Getting Back to Business

I'd like to apologize for my absence on the blog and the game over the past month and a half. A few personal and professional factors came together and took me offline for a bit, but I should have at least made a post letting you guys know.

So, where do things stand now?

In late March and early April I promoted Catastrophe X pretty heavily and we received a substantial inflow of new players. It was a crazy time for me, and I was pulling 15 hour days trying to engage new players, keep return players busy with new maps and crafts, release new features, and fix issues with existing features.

Although the game accumulated a great group of core players, it didn't gain enough traction to start growing by word of mouth. Rather than go broke, I decided to pull the plug on most of the promotion. Fortunately, I feel like have a good sense of what needs to be improved in order to make Catastrophe X appeal to a wider audience. Much has been learned.

1. It takes far too much effort for new visitors to create an account, find an opponent, and figure out how to play by watching or reading the tutorials. I need to make the game much more approachable -- new players should be eased into things in an enjoyable, engaging manner, with as few hurdles as possible.

2. I need to work on making gameplay more engaging and strategic. The root of the problem right now is that I am fairly limited in the functionality that I can assign to crafts, but I have plans to improve this considerably. Moreover, basic actions like moving and attacking feel tedious because you need to command them each tick. Players should be able to, for example, instruct a craft to move across the map in one click, even if it takes multiple ticks to get there.

3. The game needs a broader goal so that battles have a real sense of importance. Player ratings were intended to fill this need, but they are somewhat lacking -- new players don't come back just to improve a rating. If winning a battle yielded territory or resources of some sort then there would be a real reason to fight. Giving each player a personal army of crafts to develop through battle will be a major step in the right direction.

I will be spending the coming weeks and months trying to improve the game on these three broad fronts. In the mean time, I will not be promoting Catastrophe X heavily. It does not make sense to pour resources into publicity when the conversion rate of visitors into repeat players is low.

My first priority is to finish implementing the new framework throughout the rest of the game. I have spent the last couple of weeks working at this, and I plan on completing and releasing these changes within the next couple of days. The game will look and feel mostly the same, but the new setup will be faster and far easier to extend and improve. This will lay the groundwork for significant improvements moving forward.

Now that I am back online, don't hesitate to drop me a line on the forums or private message me with any comments and suggestions for the game. I will regularly make myself available for online chat and battles as well.

More soon!