#the games that took early access and/or kickstarter money from people and STILL came out unfinished

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

imagine wanting a powerpoint presentation over how starfield actually tells you how the decisions you made in the game affected your universe.

[supericonblog]

Super Icon - The Long Slow Death of an Indie Studio

Our History So Far…

I began developing games back in the late nineties; Xtreme Racing on Amiga was my first game, and ever since then I have only ever worked at my own development studios.

Starting with Graphic State; initially a sub-contract artwork studio, later moving into handheld game development on the Gameboy systems. This then evolved into Icon Games; focusing on small-ish console games on PlayStation and Wii.

You can view a full list of all the ‘Icon Games’ releases here:

·        IconGames_Catalogue

And ‘Graphic State’ releases here:

·        GraphicState_Catalogue

I founded Super Icon in 2012; an ‘evolution’ of Icon Games; like the transition from NES to SuperNES! At Super Icon the focus was on creating the games that we wanted to make, rather than trying to ride the coattails of current popular games or casual games. The focus was always trying to make great games, as good as we possibly could – games that people enjoy playing.

Our first proper release was Life of Pixel on PlayStation Mobile. We released a second PSM title around that time too, called MegaBlast.

Back in 2016, after the release of Life of Pixel on Steam and our Battlezone type shooter Vektor Wars, we decided that it would probably be best to partner with a publisher going forward. Our sales numbers were low, and we failed quite badly at building any sort of interest in the games. They didn’t completely tank, but the numbers were poor, and not enough to sustain a business.

At the time we lived in London, and during that period (we were there for about 4-years), we had tough times. I say this as possibly the world’s greatest understatement!

I attempted to document that period a couple of times in the past couple of years, and in the interest of completion I have finally released an account of our time there, which you can read here:

·        RHW_MentalHealth

 In addition to the financial difficulties, it covers mental health issues and was very difficult to write. 

Following the above period, we moved to Cornwall – which is where we are today. Just after the move we ran a Kickstarter for another game; Best Buds vs Bad Guys. It was successful, and we managed to get funds to help complete the development. During the Kickstarter I started chatting to a great bunch of guys at a studio called Whitemoon Dreams.

The upshot was I explained we were not having much success at selling/promoting our games, and they agreed to act as a publisher on Life of Pixel and Best Buds going forward, to take them over onto PlayStation and Switch.

We worked together with them, releasing Super Life of Pixel onto PlayStation 4 and Vita in December 2018. Also, during the development phase, we pitched another title we were making, called Platform Maker. After a fair few rejections, we finally found a publisher in pQube. We renamed the game to PLATAGO, and it was released onto Steam Early Access in 2018, with a full Steam and Switch release in June 2019.  

Current Development Phase – 2017 to 2019

Unfortunately, despite most players seeming to enjoy Super Life of Pixel, the sales have been poor. So bad, in fact, that Whitemoon decided they were unable to continue publishing for the time-being. As such, in the first quarter of 2019, we saw our income pretty much completely grind to a halt.

I haven’t been given any PLATAGO figures, but I suspect they are poor – it probably didn’t help that we released a couple of weeks before Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch!

We also developed Vektor Wars for Switch and PS4. Switch is out, but sales were low – since July just under 300 units. PS4 is complete and in Sony QA.

Again, my family and I faced a spell of homelessness this summer, our landlord decided to sell – and we were given 8-weeks to move out. We came closer than ever to not having a home this time, as it coincided with us also earning no revenue at Super Icon. We got lucky in the end and found a small place that we have for one year (the owners are selling early 2020), but it was scary. Added to that we have no savings or fall-back money; it was a tough time. I’m 46 this year, with three great kids who are now that much older, and it is tough for them. I think being a penniless indie develop is a younger person’s game!  

Speculative development

I did have a plan though, and it seemed a good one…

In addition to the games we released above, I developed a game called They Came from Beyond (TCFB), which off and on took about 18-months (it is pre-Alpha currently). I pitched to a few publishers, and while there was interest, I didn’t manage to secure a deal. I worked on this while Steve handled code on our other projects.

Hand-on-heart, I thought it was a strong concept, and the best game we have created so far. I was certain I would secure a publishing deal to fund the completion and release, and perhaps finally have a popular game out there. The plan seemed solid – ongoing releases generating income, with a new deal secured in the later stages for our biggest project so far.

I still f#&king love TCFB too, I really do. I KNOW there are bits I need to revisit, and it needs plenty more love and content before it is ready to release, but it appears my faith was entirely misplaced.

You can read an overview document of TCFB here:

·        TheyCamefromBeyond_Overview

 I pitched TCFB to a lot of publishers, several of whom replied that they really liked the game and the concept, but it wasn’t a good fit for them. I would say the most common comment was that many of the publishers told me that they are shifting away from smaller indie releases like TCFB to larger scale, bigger budget projects – those with budgets up to about half a million dollars. More ‘AA’ than indie really.

So, the lower than expected sales, in combination with failing to secure a deal on TCFB has really proved to be a terminal blow.

I have also developed another title over the last 6-months, called Gates of Hell; which is a sort of follow-up FPS to Vektor Wars. Arcade action, short bursts of high score chasing.

You can read a brief overview here:

·        GatesofHell_Summary

 Even now, I am still developing; working on a new 2D game. A NES plus visual style shooter; with several game types in there – top down, zoomed out top down, platform run and gun. I had planned to call it ‘The Lost Carts’, but everyone I asked says that name is a bit shit!

The concept is as follows:

Some experimental NES carts have been found, which were created using a custom ‘SuperPowerFX’ chip – which allowed a 1000% increase in enemies, effects, bullets and mayhem. Unfortunately, because of the sheer numbers of enemies and arcade action these games put out, the chips used to overheat, and production had to be cancelled. Only now have the carts been unearthed, and machines are now just powerful enough to handle the gameplay without melting! I had a small series of a few games in mind.  

And… one failed concept

Not long after we moved to Cornwall, I also spent about a year (off and on) on another speculative game, called ‘The Tower’.

I pitched to various publishers, and it was a no. I stopped work on The Tower, as without funding it was just too ambitious. There is a blog for it (updated until I stopped working on the project):

https://thetower-game.tumblr.com/

And you can read the pitch doc here:

·        TheTower_PitchDoc

  Studio Limitations

One of our key strengths as a studio is a proven track record of creating and completing games, often with very minimal budgets. In an ideal world, we would love to expand our resources so we could fully realise the vision we have for our games.

Personally speaking, I love creating games. I love the whole process; from the initial research and prototyping phase, through to making the various ideas a reality, adding little touches and cool ideas, putting it all together and trying to make it all as good as I can.

Continual restriction on resources limits what we can achieve. The result is that we make good games, but not quite great games, and unless you are very lucky, a game needs to be great to really stand out.

It also means that certain elements take longer than I would like, such as graphics and level design. These are typically the bulk of project time, and I create most of them myself, which has several drawbacks:

Quality – I am good at some things, less good at others, and I know I can find others out there who can produce far better-quality graphics than I can alone. When I do commission art, I usually have to request the minimum amount of animation and number of enemy designs. Reviewers and game players notice this instinctively they notice the quality dips, the sometimes overly generic art and lack of animation.

Limiting Factors – often our games are good fun to play, but lack that something to make them stand-out. Throughout development, there are so many ideas for cool visual & gameplay elements – bosses, new enemies, set-piece background art, cut-scenes and story artwork – that we don’t do because we can’t afford to commission artwork.

Level Design – I also handle the level design for every game we do; 2D and 3D. This way of working is probably the single most limiting factor, as you are getting ideas from just one person, and when you play the game, it shows. Most games are the product of a combination of ideas, usually from a range of different people with different tastes and experiences. Without that combination of thoughts and suggestions, a game can lack that special something to make it stand out.

Why did we not try and expand?

Both Steve and I have gone without income at times, to fund development, and when we do take income it is minimal to allow us to fund development as far as we can.

I didn’t believe we had a strong enough track record to secure financing to expand, so I didn’t pursue that option. As a studio we have developed and released more games than most; they haven’t really been successful enough financially. Also, I am on the Autistic spectrum, and this does play quite a pivotal role; I have amazing drive and focus, determination and resilience but saying I lack people skills is an understatement! I mention this because it has been the cause of without doubt the studio’s single biggest downfall; promotion.

I seem to have a complete inability to successfully promote our games, to create compelling game presentations/store pages/social media posts. I have tried many times, and never seem to get anywhere with it. Additionally, when I pitch proposals to third parties, I don’t do justice to the game and vision. As a person, I am very honest, down-to-earth, quiet and reserved – almost the opposite of someone who achieves great things through self-promotion and building a strong network of contacts.

In the past, I have sought advice from several people in the industry, showed them our proposals, asked for feedback – I have tried to improve this aspect. Most recently, when I pitched, They Came from Beyond, I managed to confuse many of the publishers who had no idea what the game was about from the proposal! I revised and adapted based on their feedback, but usually, you only get that initial chance to show the game, publishers don’t tend to revisit once they have said no.

That said, I have pitched quite a few games over the years, and secured several publishing deals – but usually for smaller amounts that are just about enough to get a game completed.  

The End of an Era

From day-one, Super Icon has been a rough ride.

As covered above, our biggest issue was always been getting our games noticed and finding an audience. The actual development process is always smooth, and our game reviews are usually reasonably good. In general, everything works quite well, especially given the lack of resources we’ve always battled with.

However, we are not making money, and it has now got to the point where we need to make an urgent decision about our future.

I considered quietly closing the studio down, but I thought I’d see if there was any possibility I could sell or perhaps find a partner/investor. We don’t have much debt, a few hundred, and everything is in good order. We have accounts for each year since incorporation, prepared by our accountants EXCEED based in Surrey.

I spent the last few days reaching out to some contacts of LinkedIn; some amazing, talented and successful people – kind of a last attempt to salvage the studio as it is.

I put together a couple of docs which covered the various aspects of Super Icon, the way the studio has worked, the whole development process. You can read them here:

a.      Studio profile doc: LINK

b.      Overview of our development process: LINK

 This morning though, I have reached the conclusion that we are done. The feedback has been that our games/studio is essentially pretty much worthless. I expected this, but there is always a small glimmer of hope – perhaps that has always been my biggest failing?

Years of fighting tooth and nail just to survive, just to live. Messing up my family’s stability and security, mentally breaking down, and so often treated like shit by landlords, accountants, etc.

I have tried so very hard to make it work, and I always had that hope I could one day do it. Unfortunately, I am now middle-aged with zero pension, no savings or home and a very uncertain future. Time has a way of creeping up on you, one day you think – I still have a long time to turn things around - then suddenly you think, shit, I’m nearly fifty now; an Autistic games industry fuck up with terrible people skills, crippling self-hate and an on-going mental health battle.

I have made A LOT of games that aren’t worth shit, I have an impressive inability to self-promote and perhaps I am now rather out of touch with the industry as a whole?

The main practicality though is that we just can’t afford to continue. Super Icon can’t afford to get the accounts done or pay the monthly studio bills. I don’t really earn much beyond a few hundred here and there, and every week we are running out of money to even buy groceries and essentials for the home.

We just notified the company accountant that we were unable to do the accounts, and this was their typically hugely helpful response: 

“My colleague will issue the P45 for Richard and will close off the payroll. As the accounts will not be submitted, there will be some penalties and we also believe Companies House will strike off the company at some point (you may apply for strike off but not sure whether they will allow you to do so and also depends on possible buyer you are looking for). In the given situation, unfortunately we have to terminate our services till this has been resolved.

If you manage to find a suitable buyer and manage to pay the debts, we will be more than happy to reinstate our services.”

 So, whatever the future holds, I think Super Icon has run its course. I feel a lot of different emotions, but ultimately, there isn’t much more I can do.

A huge thanks to everyone who bought and/or played our games over the years, and to the other indie developers and indie peeps who have helped us over the years.

Special big thanks to: Jay Koottarappallil, Christian Phillips, Matt Spencer, Rusty Buchert, Jack Littlejohn, Harry Holmwood, Jools Watsham, Garry Williams and probably several others that my currently frazzled brain has forgotten! 

Richard Hill-Whittall

Email: rich@supericon.co.uk

September 14th, 2019.

END

[libr-tumbl-alternative]

"Hello everyone!We're happy to announce that we're launching an Early Access version of the game! It will be available on October 2nd.How go I get it?The Early Access version will be available on PC, via the Steam platform for USD19.99 (price will vary depending on country). Here's a link to the Steam Store Page. =============== Who can get it? Everyone. Note that ALL backers who have pledged for the "You get the game" package or higher will receive a Steam Key, and get the Early Access for free.How do backers get their key? We will send them via Kickstarter messaging. We'll send a very small update saying when they're all sent.What's in the Early Access? The Early Access, on launch, will contain ONE chapter out of FOUR in total, which represents approximately 4 to 6 hours of gameplay.Why Early Access? The main reason we've decided to make an Early Access is because our fans are dying to play the game. We realize we've been pushing things quite a bit (more details on why down below), and we want to get our game done and in your hands as soon as possible. Seriously, we do, but game development is hard, as we've come to understand, and it takes a lot of time.With that said, we believe the Early Access is a good game on its own and will (mostly) not hinder the final experience for the player, and that's why we've decided to make it happen.Even more importantly, we wanted to gather feedback from you guys, before we finalize all the other content for the game, and shape it into something you'll hopefully love.More detailed information on the Early Access is available on the Steam Store Page, be sure to check it out.What about the pledges?An updated version of the pledges follows:"You get the game" package+ You have access to the Early Access game ON PC for free, which automatically grants you access to the PC Full Release."You get the game (console)" package+ You will get the Full Release on your chosen console for free."Awesome backer" package+ All of the above. + All backers have their name displayed in the Early Access game's credits already."Beta" package+ All of the above. + You will have access to the Full release game sooner than Full Release Date (how much time is to be determined)."Have your say" package + All of the above. + All the backers have their comments and name displayed in the Early Access game's credits already. + You get the digital soundtrack as a Steam DLC."Physical goodies" package (CA$ 150 package)+ All of the above. + All physical items will be delivered after Full Release."Design an achievement" package + Everything from the "We love you" package to the "Goodies" package + All achievements will be available on Full Release only."Event designer" package + Everything from the "We love you" package to the "Goodies" package + All events will be available on Full Release only."Your face in the game" package + Everything from the "We love you" package to the "Goodies" package + All pictures will be available on Full Release only."You're the composer" package + Everything from the "We love you" package to the "Goodies" package + All music will be available on Full Release only."Master of puppet" package + Everything from the "We love you" package to the "Goodies" package + All mini-arcs will be available on Full Release only."You become the ghost" package + Everything from the "We love you" package to the "Goodies" package + A whole chapter revolving around this partical "ghost" will be playable on Full Release (around 4 hours of gameplay).The long story behind VisageWe know communication has not been ideal from our side, so we're putting the whole story right here. If you are interested, stay with me. We'll talk about us and the struggles we dealt with while developing the game. You'll get to know us a bit better by the end of this.Why the long wait? That's a though one. Before answering that, let's dive a little deeper on how development was made. As you've now come to know, there are currently only two people working on the game full-time. Let us share some more information about that. Now now, of course Visage was not built only by two persons. We have had help from many wonderful and skilled people, and we'd like to shoutout a special thanks to Jonathan Wachoru, our very generous Lead Sound Designer, Peter Wicher, who composed great music for the game, Martin Mcghee for his great work as a character modeler, Chas! Pangburn, a very active and dedicated backer who helped us with some of the visual assets in the game, and everyone who helped us making this game possible.All these great people have been working for us on and off, sometimes paid, sometimes unpaid, because they believed in the project and its promises. It's thanks to them that we're where we are now, so close, yet so far, to releasing the full game.They have helped us in many different domains ranging from making sound assets and assisting in in-game sound design, character modeling, motion capture animations, some marketing, providing 2D assets like posters and comic books, and any stuff we didn't have the required skills to do.And let me tell you one thing for certain, these guys are freaking awesome, for they are working with us out of passion mostly, because while it may seem like quite much, ~$CND100,000, is very, very little for making a video game such as Visage, so they cooked out some deals for us. Please know that we are extremely grateful to our backers, but also note that very little of that money actually went to us, the two founders.We are very lucky to be able to work on the game full-time, and we mostly have our families who believe in us to thank for that, not exactly the generous amount that came from you wonderful people. That money was used to outsource what we couldn't do ourselves.We're not trying to play the victims here. This problem is of our making, and there's no one else to blame but us. We'll try to explain development through our perspective, though.Here's the idea: Two completely inexperienced dudes who have never made a game before in their lives come in and say:"Hey, let's make a horror game.""Sounds great, I love horror games!"It's the story of this and that, and there's spooky stuff happening... Before long, we had a grandiose scenario, and it required a ton of gameplay elements to make it possible.Any experienced game developer would have laughed at us and tell us to slow down and be realistic. Well, thing is, there was no one to tell us how hard exactly it was to make such a game. And once we were diving in it, we always told ourselves "eh, it's just a small addition." Until the game became a ~20 hours game with motion capture animations, somewhat complex AI, pretty damn good visuals that need to work on the very limited console hardware while being a close-to-no-loading-screen game, a ton of gameplay elements that vary greatly between chapters, a dynamic save system, and holy shit so many other things available in some AAA games. Except they have a team of 20+ experienced workers. Well, we implemented it all, and it took a damn long time, and it was very hard at times.Then came the immense brick wall: making the game ready for release. The whole script was done, we had pretty much all the environments and gameplay elements we needed, and everything "almost" worked. That's the "almost" that hit hard. Very hard. Suddently, we thought we were ready for release, but we weren't even close.Bugs started to pile up, code done two years ago had to be re-worked, because in two years, you learn an awful lot, and you realize that what you did with no experience is actually pretty close to garbage. And it's then we've come to realize how much stuff needed to be done "after making the actual game". We have one programmer (hi, that's me). Hey programmer, where's the UI? Where are the video settings? Where is the Xbox One/PS4 version in 30 FPS? How do we package for release on all platforms? How do we link Steam/PlayStation Network/Xbox Live? What about achievements? What about ratings? Sound settings? Subtitles? Localization? Loading Screen? Gamma correction? Features from Unreal Engine update 4.19/4.20? The list goes on.Well... What do you know, the human brain has its limit, and when its limit is reached for too long, I guess it breaks. And it did.I'll spare the details, but I went through quite the dark stuff, and so did my friend, the co-founder. Our mental health suffered a great deal and it took its toll on us. Work was a lot slower for a while... We're getting back on track though.Visage has been our life for almost 4 years now. An experimental psychological horror game. Not the very popular kind of game, from a business perspective, so here's to hoping that the gamers of this world prove us wrong! We can only live so long on passion.So there it is I guess. Why did it take so long to get to where we are now? It all comes down to two things: inexperience and overwork.With that said, there is still quite a bit of work to be done, but it's manageable. And this time we say it with a more experienced confidence. We'll start with the incremental Early Access, and in what we estimate to be 4 months, you'll have the full experience in your hands. Ending Note We do believe that our game has something quite unique to offer—the Early Access is nothing but a sneek peek—and we really hope you'll think so too after playing it". Reblog with caption 🙃

[breegullbeakreviews]

           2017 has come to a close and that means an obligatory award show. Let’s celebrate the New Year by reveling in the good and the bad of the previous 365 days of what I played.

GOMY = Game of my Year. This means I hadn’t played this game or add-on until this year. I had to have played it for the first time this year for it to count though. This means no Skyrim, Psychonauts, or any other titles that I’ve went back to.

GOTY = Game of the Year. This means that not only have I played it this year, but it came out this year as well. Unlike your big magazines and websites I don’t play everything and in some cases have no interesting in playing everything. If you’re favorite title isn’t in the running it’s not the end of the world. Everyone has their own opinion and mine just isn’t yours. It’s better.

Because of how little I played this year I’m giving this award ceremony an overhaul. Outside the obvious GOMY and GOTY awards this isn’t going to differentiate between digital and physical release and is instead going to focus on what made these games awesome or decidedly not so awesome.

Biggest Disappointment:

           I played some bad games this year I won’t lie, but I’m not going to give those the time of day. What I will call out is what disappointed me this year, and there were two games that fit the bill this year. As a backer of Yooka Laylee at the 64-bit Tier, I was highly anticipating a return of the 3D platformer developed by the team that built one of my favorite games of all time. I know since I’ve reviewed the game it has been patched to address all of my complaints, but the sting of what it was at launch still hurts. The other thunderous thud was Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. In what will almost certainly be the series’ final outing for the foreseeable future the team at Arkane Studios delivered a Dishonored game that lacked even more in a narrative sense than its predecessor and seriously lacked when it came to player choice?

           For a while I was conflicted about which was more disappointing, but after a while it became pretty clear. Yooka Laylee was the start of a franchise that missed the mark. It had years of development. Death of the Outsider was clearly rushed, but it was Bethesda trying to drop the series quickly so that the team could move on. I’d be shocked if the game was in development for more than 2 years. Yooka Laylee even without the amount of faith and money I put into the team would still sting just because of how much it missed the mark in a year where this very same genre got two bonafide gems.

The winner, or in this case loser, is Yooka Laylee, a game that brought back everything wrong as well as right when it resurrected a genre.

Biggest Surprise:

           So what is biggest surprise? Well it’s something that coming into the year wasn’t on my radar, or in some cases not even a known quantity. The most important part of this though is that it followed through and was a lot of fun. As much as I enjoyed Arms in the Test-Punch, when the full game dropped I was disappointed. While Before the Storm had some highs, its story ended on a dud so it’s not winning here either. This one is somehow coming down to two games that while certainly being known quantities before this year, neither were available on PS4 where I mainly play, and one no longer is.

           Marvel Heroes Omega is, or I guess I should say was a top down dungeon crawling RPG in the vein of Diablo. I’ve never touched this genre and probably never will again, but this game was my entire summer. From later May to when the servers closed as the studio shuttered I was playing almost daily grinding away as my favorite heroes. I’ll fully admit it’s entirely because of the IP, but I’d be remiss if this game didn’t get at least a nod.

           The winner oddly enough is a multiplayer game, and not the one that took up the early months of the year. Friday the 13th the game is a janky multiplayer mess, but like a Bethesda RPG the design of the game overcomes these short comings and what you get is an asymmetric multiplayer experience that works. I’m not a huge fan of the IP so I wasn’t there day one, but you can only watch Greg Miller play for so long without wanting to jump in yourself.

While far from prefect, Friday the 13th the game was a surprise that satisfied, and wins this award.

Story of the Year:

           Maybe I have really high standards coming off a year where I played Life is Strange, but trying to find a satisfying story this year was quite a challenge. I started the year with a lot of duds, but it wasn’t until July when I stumbled upon some games that were good. While it’s not winning any awards shout out to that smut I stumbled upon via Jim Sterling. House Party is my first early access game and it’s intriguing to see an adult game like that on a big storefront like Steam.

           This really comes down to Life is Strange: Before the Storm and What Remain’s of Edith Finch, and honestly it’s not that hard a choice. As much as I didn’t like how it ended, Before the Storm was an enjoyable ride that suffered all the same problems most prequels run into. The issue was they were exaggerated by the fact that Life is Strange is a series based on choice where at the end of the day all of your choices need to not matter because they need to flow into the events of the first game.

           What Remain’s of Edith Finch was just okay and in the middle was hit by a blow that most would overlook. Midway through the game an Easter egg is presented in a way that recontextualizes the Unfinished Swan and now I’ll never be able to look at that game the same way again, and not for the better. Unfinished Swan isn’t my favorite game of all time or anything, hell I’m not sure it’d crack the top 50. I still adore it though and this twist actively hurts my ability to enjoy a much better game while adding nothing but one time shock value to this one.

Winner by waiting to slip up until the curtain close: Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

Game of the Year:

           While most people are going to look back at this year as one of the greatest years in gaming, I’m not sure I will. Most of the year’s heavy hitters didn’t appeal to me at all. I will never play Persona. Horizon Zero Dawn just looks kind of boring if I’m being honest, and even Breath of the Wild didn’t blow wind up my skirt. In fact the latter was just something to pass the time on my Nintendo Switch until a Mario Odyssey came out.

           Speaking of Odyssey, it’s one of the finalists, and up until a week ago it was uncontested, but that’s when I finally got around to playing the other game I backed on Kickstarter. A Hat in Time was a charming 3D platformer built by the people who grew up with the 3D platformers I did. Almost five years ago I backed this project and in the time between I started playing on PC less and less, so when it finally launched I never got around to it. When it dropped on PS4 though I was surprised and dove in as soon as I had free time.

           Mario Odyssey is the kind of Mario game I grew up with. It’s polished enough so that unless you are actively seeking to do so won’t be breaking the game, but those who want to challenge themselves will find hours of enjoyment. A Hat in Time on the other hand is much shorter. I wrapped all of the games content in just under 16 hours. One key factor however came down to me deciding which was the better game: which made me the least angry?

           The obvious low point for Mario was the jump rope challenge. This segment broke from what the rest of the game was about, platforming and puzzles, to create a challenge built entirely around ridiculous reaction times. While it never got me as mad as Yooka Laylee, it got really close. A Hat in Time’s lowest moment was the boss fight against the Snatcher. While I was mad at the design, I was never mini-game mad, which is a phrase I’ve just coined and will refer too whenever I talk about mini-games that suck from now on.

It came out of time and hit with an upset, A Hat in Time takes my Game of the Year.

Game of my Year:

           I didn’t play a lot from years past. While I planned to hit a lot over the summer I mostly ended up just wrapping up all of the previous year’s Christmas games for what pickings I have this year. This pretty much means it’s down to Lego Dimensions and Titanfall 2, one game that’s been chopped, and another that I wouldn’t be shocked if it was a ghost town.

           As great as Titanfall 2 is I still have so much to do with Lego Dimensions. I’ve bought the rest of the trophy tied content so expect reviews of that, but even still there are so many characters and levels I’ve yet to cover. Hell I still haven’t even put Green Arrow(I won him through a Facebook giveaway) in the game yet.

Lego Dimensions is what all Toys to Life games should have strived to be and despite it coming to a close is more than worthy of being the Game of my year.

Best of the Best:

           It’s not that hard this year. Mario and Hat in Time entirely dominated my thoughts while writing this whole thing up. Nothing against Lego Dimensions, but while it may have the advantage of loads of content, just like with Mario, quality won the day.

A Hat in Time is the best thing I played this year.

[topicprinter]

The blog post was originally posted on our blog.Startups need to get their products to the market faster than ever in an increasingly competitive world. The minimum viable product a.k.a. MVP is the way to achieve this, but you must be able to provide the right key features that differentiate and give value to customers to attract clients and investors before the market moves on.We’ve gathered these 15+ examples of successful MVPs to show what you should focus on when it comes to developing that key MVP feature set.Facebook** All Facebook's (or Thefacebook as it was called when they launched) MVP did was connect students together via their college or class and let them post messages to their boards. The idea already existed in Friends Reunited and other social platforms, but the simplicity of Facebook’s approach and the traction it gained in the virulent world of college graduates proved unstoppable. This allowed almost all of the features that came after to build on that success.Groupon Vouchers and discounts are old concepts, but Groupon took the idea of sharing and socializing them to new heights. It launched with a simple WordPress site and regular PDFs emailed to early subscribers. The test proved successful, and the company then built its voucher system and backend, driving it to a great success.Airbnb Cutting out the middleman and providing short-term renting is the key mission statement behind Airbnb. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia lived in a loft apartment in San Francisco and had difficulties with paying their rent. That's when they decided to give it a try and fulfill one of their dreams to start a business. To test the idea they provided accommodation for those who came to town to attend a design conference. Brian and Joe took a few pictures of their loft, created a simple web page and soon enough had 3 paying guests. Airbnb expanded organically, with founder Paul Chesky living exclusively in Airbnbs to dog food the product.Zynga Games and social media sit easily together now, but were once two very different streams. Zynga’s original product was a poker game that almost anyone could have made. Going live on Facebook made the difference and helped the team raise venture capital to fund titles like Farmville, which would drive it to a huge success. This is a proof that sometimes your MVP isn’t about the product, but the platform it ends up on.Pebble The smartwatch market is slowly gaining traction, but Pebble proved that cramming massive amounts of tech into a coin-sized space isn’t a prerequisite for success. Its e-paper-based original design raised $10 million on Kickstarter, with backers proving the concept was something people really wanted. The company demonstrated repeatability with the Pebble Time raising over $20 million in 2015. Yes, Pebble retired from the market last year, but it proved with millions of sales that not everyone needs the fastest and latest tech.Amazon Amazon started off selling books online, challenging the Barnes and Nobles of this world who were largely stuck in the bricks-and-mortar age. Focusing on the books at a low prices angle in 1994 with a simplistic web design was all it took for the company to grow and branch out to become the retail leviathan it is today.Zappos What if you can’t get inventory for your site? Zappos's founder Nick Swinmurn went into shoe retailing with no stock. He took photos of shoes he wanted to sell in stores and if customers ordered them, he then physically purchased the product and sold them on. That’s a great way to test a market if you don’t have access to the product, but have an MVP model you think will succeed.If you need some help with building your MVP, just drop us a line at Krzysztof.Marszalek@rst-it.com and we'll be happy to share with you an experience we gathered while working with many other startups!Etsy This craft-focused site let eBay do the proof of concept and then found an audience that needed their own MVP to resonate with. Craft sales have boomed since, as Etsy focused on small bespoke crafters and their products. All based on seeing where eBay succeeded and where it let sellers down.Dropbox Dropbox decided to go even further and didn’t make any product at all. Instead, they pretended they had it ready by creating an explainer video. They wanted to check if their file-syncing idea is anywhere close to being interesting to people. They could've built a whole hardware infrastructure, develop apps and so on, but that was a risk they weren't willing to take. If the idea would have failed, Dropbox founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston would lose priceless time, a lot of effort and money. Overnight they attracted over 70k of people who left their emails and wanted to get the products as soon as possible. I don’t need to tell you how it ended, do I? ;)Buffer For those who might not be familiar with Buffer - it’s a social media tool that lets you schedule posts on different social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ or Instagram. The CEO of Buffer, Joel Gascoigne, decided that he doesn’t want to build a product that no one's going to use. So they did something similar to what Dropbox did, just instead of a video, they created a landing page that would present the idea of Buffer product to visitors, show them different pricing and features. If someone was convinced enough to proceed with purchasing the product and picked one of the available plans - they’d get a screen informing them that Buffer was not fully ready yet, but they could subscribe to the waiting list. Later, Buffer used emails they received to talk to those people and ask them about their expectations etc. This approach helped them to build a product the market actually wanted.Twitter Twitter, a widely popular social media platform, is a matter of completely different approach. After Apple released iTunes, a podcasting platform Odeo was going through tough times that forced them to organize hackathons in order to decide what to do next. During one of the hackathons, they came up with an idea to create an SMS-based messaging platform. It was initially called “twttr” and was supposed to be an internal-use-only product, but employees were spending hundreds of dollars on SMS to post to the platform. That showed to the founders of Odeo that the idea of “twttr” might be exactly what they were looking for.Foursquare One of the great examples of a single-featured MVP is a location-based social platform - Foursquare. Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai weren’t new to the business world. Before they founded Foursquare they had developed another similar platform - Dodgeball, which was eventually sold to Google. So when they moved to a new project they knew exactly what they should be doing. Dennis and Naveen started building an MVP with limited functionalities. It allowed you to check-in into different locations and would award you with different badges as a part of their gamification process. Only after the MVP became successful they added more features, transforming it into a sophisticated city guide.Spotify Spotify is another great example of how implementing only one core feature, instead of getting distracted by different cool features it would be nice to have in your MVP, can help you to succeed. They wanted to build the best music streaming service and for their MVP they concentrated on a single most important feature - music streaming. Spotify developed a desktop app and run a closed beta to test the market. While the MVP product and a freemium price model was proving to be exactly what people wanted, Spotify team spent time on signing even more artists, simultaneously developing mobile apps and going overseas to conquer the US market.Uber You might be surprised, but if you didn’t follow Uber’s history since the very beginning, you might not know that back in 2010 Uber wasn’t what you’d expect it to be. Uber’s MVP did one simple thing: connected drivers with iPhone owners in San Francisco who weren't scared to have credit card payments enabled in an unknown app. It was enough to fulfill their main goal: offer taxi services as cheap as possible. The Uber we know now is a result of a right approach to business scaling and a successful MVP test.iPhone Surprised to see iPhone on the list? Well, you shouldn’t be. When Apple released their first version of the iPhone, it was lacking many basic functionalities. Copy-paste, for example. And I’m not talking about copying an image or a photo, you couldn’t even copy text. Next, search. Searching for your colleague's email address shouldn’t be that difficult, right? Just put their name in the search field and… wait… there’s no search field? Yes, that was a reality for iPhone users. More than that, if you’d like to send an email and would start typing your friend's address you’d expect some suggestions to pop up. Well… Not in your iPhone, tho. And I’m not done yet.Do you like to be able to send a nice picture of a squirrel you met in a park on your way home to your partner? That would, of course, be really nice, but your iPhone doesn’t handle MMS… And iPhone 2G wouldn’t be able to help you either. Still no MMS... Okay, fine, since I’m not able to send an MMS, I’m gonna enjoy my walk home with some music on. And I really hate wires, so it’s time for my amazing Bluetooth headphones. Let’s rock it! Hm, how do I connect tho? What do you mean there’s no Bluetooth? Every smartphone has Bluetooth! Every, except your iPhone.And please don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on Apple’s products. I love them, I really do. I just want to show you that you don’t have to build every single feature in your product’s MVP. Build the core, test if the market really needs it. If such titans as Apple are not willing to gamble, you definitely shouldn’t.AngelList AngelList - a platform developed to help startups raise money and connect with investors, now also an employee recruiting platform. When Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant founded AngelList in January 2010, they tested their service idea by doing simple email intros to investors using their broad network of contacts. After they saw there was a potential in their solution they were able to come up with a plan to scale it.Summary There are many ways to achieve success in business, but MVP, in my opinion, is a go-to solution, especially for startups, due to a lack of huge funds behind their back. Small companies are also on the frontier of innovation because they don't have as much procedural or formal limitations as huge corporations.That's why you shouldn't be scared of testing your ideas. Even the craziest one may be not that crazy after all.If you know other examples you think we should add to our list, feel free to post them in the comments below.