PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hi I'm Alan. I went to university for video game art, mostly 3d art, then get a job with a mobile game company which i stayed at for 10 years. Towards the end I wanted to contribute to the company producing own IP games instead of licensed games and started learning how to program. As I learned and grew confident, I started making Fuzz Force: Spook Squad, releasing it 18 months later. From there I've just kept going!
TELL US ISLE OF SWAPS.
Isle of Swaps came about whilst I was working on my second game (Cardterrupters) and I got back into collecting Pokemon cards. I thought collecting and swapping cards is more fun than deckbuilding for a lot of people. I made the prototype and another indie dev who had some funds to give back to the indie community wanted to put in a small investment.
With that money I'd be able to commission artists to illustrate some of the Critter cards (which has been great to see the results) I put Cardterrupters on the backburner and moved forward with Isle of Swaps.
To quickly summarise the game, Isle of Swaps is a TCG roguelite deckbuilder where your deck is built by swapping cards with characters you defeat.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
The journey has been pretty rocky to tell the truth. Isle of Swaps was initially a small open world with the intent to collect all the cards in the fictional Critter Card TCG by swapping your cards with other characters. It was intended as a cosy collectathon with some quick auto battles.
Unfortunately I couldn't get many content creators to cover it in the first 6 months, so i either continued a potential losing battle or pivoted to a roguelite deckbuilder which I'd had experience with before. This meant stripping out the open world and dialogue and focusing on making the battles more tactical and adding way more cards.
Personally, I was disappointed to make the change, having a low stakes collectathon would've been a relaxing few hours but the game has garnered more attention as a full deckbuilder roguelite.
Another drain has been doing the illustrations for the cards. The game has about 400 cards, with the hired artists doing about 70 of those. I'm left with 80 smaller icons and and about 250 proper illustrations to do (though some are reused). This is the most 2D art I've done over the last 13 years but I'd say my art has definitely improved over this time!
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I've been using Unity to make Isle of Swaps as thats the engine I learned whilst at my first job. As that's 10 years of experience, I'd find it tough to move to another engine. In unity it's pretty easy to get something together quickly.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
he main part I've struggled with is getting eyes on the game. Wanderbots recently posted a blog about Coverage Limbo which in summary says there's so many games, and so few hours to make videos, that even good games can be neglected for those that really stand out. In June's Steam Next Fest, Isle of Swaps didn't get any big content creator coverage but still pulled in 2000 Wishlists. From seeing some results after, 2000 is a surprisingly good result for mostly organic steam traffic.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
I'm sure the advice has come up a lot but start small. If you have loftier ambitions, start with something you can build upon. Isle of Swaps devevelopment has been faster as it builds on Fuzz Force: Spook Squad. And from here I may make another Isle of Swaps, or a different card game.
Of course you gotta avoid scope creep too. If you initially plan to make a game in 6 months, don't keep adding things that it takes you 2 years! Only add things that bolster your core game mechanics.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
I'd say that the length of time you spend developing a game is not equal to how much money you'd get from it. You could potentially be more successful making 4x 6-month games instead of 1x 2-year game. It's the direction I'm going to aim for after Isle of Swaps, the variety is pretty exciting!
-Alan
❤️
