Dev Blog - So You Made A Game - Now What?

[Balthagor]

I must admit, I'm feeling pretty good today. At the start of the year, we had an ambitious goal - put together a World War 1 themed Supreme Ruler game in just 6 months. While it turned out to be 7 months, I'm still very proud of what we accomplished. Supreme Ruler The Great War is a strong addition to the series and offers a new gameplay style in a familiar engine.

Now that's not to say we accomplished everything we wanted. There are two features in particular that will not be ready in time for the release. The first is rail transport. We've played with a few different systems, some with almost acceptable results, but we're still not quite satisfied with the approaches we've tried. The other is Zeppelins. We've figured out how we want to handle these but the data sets won't be ready in time. Both of these features will be part of our first update to the game which shouldn't be too far out.

As we've gotten near the end of development, two new tasks have increased in priority - testing and marketing. I'd like to thank the testers from the community and our YouTube content creators for their help with the testing. We've had good fortune that most things have been working as expected, but with so much content it's hard to find it all. And sometimes it's just the little stuff, like the submarine that was using the 3D model of a pier to sail around the oceans. Perhaps it was just a clever disguise?

We've seen good results from our testing, that the game stability is good as always and game performance appears better than ever. During some multiplayer testing yesterday evening, George and I spent a few hours of France vs. Germany. He, as Germany, decided to just fortify in the West and focus on the Russian Empire, building trench lines running North to South from the Swiss border to Luxembourg. I couldn't get Belgian cooperation, so realized I'd have to hit his line. And I'd have to do it alone, since Great Britain wouldn't join unless he attacked Belgium. Luckily I was confident I had more artillery near the southern edge than he did and that I could use my aircraft to spot his troops, hit them hard then march in with my artillery. It worked fairly well, but I took heavy losses. I took the southernmost trenches, but trying to take a few more kilometers to the north cost me thousands of men for very little ground. And with very few aircraft and nothing else that could effectively spot, it was hard to find the enemy before their artillery slaughtered my forces. It seemed eerily historically accurate. After a couple hours, I did manage to work my way across some of his lines. George tried a charge in the North to see if he could divert my forces, but it simply became his version of the Battle of the Somme with tens of thousands of dead troops and no gains. When we called the game in mid 1915, I knew that I had him, but it would take till at least 1917 for me to force him to capitulate, and that assumed no other nations got involved.

So with some successful tests, and me securing the first win vs. George, the focus is mostly on marketing today. We enjoy the niche market in which we are developing but it does certainly create challenges around discoverability and conversion, ie. convincing players to purchase a game of this style. The interest from various YouTubers, Streamers and industry media companies certainly looks positive at this time, but we also want to do all we can to promote the game. Much of that is centered around our community presence, both on our forums and the Steam community. We hope that level at which we make ourselves accessible to the community creates goodwill among players and encourages them to share info about the game. Word of mouth and organic growth of partner videos will always be a big part of our success.

And the big unknown remains what else will be created for the Supreme Ruler series? We have a roadmap for some ongoing support and a bit more on features for Supreme Ruler The Great War, but our team is also eager to dive into a new project which we've not yet announced. We believe that SRGW will build on the success of the series, but if the community really embraces this title and the growth is larger than expected, we'll need to look to what more we can do to grow the title. The most likely aspect we'd look to expand would be the return of scenarios to the game. The limited budget and timeframe for this project meant that the set piece scenarios for this time period ended up on the cutting room floor. It's always great when we can add additional content to the game.

In a few more hours, we should be able to see all of this come together. We've made the final changes, uploaded all the files and are just waiting for final approval from Steam. The Great War is almost upon us! Thanks for joining us in this latest adventure.

[Balthagor]

Still in the queue :(

We may be a little behind on the launch...

[Balthagor]

The delay is going to be a bit longer, we did not pass the review. There were small issues and some confusion such as they didn't realize that the hosts in MP must assign countries, that clients can't pick for themselves. We've addressed their issues and resubmitted. Fingers crossed for a quick turn around on the resubmission.

[GIJoe597]

All right.

[Goa ing Insane]

Is the delay going to push back the game to tomorrow? jw

[Buzzbrad]

Is the delay going to push back the game to tomorrow? jw

Our hope is still August 1st if Steam approves it on time.

[Buzzbrad]

The game is live everyone. Enjoy