The Indie Game Magazine September 2014 | Issue 41 | Page 13

they’re getting into before they pick it up. Managing
expectations is a bit of a problem for some games,
so I tend to use words like “harsh” to describe Scred.
All said, though - the reaction’s been insanely
positive. No hate mail yet, which is awesome - and
plenty of fan art (which I keep and look at when I
feel depression coming in). I can’t emphasize how
awesome the community has been.
As for gauging reaction, I spent earlier times
sitting in on streams without telling people who I
was, tends to help get honest opinions. I also keep
track of the #QuarriesOfScred hashtag and a few
others, which tends to show me people are still
playing the game. Other than that, there aren’t any
analytics from the game itself, so I don’t track these
things.
IGM: Do you have any future projects in mind?
Are you working on anything now that we should
look for?
Kale: Absolutely. Personal motto: Always keep
learning - and I like to learn through doing. I’m
(today) working on an LCD/Game & Watch style
game as a prototype, and I’ve got two other projects
running - Fields of Scred & a secret project you’ll
hear soon (which will link in with DKCC). There’s also
Beware the Caverns of Scred, which is a gamebook I
wrote about 50% of - but I want to reconsider what
style I’m going for with that one.
Fields has been a bit hard to work on, since it’s a
genre I’ve played only a little bit of, so I don’t quite
know how to lay things out. Fortunately, there are
some people I can talk to who have various ideas again, another reason to have a support network.
Predominately, I feel that I need to do a lot of
smaller things FIRST before I go back to Arnthak
& my magnum opus. I need to launch a whole lot
more games to work out how to do PR, or Arnthak’s
just going to flop... which will be really bad for me
mentally, considering all the work that went into it
originally.

IGM: Any last thoughts or words about either
game?
Kale: I’d really like to bring an online scoreboard
to QoS - but other things keep jumping in the way. I
do have code for making animated gifs & uploading
them to gyfcat, though - so DeathCams may be
making an appearance in the near future (big thanks
to Tom Coxon from Lenna’s Inception for the code).
Otherwise, I’ll probably be launching a Greenlight
campaign soon - if I’m going to try and get the
game onto Steam, I’d like to do so before I get to
PAX Aus. QoS recently got coverage in RPS [editor
note: Rock, Paper, Shotgun], which was a really odd
thing - it drove a lot of people to buy the game from
Indie Game Stand, which had been pretty barren
previously.
Doktor Kale’s Creature Constructor has been
an interesting one - I got “is this actually a game?”
questions on reddit, with other redditors replying
“sure, kinda.” It’s had some odd reactions which
is actually a good thing. Otherwise, it’s been really
cool to see people with their monsters as their
Twitter avatars.
Both games have really benefited from the Itch.
io release platform - I’ve learnt a lot about releasing,
after-release service to customers, delivering tech
support, and handling communities. Fortunately,
everyone’s let me keep the training wheels on for
both games.
Oh, and if you already downloaded DKCC, you’ll
see I accidentally released one of my .java files with
the initial download. No one’s told me how bad my
code is yet, but SPOILER: Terrible code.
Mostly, though, I’d just like to take the time to
thank everyone who’s ever sent me a message of
support - the game’s have been good to work on,
money’s always nice to have - but having people
who will take time out of their day to say I made
them smile? Priceless.

13
The Indie Game Magazine | www.indiegamemag.com