You will be excited to know that wordpresses automatic clickbait generator rates that headline as 73/100 because of the ‘power word’ *new*. I get points for the ‘uncommon’ word *awesome* too. Is this really human civilisation at its peak?
anyway…
I’ve just updated Democracy 4 to build 1.09 (still in alpha from our website here BTW), and there is a huge list of 31 official fixes plus some minor stuff I didn’t bother mentioning like grammar fixes (thanks ginny). The fixes are many and various but a lot of them are balance tweaks to make the game a bit harder, and various extra links between items have been added, and a bunch of equations adjusted.
I should probably call out the fact that prt sc key on your keyboard now drops a png format screenshot inside
\my documents\my games\democracy4\screenshots.
In fact it bugs me a bit that often you have to ask about a game with ‘how do I print or copy a screenshot in X’ where we all have a button that basically says SCREENSHOT BUTTON right there in our faces on the keyboard… bah. Plus its 2020 and hard drives/internet speeds are awesome, so screw lossy jpgs, I’m saving stuff as pngs :D.
For anybody unsure, the game checks once a day (if you run it obviously) to see if there is a new version, then pops up a box to tell you, and tells you what’s in this version, but then you have to go the humble bundle link and re-grab the installer and re-run it over the top. If you need your link resent, you can do that here. (be warned, sometimes they go in ‘spam’ or ‘promotions’.
oh dear…
I have exciting news in that yes, we now have a listing on steam, and so its officially coming to steam on the 6th October. If you think that’s really soon then *gulp* so do I, but I like deadlines :D. Obviously that’s EARLY ACCESS, not the final game release. So much more work to be done before then… although I expect that by that date we will have a bunch more countries in the game, even if its all still in English at that point.
So anyway… wishlists are a thing, and more important than you think because steam apparently takes the number of wishlists into account in promoting new games, so its super-helpful to have people who are interested in the game wishlisting it in advance. You can do that using this handy little widget below this text here…
Exciting stuff :D. The trouble is there is discussion among indie devs as to how many wish lists you need to get promotion for your game. Some people say 5k minimum, 20k awesome. Others say 50k minimum. That sounds like a lot. I have no idea how things will go in the mere four weeks between now and my steam release, but I’m hoping for a shot at 20k anyway.
This means I now have a new thing to check and obsess over EVERY DAY as part of my job, as though steam sales / direct sales / stock market / exchange rate / ad performance / youtube views were not already enough! Luckily I have a monitor that can keep 64 spreadsheets on the screen at the same time, so I guess that’s just fine :D