Here at RetroPixel Digital we're currently developing our first indie video game, 'Green Hawk Platoon'. I almost love playing it more than I like developing it, because it's so damned fun! The whole team loves this game, and the alpha testing team has spent up to 4 hours playing it at a time!
Let's get a bit of backstory here. I started developing a video game for FUN in December of last year. The initial reaction of the game was insane when I posted my first video of it. I decided to go a bit farther with the game, and it eventually became one of RetroPixel Digital's main projects. Now, it's up on Steam, has 1,000+ wish-lists, over 200 beta testers, and is about to launch into official beta on October 31st!
The game is unique in that the players can be small green plastic army men (you know, the ones that have been around since the 1950's, and can be picked up in any dollar store?) The sets come with little rocket soldiers, riflemen, mortar soldiers, tanks, jeeps, paratroopers and little base-parts (like sandbags, fences, etc.) The fact that you can play as these little guys in a child's bedroom, garage, kitchen, backyard, convenience store, etc. makes it really cool. You feel so small, since the world is so big.
Any of us 90's kids get this wave of nostalgia that just adds to the game. We're focusing on game mechanics that make you feel like you're small. Adding environmental hazards like mousetraps, gas ranges, barbecues, garburators, freezers, house cats, birds, etc. makes it feel so much more immersive. Some of the character special abilities are abilities that only small toys would have. For example, the flame soldiers do a lot of damage to tanks. Since they are plastic, flames will melt them easily. In real life, a flame soldier would have little-to-no effect on a tank.
We've also spent a lot of time on making this game less violent than most of the first person shooters out there. It's a hard sell being a shooter, but we've removed blood and made the soldiers return to their original plastic form (little stand and all) when they "die". This is more to simulate a child's imagination when he or she is playing with the toys in their bedroom.
The team is very small. We started off doing Visual Effects, Motion Capture and Unreal Engine projects. The fact that Green Hawk Platoon just kind of exploded with popularity one day, made scaling the company and the project difficult! We had no idea this game would be so popular so fast, so it's been a bit of a shuffle trying to get everything together so quickly. Funding was never something we thought about, so each of us has been doing insanely long days (I regularly work more than 15 hours in a day)
I, personally, left my job in film and decided to take less side projects to focus on this game. It's a tough situation since all my money came from my full-time job. I'm running on any money that was in my savings account, and I'm living like a student again. This is because I see the potential in this game and want to focus all of my efforts into getting this game to hit the world. It will be such an amazing feeling seeing people stream this on Twitch and give (hopefully good) reviews on the game.
We're running a Kickstarter Campaign in the next little bit here so we can continue working on the project, developing more levels, content and mechanics. The game is free-to-play, so we will have to count on this game being a huge success and people wanting to buy optional cosmetic skins and items (This will mean they will have to LOVE the game). We feel confident that we have a shot to make this a hit.
Other sources of income that we have projected include partnerships with other big companies for DLC (downloadable content) and skins, as well as paid advertising spots. For example, we have a huge convenience store level, where there are literally hundreds of products that have the potential to be skinned as actual brands. This makes our advertising less intrusive and more natural for players. Also, the fact that characters are about 3 inches tall, makes each product into a huge billboard that players will need to hide behind and climb up on top of - in order to keep away from incoming fire!
If you want to find out more about the game, here are some links that might be useful:
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