-facing features which we need to sell the game concept with. I'm going to spoil one minor secret, as an example. You are forewarned!
The basic mechanic of our game is trivial - touch a stone to "pick it up" and release the touch to "put it down" where your finger is. We never explain this to anyone - it takes at most two-three seconds for people to figure it out. Beautiful and Elegant.
But our second mechanic is a bit harder, if only a little bit harder. It's this: horizontal or vertical lines of three or more "sunstones" will transmute into common black stones. Over the series of just a few puzzles we teach people to look for interesting opportunities to use this mechanic. Exactly where you create these transmutation lines becomes important. Do you transmute 3,4, or more stones at once? How about five stones in a right angle? Players discover the "three in a row" rule quickly, but they might not realize that both horizontal and vertical lines work, or that you can change the order in which you place sunstones to transmute larger groups all at once.
We push all of these concepts in individual puzzles which require you to make these leaps in order to achieve perfect scores. But if you don't go for the perfect score - you might be missing some of the subtleties of the mechanic for quite a while. We've experimented with different approaches, and our best guess at this time is that it is better to allow players to grow at their own pace rather than hold up some artificial stick for them to measure themselves by. We believe that our players are intelligent - it's in our charter manifesto - and so we don't want to deprive them of that magical learning moment.
Learning, after all, is where much of the fun originates in single-player games. Our job as game creators is to create interesting spaces for learning.
But, in fact, our entire game has been conceived and developed with a sequence of secrets in its DNA. We have some awesome, awesome secrets which we hope will really ignite loyalty and interest from our players. Of course, since only a few people will actually have these secrets revealed through gameplay, we don't want to make the mistake of putting TOO much effort or energy into them. What use, after all, are secrets that nobody sees?
So this is our balancing act - to build a game which thrives on secret information, and to still put most of our time and energy into the forward-facing features which we need to sell the game concept with. I'm going to spoil one minor secret, as an example. You are forewarned!
The basic mechanic of our game is trivial - touch a stone to "pick it up" and release the touch to "put it down" where your finger is. We never explain this to anyone - it takes at most two-three seconds for people to figure it out. Beautiful and Elegant.
But our second mechanic is a bit harder, if only a little bit harder. It's this: horizontal or vertical lines of three or more "sunstones" will transmute into common black stones. Over the series of just a few puzzles we teach people to look for interesting opportunities to use this mechanic. Exactly where you create these transmutation lines becomes important. Do you transmute 3,4, or more stones at once? How about five stones in a right angle? Players discover the "three in a row" rule quickly, but they might not realize that both horizontal and vertical lines work, or that you can change the order in which you place sunstones to transmute larger groups all at once.
We push all of these concepts in individual puzzles which require you to make these leaps in order to achieve perfect scores. But if you don't go for the perfect score - you might be missing some of the subtleties of the mechanic for quite a while. We've experimented with different approaches, and our best guess at this time is that it is better to allow players to grow at their own pace rather than hold up some artificial stick for them to measure themselves by. We believe that our players are intelligent - it's in our charter manifesto - and so we don't want to deprive them of that magical learning moment.
Learning, after all, is where much of the fun originates in single-player games. Our job as game creators is to create interesting spaces for learning.
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