Monthly Archives: December 2018

Merry Christmas (Sale) 2018!

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Merry Christmas, everyone! Instead of the usual Tuesday blog post, since today is Christmas, I don’t have too much for you. (My family is going to be here in about an hour) I guess that’s sort of underwhelming for the last blog post of 2018… sorry!

But Where Shadows Slumber is on sale for Christmas until New Year’s, so I wanted to take a second to let everyone know about the upcoming deals. We’re offering the game for just $1.99 USD (or regional equivalent) for two weeks! It’s a little different for each platform though, so pay attention:

 

App Store (iOS) Christmas Sale: December 25th – January 6th (link)

Google Play Christmas Sale: December 27th – January 3rd (link)

Amazon App Store Christmas Sale: December 22nd – January 6th (link)

 

That’s going to be it for 2018, so take some time to play our game and relax! We’re heading to MagFest 2019 next weekend to kick off the new year, so I’ll see you all on New Year’s Day to give you some updates about it.

Hope you had a good 2018, everyone!

 

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Where Shadows Slumber is now available for purchase on the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store!

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.

Where Shadows Slumber is in TechRaptor’s Holiday Gift Guide!

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Here’s a quick “in the news” update about Where Shadows Slumber – our game was included in TechRaptor’s Holiday Gift Guide for 2018!

This is a new initiative that they’re trying over at TechRaptor, so it’s nice to be included in the inaugural issue. Robert Adams, who compiled this guide, reviewed Where Shadows Slumber when it launched last month on Android. We’ve been in touch with him since we met him years ago at a Playcrafting event in the city, and he was super excited to try the game.

It’s nice to see that it made such an impression on him, and we’ve already noticed a small bump in popularity since this guide went live. Thanks for giving us this publicity, Robert! We won’t let you down [ *_*]

Here’s a quick snippet of the catalog:

 

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From the description:

For the first time, we’ve sat down here at TechRaptor and made an official gift guide. Put together by Robert N. Adams, this gift guide features a variety of technology, video games, board games and more that we hope you’ll enjoy along with a few words from yours truly.

Scroll down a bit to see our highlight! I don’t want to include it here because I want you to actually go to their site [ ^_^] (They helped us, so let’s help them out!) Along the way you’ll see some good deals on games, peripherals, and nerdy collector’s items.

See the full gift guide for yourself right here!

 

interview-with-microphone

One More Thing – Ask Us Questions!

This was a short blog post, so I wanted to include a small addendum. I’m hoping to compile a list of some frequently asked questions for a future Q & A blog post. That means you better start asking some questions frequently!

If you comment on this post (on WordPress, Facebook, or Twitter) with a question, I’ll add it to the article I’m working on and you’ll get a full, complete answer at some point in the future. The benefit of this is that I can pose programming questions to Jack and music questions to Alba and Noah, so we can cover a lot of ground.

What would you like to know about the development of Where Shadows Slumber? No question is off limits! Please submit your questions and I’ll put that blog post together for mid-January. Thanks everyone!

 

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Where Shadows Slumber is now available for purchase on the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store!

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.

We Were Game of the Day!

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Every once in a while, we’re going to use this space to just brag about something awesome. We hope you don’t mind! Yesterday, Where Shadows Slumber was featured in the Today tab on the App Store as the “Game of the Day.”

Every day, the App Store Game editors pick a game they feel deserves a moment in the spotlight. The impact it had on sales was pretty severe, as we’ll show in our upcoming financial tell-all blog post. But more importantly, it’s a nice ego boost to some struggling indie devs. Someone out there cares! Thanks, Apple.

Unfortunately, you can only read the official article if you’re on an iPhone or iPad. So just to make sure everyone gets a chance to read it, I’ve copied the text below as best as I could. What follows is the full text of our “Game of the Day” article, which was written entirely by staff at Apple and not by us. How cool is that?!

 

 

 

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Most games treat darkness as a threat. In the melancholy Where Shadows Slumber, shadows shed light on perplexing spatial puzzles.

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Magically repair a broken bridge by passing the right combination of light and shadow over it.

You’re Obe, an old man equipped with a mystical lantern that can change and morph each mazelike level. As you progress, objects and other light sources create shadowy patterns. Activating switches causes objects to slide and move, altering the location of the shadows and revealing previously unseen paths – and dangers.

Obe eventually has to coax other characters to press buttons and switches. It ramps up quickly; within a few levels, you’ll have your hands full puzzling out the right patterns to open the way forward. It’s typically brief, however. Where Shadows Slumber is filled with aha moments when the solution suddenly becomes evident. You won’t be stuck in the dark for long.

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What’s wrong with all these people? It gets pretty creepy.

With an evocative animation style and stark use of color, Where Shadows Slumber paints a dreary, beautiful picture. A strange, rhythmic soundtrack amps up the tension, while brief, menacing cutscenes featuring mean-spirited beasts give glimpses into the game’s mysterious narrative. Where is Obe headed, anyway?

It’s all a bit hazy. But while the story is deliberately ambiguous, Where Shadows Slumber’s unique, shadow-manipulating mechanic shines clear as day. Step into the light.

 

 

We’re so thankful to the staff at Apple for featuring our game. Please share this article with your friends if they haven’t purchased the game yet – what more proof do you need that our game is awesome?!

See you next time!

 

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Where Shadows Slumber is now available for purchase on the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store.

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.

Upcoming Patch: Review Requests

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In a patch that will go live later this week, we’re adding a small pop-up window to the game that asks the player if they would take a moment to review the game. I would have put this update through last week (Jack finished this feature a while ago), but my laptop was on the fritz and I just got it back this morning.

I realize it’s a bit odd to talk about a patch before it goes out, but I wanted to explain our thought process behind this addition. This patch will be a bit different than the others. We’ve just been fixing bugs for the past few weeks, but this is an addition that might rub people the wrong way. Read on if you’re an indie developer, because this totally affects your business…

 

No one likes “barriers to fun.”

Why We Didn’t Launch With This

Jack and I spent a long time working on Where Shadows Slumber. During that time, the user interface went through quite a few iterations. The “user experience” was even more important to us than the interface itself. We always asked ourselves what we wanted the player to feel when they first opened the app, or when they opened the app after closing it, or when they returned to the app after not playing Where Shadows Slumber for a few days.

One of our core principles was “don’t annoy the user,” and we took that very seriously. For you old-timers out there, did you ever notice how our free Demo jumps right into the first Level straight from the Splash Screen? Or did you notice how the final version of the game goes right into the Level 0-1 title card after the Splash Screen? We tried to take out as many “barriers to fun” as we could to make the experience as painless as possible. I think we did a great job! So far I’ve only seen one complaint that the game “has no Main Menu,” and that was on a 5-star review. So it wasn’t that big of an issue after all!

Anyway, when the topic of review requests came up, we weren’t enthusiastic about the idea. Sure, every mobile game does it – but we were worried it would annoy people so much, they would give the game a bad review, and say something like “too many pop-ups!!” People are weird. You never know what might set them off.

But it’s a classic Catch-22, because if we don’t ask for reviews, we might not get one at all. Less reviews & ratings mean that our game won’t become popular, which leads to less downloads, and the app goes into a death spiral. Furthermore, right now people who don’t enjoy Where Shadows Slumber have a lot of motivation to leave a bad review. But people who did enjoy the game have no motivation to leave a positive review. Think of it this way – when is the last time you left a great review for a restaurant you love? Have you ever done that? But I bet if you had a terrible experience at a restaurant, you couldn’t wait to go outside and write all about it on Yelp. It’s human nature to ignore the positives in life and let negative experiences motivate our actions.

Our old Demo got a ton of ratings (6,000+) compared to our final production release on Google Play. I realize that version was free, and it’s been out for two years, but I think a review request also had something to do with it. The problem is that the Demo’s review request was at the very end of the experience after the last Level. I don’t really want people to have to beat the entirety of Where Shadows Slumber before they get a message asking them to leave a review. Instead, we’re putting the request towards the middle of the game.

Overall, I’m pretty optimistic. If we get this feature in before the next time Where Shadows Slumber goes on sale, and then drive a lot of downloads / installs with that sale, we might get a nice review bomb to bring us higher up the charts.

In conclusion, we’re hoping this addition:

  • Won’t annoy people too much
  • Will lead to more ratings overall
  • Will increase the rate of positive reviews to negative reviews

Wish us luck! Better yet, wish us 5-stars…

 

Eat an entire megaphone, as shown above. (No chewing!)

Make Your Voice Heard!

Once this launches, you probably won’t even notice it. Jack set a timer that’s pretty lengthy, so it’s rare that you’ll be asked twice or three times to review the app. Besides, if you haven’t done that already, what are you waiting for?

But seriously, if you have any comments or concerns, leave a comment on this post or on Facebook! We want to know what you think. Especially if you have any marketing ideas for us, because we want to do everything we can to get Where Shadows Slumber out to the whole world.

See you next week! A financial update article is in the works, so you won’t want to miss out. Keep your eyes peeled on this blog…

 

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Where Shadows Slumber is now available for purchase on the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store.

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.