On the week of Ancient Savo Steam launch I got a SMS saying that there is a delivery for me, waiting to be picked up. The message was from the local liquor store. My friends had bought me a present - I didn't know that the Alko liquor store has this kind of service =) Well, I picked up the delivery and it found that it was a bottle of fine quality Champagne. Thank You, my friends!

Before the Steam launch I was mostly worried about the average player getting pissed off because of there being bugs - or bashing negative reviews because of unpolished UI or partially implemented features. As I'm so very well aware that my main development focus has been in the internal workings of the game logic, and the UI still needs a lot of polishing. At one point of the development I illustrated the situation to the friends (the same friends who sent the Champagne!): Imagine an engineer is designing a new car. The engineer is very enthusiastic about the inner working of the engine, the gears and such. And finally the engineer gets to put all the parts together to make a prototype which can be driven around. "It is almost finished, time to get some user feedback!" the engineer thinks. And then the user feedback is : "Okay, maybe the engine is very clever, but I find it uncomfortable to use a crooked piece of timber to steer the car, also this kitchen chair is not very comfortable seat, and the hull made of cardboard makes me feel unsafe!" - and so the engineer realizes that the user is mostly interested in what first meets their eye and hand, and only then comes the inner workings of the machine. And to the very last moment before the Steam release I kept on working with some of the inner logic, knowing that the UI could use a few months of polishing.

But, instead of postponing the Steam launch I decided to go with the September date, hoping that majority of the players will understand, or even contribute their feedback on how to improve the UI. And things went better than I dared to hope for! There were enough exposure to make it feel like a success. And not too much exposure to feel overwhelmed by a flood of bug reports =) All the feedback has been positive, and the bug reports were not too many.

So, in a way the Steam launch didn't change that much - sure, bringing in new players (and potentially also some money to allow me to continue coding) - but otherwise the same steady routine which I already had for the past few years. Read bug reports - fix bugs. Answer user questions and feedback. Add new features. Test. Test again, fix bugs found in internal testing. Publish a new release, post release news. Or, if it were just the indie coding, it would've been the steady routine. There were sheep to be butchered - that was two long heavy days of work, which left me feeling rather exhausted. And after a week a full day to cut my share of the meat. And at the milling company they needed a bunch of software updates which has meant many long days of coding for money.

After the Steam release life has felt somewhat busy - and at a times it felt that I didn't have enough time to recover, but just kept hopping from a task to another. But that was manageable, there was only a short period when I had sleep problems and headache. Otherwise all the extra activities were good - bringing in money and food, which helps me to balance the financial situation. And towards the end of October it started to feel that I regained the balance between work and rest.

Also, at the end of October I got the September sales from Steam. A nice modest sum of money, enough to start paying back to those friends who lent me money when I was desperately in need. Hmm, I don't know but sometimes it feels that making games is often associated with the "gold rush" scheme - as if everyone is aiming to make something like Minecraft, or Angry Birds - ie. getting filthy rich quick. But I am not. After years of living the low budget life I can manage with my income well below poverty line (compared to the median income in Finland), and game sales of few hundred euros per month would stabilize my personal economy. At the moment that looks possible - getting enough sales so that I could keep my previous amount of odd jobs at the side, and devoting the remaining work days to indie coding. Of course, sometimes I dream of the sales slowly increasing so that eventually I would have more than I need myself - if that happens, I'd offer (part time) jobs to other people. Hehe, but that remains to be seen - it still feels like a possibility in the future, maybe with some sequel project after Ancient Savo. But, before that there are a bunch of features to be added to Ancient Savo to declare it finished.

Well - but Steam sales on my bank account! Time to celebrate. Today I took a day off from the coding. I cooked myself a tasty meal, went for a walk, and heated up the garden bath tub. And enjoyed that bottle of champagne. Cheers!