Katja's Abyss Release Day

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kylekrack
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Katja's Abyss Release Day

Post by kylekrack »

Happy Katja Day, everyone.

Today she hits the big screen as a real, commercial game. I can't thank this community enough for everything they've done and everything it's taught me. May this be the first of many.

https://onehundredthousand.itch.io/katjas-abyss-tactics

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I'll continue to use this thread for anything Katja related. Feel free to do the same, whether it's questions, bug reports, etc.
Last edited by kylekrack on Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:16 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by RMZ »

Congratulations kyle! It's been a lot of fun watching this game develop over the last few months. Very few OHR games have this level of polish. Enjoy Katja Day! You earned it!
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Post by Spoonweaver »

Happy Katja Day!
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Post by Rue »

Hey, congrats! I've watched you go through hell working on that game. I'll boost it everywhere I can.


... I still stand by nobody knows how to play minesweeper. Good thing it's not just minesweeper. :)
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Post by TMC »

Congrats! It's something you can be proud of.

Wish I could do something to spread the word, aside from wishlisting on Steam, but I don't even have a Twitter account...
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Post by kylekrack »

It's Katja Day again!

This time it's on Steam! Thanks again to everyone who's contributed to making this a possibility. Big shout out to TMC specifically, this time, aka "He Who Makes the Hamster Wheel Go Round".

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586 ... cs/?beta=0

If you already got the game on itch.io, you'll be able to redeem a Steam key on there soon. I'm waiting on Steam to approve the keys currently.
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Post by TMC »

Huzzah!

Are you going to keep using the itch.io forums to list/track bugs instead of crossposting everything? Crossposting is a big pain.

But I haven't done anything on those engine bugfixes yet! (Err, I wasted yesterday and was really busy today.)
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Post by kylekrack »

I'll probably crosspost to multiple places. I don't expect Steam users to view devlogs on itch. That being said, maybe I'll just link to itch devlogs instead of copying the entire update description in multiple places. Honestly, copying the text in multiple places is less of a pain than uploading the new build to multiple platforms.

I should also say that Steam has been terrible to publish to, overall. Itch has been really easy and nice in comparison. Steamworks documentation seems thorough at first glance, but the UI of the whole site uses so much jargon, I always struggle to find the page I'm looking for, some stuff will give you an error and not say what it was, etc. etc... As TMC learned, because they're working from home, apparently no one at Valve has a Linux machine to test builds on, so I had to recruit someone else to do it. It sucks pretty consistently. Plus, apparently the sales data tracking stopping working on the day I launched, so I have no idea how well it's performing. Each step of the way it's been pretty unsatisfactory to work with. It's really disappointing that nobody respects any other game distribution platform (aside from maybe Epic Games?) for seemingly no real reason.
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kylekrack
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Post by kylekrack »

I'm in the meme market now.
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Re: Katja's Abyss Release Day

Post by WildWoodsmith »

kylekrack wrote: Sun Apr 25, 2021 1:49 am I should also say that Steam has been terrible to publish to, overall. Itch has been really easy and nice in comparison...It's really disappointing that nobody respects any other game distribution platform (aside from maybe Epic Games?) for seemingly no real reason.
Good to know. I think there was a roguelike a few years back that was free on the dev's website, but so many people complained about it not being on steam that he put it up there - for $15. And people bought it, just to have it on their steam account.

Anyway, just bought Katja's Abyss. I'm impressed. Having recently switched over from RPG Maker, I'm used to seeing non-RPG games made in RM that are barely-functional tech demos the dev made just for fun. You've apparently created an actual fun strategy game with a tool intended for JRPGs. I have to ask - how did you do that? Would you have been better off using another engine? Not being critical, I'm just curious.
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Re: Katja's Abyss Release Day

Post by kylekrack »

I'm glad you like Katja's Abyss! Thanks for the support. Steam appears to be a necessary evil. It's just so ubiquitous. But yeah, the Steamworks client has horrific UX (outdated visually in some parts, broken in others), and the documentation is pretty bare-bones. On launch day, the "visibility boost" Steam gave Katja's Abyss was so minuscule that I had to search through multiple tabs and scroll multiple pages to even find it in the store. So yeah, just super lame and disappointing.

There are two main reasons Katja's Abyss is more than a barely functional tech demo. First of all, I was unemployed; I worked on this game full time. On top of that, the design was really easy to prototype. The game started as Minesweeper Tactics (which I would link right now, but I can't access the itch website for some reason). That tech demo is visually different from Katja, but all the base gameplay elements are pretty much there. From that point, finishing the game was mostly adding and tweaking features. It was always really easy to envision what the final product of Katja's Abyss would be, so I never found myself completely lost. The AI, tutorial, and a few choice bugs drove me nuts, and I procrastinated doing them. Usually, I'd take a break from the nightmare tasks to add fun stuff, like the secret shop, palette swaps for your units, sprucing up UI or the title screen, etc. So even though I wasn't working on the core stuff, like finishing all the levels, the tutorial (god, that tutorial...), or fixing release-blocker bugs, the game was getting more tertiary content. Ultimately, that's what seems to make games feel full in the end. In Fire Emblem, all the fights and levels are fun, sure, but I really remember all the side conversations and other optional content. I think the Artifacts are the most interesting part of Katja's Abyss, and they're completely unrequired. So I prioritized the meat of the game, eg. mineweeping & tactics, and I took breaks by adding the juicy stuff, eg. artifacts, dialogue.

Thanks for showing interest. My experience is really personal, obviously. I hyper-fixated on a project and had the free time and financial security to enable that fixation. I don't want to understate how significant a role that played in getting the game done.
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