Let me just give a big THANK YOU to everyone who has downloaded and played my game! I really appreciate all the support, comments, and feedback that I have received from everyone who gave my game a chance. I know 2000 isn't that huge of a milestone, but I don't think I'll be hitting another one any time soon, so this felt like a good time for a special blog.
I first came up with the idea of LOI2 almost 5 years before I even created the project file for it. I was trying to finish up the original LOI at the time, and I began to have a lot of ideas for LOI2, some of which I began to tie in to the latter parts of the first game. I started to become more interested in the story I had in mind for LOI2 than even LOI istelf, but I was struggling just to finish all the work required for the first game, so I really never thought I would actually make a second game. I even put a sort of secret trailer for LOI2 at the end of LOI, but I'm not quite sure how many people found it.
Over the next few years, I would often listen to some rpg soundtracks and such while working on other things, and sometimes I would hear a song a think to myself, "this music would be great in the X cutscene of LOI2!". I think music may have been the greatest source of inspiration and motivation for me to come up with ideas for LOI2. Eventually I just couldn't bear leaving my ideas in limbo and officially began working on LOI2. I think that was almost 5 years ago now.
It was a long and arduous journey to get to this point, and it hasn't always been easy. When I first "finished" and released the game a couple of years back, it wasn't quite as well received as I had hoped. There was some positive feedback, but there was also some big flaws with the game, and some bad reviews set me back as well. In general the game just didn't quite meet the expectations set by the first game.
At first, I wasn't quite sure what I could do. I made some small changes based on the feedback I received, but there were still some major issues I couldn't get around. I hoped that it would still be good enough, and that maybe some people would see past the flaws and appreciate what I had made, but I didn't get much results. Eventually, I was resigned to just leave the game as it is, to be finished with the project, and focus on other things.
Then around last summer, I found myself with some extra free time and playing some more RM games. I played some games that were pretty highly acclaimed, which were very enjoyable, but sometimes I noticed some pretty huge flaws as well. But even despite these huge flaws, I agreed with many others that they were high quality games. It made me really analyze how the positive aspects of these games were able to completely overshadow its flaws, and helped me to understand some of the important things that I had neglected or taken for granted. I began to feel really inspired and suddenly the ideas began to flow into my head very quickly, and I began working on making changes to the game once again.
Then last October, I had finally done enough to release a new version 2.0 of the game. But even then, I wasn't quite satisfied and so I continued working on it, tweaking, changing, and adding things, and releasing many small updates, almost every one or two weeks. Now here we are at version 2.071, and though I'm mostly done with it, I will probably still make some minor updates once in a a while.
It feels great to see the download count keep going up, to see all the comments and feedback, and to see the reviews get progressively better, to finally a five star review. It really feels like a small bit of validation for all the hard work over the years, and the blood and sweat poured into making the game. It's still far from perfect of course, but it's very satisfying to know that there are people who enjoyed the game as much as I could have hoped. It always puts a smile on my face too when people make speculations and theories about the storyline.
To all the fellow game makers out there: Don't get disheartened if your game isn't well received at first. You can still turn things around! Just keep working hard at it, and you will get better and better! Whether it be on this game, or the next game, or on another project, as long as you keep making things and learning, you will improve! Don't just stand still and do nothing, because everything you do will give you valuable experience. Even just playing other people's games can be an incredible source of inspiration and a great way to learn as well! So take a little time to play other people's games, leave some comments and feedback, because you'd want others to do the same for you too, right?
So let's all keep working together and supporting each other, and making awesome games! Cheers!
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