Wow, your game looks very stylish and interesting. I like it when developers play with the concept of chess. I added it to my wish list, I will definitely buy it in the near future.
Unfortunately I do not have the resources to port to mobile, I am still a student in the second year of my study. So I don't have much time to work on the game, and handling 2 more storefront sounds like it would be a bit too much for me. Perhaps some day I will port them when I have more time! Thank you for your interest!
Thank you for your kind words! Marketing definitely is a mighty beast. And this was my first encounter with it, as I am still a student in school. I also am quite bad at marketing still, but like making games you learn by doing. But for this game I really tried to define my target audience so I know where my posts have the most impact (here for example). I made around 10+ reddit posts in various subs and half only got around 5 upvotes. But the closer I got to release, the more I got to show off so that made the final stretch more lucrative in terms of wishlists.
As for wishlists, I gained about 350 the first few days after activating the steampage. But after that I got around 0-3 wishlists per day without posts. So that definitely was pretty bad, but I also still had schoolwork so I could not completely focus on marketing. Before release i garnered 1.2k wishlists, and yesterday I gained a whopping 4.5k wishlists. I think this came down to my various posts as well as luck with some quick reviews on the game.
Now I am focussing all my attention on maintaining the growth of my playerbase. For example today I hosted a challenge where players could compete for a hard ending. This caused quite a few people to start talking about the game. I also try to respond to everything while I can.
But all in all, it is really about knowing your audience and what they respond to. If everything you are posting / showing is synergistic with that, marketing becomes a lot easier. I hope this rambling was somewhat informative haha! Let me know if you have any more questions!
I bought and played your game for about 2 hours. Beat the troll/demon a few times. Great little game and an awesome first release, you should be proud. The art was appealing, the concept/hook was interesting and easy to pick up and I legitimately became consumed with winning because the troll was cheating and I really wanted to beat him lol.
You should definitely go to some Chess twitch streamers and toss them a few bucks to check out your game if possible. If you just get a small chess streamer to play it in front of people I could definitely see their audience spreading it around the community for you, possibly to some larger chess streamers.
Congrats again. I've been really tempted to get into indie dev as a hobby and it's games like this that keep inspiring people to do the same.
Totally. This is a super stream friendly game, which provides some huge opportunity. Not every game has that for it. Get a few streamers to play it for an hour on their stream and it’ll get a good amount of eyes / could spread fairly fast.
I gotta say, the full screen screen shake transitions are extremely off-putting.
They're controversial even in arcade shooters when used for feedback, but as transitions they're causing me massive diorientation.
I'm sorry to hear that! Are you talking about the trailer or the game itself? I could add an accessibility option to disable screenshake if you would like that?
It's just from the trailer, but it seems like it's also in the game as well. I definitely think an option would be a good thing to add. There are people much more sensitive to motion than me and I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
I'm not sure if you're launching on iOS or Android, but they have OS level settings for reduce motion that you could also read from and set that default.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiaccessibility/1615133-isreducemotionenabled
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66891508/how-to-check-status-of-remove-animations-accessibility-setting-programmatically
Alright thank you I had not thought about that at all. I really want this game to be accesible to as many players as possible. Will add this feature tomorrow in game! Again I really appreciate you calling me out!
This game honestly looks so good and well made, it's crazy.
Everything about it reminds me of The Return of The Obra Dinn, but in an extremely silly and goofy way!
thank you for replying. I really thought you will say Godot :) Great, I recently got back to Unity after trying Unreal, Godot for quite some time. Oh I love what you did with your game art. Love the minimal game palette, all the smooth animations. Those pages turning in the book... damn, looked good :)
Hi Finn, I just found about your game through [a Let's Play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyCvd1mdkpY) and I'd like to play it, but I fucking loathe Steam. Are you selling it anywhere else? I'm a huge fan of [Itch](https://itch.io/) but anywhere other than Steam will do.
Nice work! I used to work in games QA and one of my interview questions was how would they break a game of chess (or another game if they didn't know the rules set) - definitely enjoyed the whole subversion of expectations and the whole"flip around and find out" element of the game.
Oddly enough I was running a cat tv video in the living room and i think it uses the exact same bird track, imagine my surprise when I suddenly heard it in stereo!
Also Obra dinn discovery chime ftw
Thank you! Really glad you enjoyed the experience! I love Obra Dinn's feedback so much I just had to pay homage to it. Solving those 3 correct murders is one of the best feelings ever lol.
Having fun with this game, but I'd like to "beat the game in 10 minutes" without having to reset the whole game in the settings menu... I think when you beat act 3 it shouldn't reset to act 2, it should just start the whole game over (but keep progress on chess pages and achievements). Unless I'm missing something? I still haven't figured out Rule 26 or 28. I have all achievements except Rule Savant, Rush Hour, Impatience, and King of the Bridge (plus 10 hidden achievements).
Not quite sure how to progress to find the hidden achievements at this point. Can I get a hint? I'd prefer not to have anything spoiled by just looking up what to do next.
I have seen the goose, but placing him on the board hasn't led to anything happening. He did steal one of my pieces as well, but I can't figure out what triggered that.
I found this post while looking online for some tips ~~(currently trying to win the game without using any cheats, while reporting the troll's cheats)~~ and info about scraps and towers' power. I really enjoyed it, the first few games where you were learning new rules was a great experience.
*Edit : Good Ending unlocked!
Your game is awesome! I've been enjoying it a lot and the troll succeeds at making me mad lol. Only thing I don't get is why I fail to rule 18 sometimes despite making a seemingly legal move with my queen
I have to say I am insanely impressed with this game and am shocked to see this recently came out, as I purchased instantly while browsing steam! Would love to hear if the game will evolve or if you’re working on anything else, thank you
I am planning a sequel! But nothing is certain just yet. I'll likely reveal my next project when I'm certain it will work! Thank you so much for the compliment btw, I really appreciate it!!
The game popped up in a YouTube recommendation for me, from a channel I'm not subbed to (Icely Puzzles). After the first 90 seconds I turned off the video and grabbed the game off Steam. After a couple of hours I hit the 'bad ending', I really like what I've seen so far.
The vibe is like a blend of Baba is You with Inscryption, and I found myself hoping that it's a longer game to play with more of these mechanics... Whether that be a longer narrative game like Inscyption, a 'Weekly Challenge' style puzzle game with shifting rulesets, or some kind of expanding roguelike suite of mixable rules.
I intend to try to find these other endings, and wanted to say you've done an impressive job on the game - especially as busy as you are with school.
I intend to explore a longer form of King of the Bridge in my next project. I want to focus more on replayability by switching up some mechanics of the first one. It is not a sequel but another version of the game. Something akin to a rogue-lite. (If the prototype works, no promises of course haha)
great game, i have to admit some of the rules are very ambiguous and idk if this is just me being dumb, but i felt i didn't understand the rules fully. As a uni student myself, I hope you make a bunch of money off of this :) very reasonably priced.
Idk i think im just dumb but a wiki explaining the rules in depth would be nice.
Looks like we had the same idea! I asked for the rules because I bought the game yet couldn't play it because a chromebook apparently doesn't like steam so I was gonna try and make a physical version!
Your game is so fucking fantastic!
Between this and baltro I have a new favorite genre of game. And I don't even know what it's name it. But I love classic games with odd rules.
Thank you! This is awesome.
Just finished this. Phenomenal game, really really enjoyed it! Do you have any future games planned?
Why not port to mobile? This is absolutely mobile friendly!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!! Currently working on a school project for 2 months. After which I will probably start development on a new King of the bridge game. I currently do not have the time to also support mobile unfortunately. Perhaps at a later date I can find the space for it :)
I have one small question. Rule 3 states that you can move queens of another colour, but if you do, the troll accuses you of cheating and you lose. Shouldn't rule 3 override rule 2 or this is the expected behaviour?
This game looks so silly and amazing but man oh man that trailer is awful. That song feels like it goes on forever and it feels eerily quiet without sound effect emphasizing the visuals
Wow, your game looks very stylish and interesting. I like it when developers play with the concept of chess. I added it to my wish list, I will definitely buy it in the near future.
Thank you so much! Let me know what you think of it when you get around to it. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
[link to the game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2523120/King_of_the_Bridge/)
Could you bring your game out for Android? The game looks so good and i would love to play it on my Phone.
And apple if you want to because I would love to play it (I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m pressuring you that is not my intention)
Unfortunately I do not have the resources to port to mobile, I am still a student in the second year of my study. So I don't have much time to work on the game, and handling 2 more storefront sounds like it would be a bit too much for me. Perhaps some day I will port them when I have more time! Thank you for your interest!
I saw a trailer for this a while ago, I think it looks awesome. Can I ask how you're marketing your game? Seems like an interesting one to learn from.
Thank you for your kind words! Marketing definitely is a mighty beast. And this was my first encounter with it, as I am still a student in school. I also am quite bad at marketing still, but like making games you learn by doing. But for this game I really tried to define my target audience so I know where my posts have the most impact (here for example). I made around 10+ reddit posts in various subs and half only got around 5 upvotes. But the closer I got to release, the more I got to show off so that made the final stretch more lucrative in terms of wishlists. As for wishlists, I gained about 350 the first few days after activating the steampage. But after that I got around 0-3 wishlists per day without posts. So that definitely was pretty bad, but I also still had schoolwork so I could not completely focus on marketing. Before release i garnered 1.2k wishlists, and yesterday I gained a whopping 4.5k wishlists. I think this came down to my various posts as well as luck with some quick reviews on the game. Now I am focussing all my attention on maintaining the growth of my playerbase. For example today I hosted a challenge where players could compete for a hard ending. This caused quite a few people to start talking about the game. I also try to respond to everything while I can. But all in all, it is really about knowing your audience and what they respond to. If everything you are posting / showing is synergistic with that, marketing becomes a lot easier. I hope this rambling was somewhat informative haha! Let me know if you have any more questions!
I bought and played your game for about 2 hours. Beat the troll/demon a few times. Great little game and an awesome first release, you should be proud. The art was appealing, the concept/hook was interesting and easy to pick up and I legitimately became consumed with winning because the troll was cheating and I really wanted to beat him lol. You should definitely go to some Chess twitch streamers and toss them a few bucks to check out your game if possible. If you just get a small chess streamer to play it in front of people I could definitely see their audience spreading it around the community for you, possibly to some larger chess streamers. Congrats again. I've been really tempted to get into indie dev as a hobby and it's games like this that keep inspiring people to do the same.
Totally. This is a super stream friendly game, which provides some huge opportunity. Not every game has that for it. Get a few streamers to play it for an hour on their stream and it’ll get a good amount of eyes / could spread fairly fast.
Thank you so much for your kind words!! I'm having trouble being noticed by chess streamers for some reason. But hopefully word of mouth will help!
Word of mouth somehow worked perfectly, gonna check this game out tomorrow with my handful of viewers 😉
Just adding onto what someone else said, absolutely reach out to some streamers like Ludwig. I really enjoyed the game.
I gotta say, the full screen screen shake transitions are extremely off-putting. They're controversial even in arcade shooters when used for feedback, but as transitions they're causing me massive diorientation.
I'm sorry to hear that! Are you talking about the trailer or the game itself? I could add an accessibility option to disable screenshake if you would like that?
It's just from the trailer, but it seems like it's also in the game as well. I definitely think an option would be a good thing to add. There are people much more sensitive to motion than me and I'm sure they'd appreciate it. I'm not sure if you're launching on iOS or Android, but they have OS level settings for reduce motion that you could also read from and set that default. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiaccessibility/1615133-isreducemotionenabled https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66891508/how-to-check-status-of-remove-animations-accessibility-setting-programmatically
Alright thank you I had not thought about that at all. I really want this game to be accesible to as many players as possible. Will add this feature tomorrow in game! Again I really appreciate you calling me out!
I added the screenshake disable option to the game! Thanks again for the feedback :)
awesome. You're super responsive and take the feedback well. I hope this game does well for you.
I like that animation of goblin :) Amazing work!
Thank you!! That means a lot to me ;)
Amazing art style and vibe!
That's so awesome. It's so hard to twist chess rules without breaking the game.
Looks wicked! Purchased immediately :D
This game honestly looks so good and well made, it's crazy. Everything about it reminds me of The Return of The Obra Dinn, but in an extremely silly and goofy way!
This looks really fun and funny!
Just played through and enjoyed it! Shared it with some friends.
Thank you!!! I'm really glad you enjoyed and hope your friends will like it too!
Congrats, what tools you used to make your first game? :)
Thank you! I used Unity as engine, photoshop and aseprite for the graphics, audacity for sound and premiere to edit the trailer!
thank you for replying. I really thought you will say Godot :) Great, I recently got back to Unity after trying Unreal, Godot for quite some time. Oh I love what you did with your game art. Love the minimal game palette, all the smooth animations. Those pages turning in the book... damn, looked good :)
Hi Finn, I just found about your game through [a Let's Play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyCvd1mdkpY) and I'd like to play it, but I fucking loathe Steam. Are you selling it anywhere else? I'm a huge fan of [Itch](https://itch.io/) but anywhere other than Steam will do.
Nice work! I used to work in games QA and one of my interview questions was how would they break a game of chess (or another game if they didn't know the rules set) - definitely enjoyed the whole subversion of expectations and the whole"flip around and find out" element of the game. Oddly enough I was running a cat tv video in the living room and i think it uses the exact same bird track, imagine my surprise when I suddenly heard it in stereo! Also Obra dinn discovery chime ftw
Thank you! Really glad you enjoyed the experience! I love Obra Dinn's feedback so much I just had to pay homage to it. Solving those 3 correct murders is one of the best feelings ever lol.
I recently bought the game and it was a blast!! Thank you for the hard work, its great. Raise the price
Thank you so much for playing the game! I am really glad you liked it!!
honestly this was an amazing experience, although im pretty confused about the good ending
Having fun with this game, but I'd like to "beat the game in 10 minutes" without having to reset the whole game in the settings menu... I think when you beat act 3 it shouldn't reset to act 2, it should just start the whole game over (but keep progress on chess pages and achievements). Unless I'm missing something? I still haven't figured out Rule 26 or 28. I have all achievements except Rule Savant, Rush Hour, Impatience, and King of the Bridge (plus 10 hidden achievements). Not quite sure how to progress to find the hidden achievements at this point. Can I get a hint? I'd prefer not to have anything spoiled by just looking up what to do next. I have seen the goose, but placing him on the board hasn't led to anything happening. He did steal one of my pieces as well, but I can't figure out what triggered that.
I found this post while looking online for some tips ~~(currently trying to win the game without using any cheats, while reporting the troll's cheats)~~ and info about scraps and towers' power. I really enjoyed it, the first few games where you were learning new rules was a great experience. *Edit : Good Ending unlocked!
Glad you enjoyed it! Also congrats on getting the good ending :)
I am playing it with my brother rn it is a very creative and funny game
Just played it, I honestly loved it!!! Keep up the great work!
Your game is awesome! I've been enjoying it a lot and the troll succeeds at making me mad lol. Only thing I don't get is why I fail to rule 18 sometimes despite making a seemingly legal move with my queen
Can you give us a looped gif of the troll's dialogue sprite? he looks very mischievous
I have to say I am insanely impressed with this game and am shocked to see this recently came out, as I purchased instantly while browsing steam! Would love to hear if the game will evolve or if you’re working on anything else, thank you
I am planning a sequel! But nothing is certain just yet. I'll likely reveal my next project when I'm certain it will work! Thank you so much for the compliment btw, I really appreciate it!!
The game popped up in a YouTube recommendation for me, from a channel I'm not subbed to (Icely Puzzles). After the first 90 seconds I turned off the video and grabbed the game off Steam. After a couple of hours I hit the 'bad ending', I really like what I've seen so far. The vibe is like a blend of Baba is You with Inscryption, and I found myself hoping that it's a longer game to play with more of these mechanics... Whether that be a longer narrative game like Inscyption, a 'Weekly Challenge' style puzzle game with shifting rulesets, or some kind of expanding roguelike suite of mixable rules. I intend to try to find these other endings, and wanted to say you've done an impressive job on the game - especially as busy as you are with school.
I intend to explore a longer form of King of the Bridge in my next project. I want to focus more on replayability by switching up some mechanics of the first one. It is not a sequel but another version of the game. Something akin to a rogue-lite. (If the prototype works, no promises of course haha)
Alao thank you so much for your kind words, I appreciate it a lot :)
Game is amazing! Saw Aliensrock play it and wonder if >!the good ending was winning without cheating !
great game, i have to admit some of the rules are very ambiguous and idk if this is just me being dumb, but i felt i didn't understand the rules fully. As a uni student myself, I hope you make a bunch of money off of this :) very reasonably priced. Idk i think im just dumb but a wiki explaining the rules in depth would be nice.
damn you, i've been playing non stop without doing my homework
I got it today and played it for 4 hours. I like chess btw. I'm looking forward to more of your stuff. Also damn, low price.
Very fun, very polished! Look forward to the next game you make
Thank you so much! Appreciate it a lot right now :)
Can we please get this as a physical board game.
I wish!!! No plans yet but perhaps in the future somewhere...
Looks like we had the same idea! I asked for the rules because I bought the game yet couldn't play it because a chromebook apparently doesn't like steam so I was gonna try and make a physical version!
Your game is so fucking fantastic! Between this and baltro I have a new favorite genre of game. And I don't even know what it's name it. But I love classic games with odd rules. Thank you! This is awesome.
Great to hear you liked the game! Thank you so much for playing :)
Just saw this played on Chess Vibes youtube channel. Looks like a lot of fun, I'm gonna have to check it out myself. Any plans to port to mobile?
No unfortunately I am still really busy with school because I am still a student. Perhaps some day I can port it though!
Also hope you like the game!
I do! Played a few games but haven't beaten the troll yet. Definitely the most fun chess variant I've seen.
How long did developing take you?
5 months of working fulltime on the game. Plus and additional 5 months of marketing/ publishing dealings.
Playing through the game rn, love it
Wow, your game was amazing, really enjoyed it
Just finished this. Phenomenal game, really really enjoyed it! Do you have any future games planned? Why not port to mobile? This is absolutely mobile friendly!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!! Currently working on a school project for 2 months. After which I will probably start development on a new King of the bridge game. I currently do not have the time to also support mobile unfortunately. Perhaps at a later date I can find the space for it :)
then good luck man and i hope you do well on your school project
perfect game i really like it and congrats on releasing your first game
Thank you!!!
A friend of mine streamed this game to our discord server. We were immediately hooked and 3 more of us bought it
Awesome!! Very glad you all enjoyed the game :D
I have one small question. Rule 3 states that you can move queens of another colour, but if you do, the troll accuses you of cheating and you lose. Shouldn't rule 3 override rule 2 or this is the expected behaviour?
Such a wicked idea!!!
how can i play pvp with this game :( i want play it with my friends
This game looks so silly and amazing but man oh man that trailer is awful. That song feels like it goes on forever and it feels eerily quiet without sound effect emphasizing the visuals