Fun Infused Games 2013 Wrap-up

This is a repost of an article originally found at on our game dev blog at http://www.funinfused.com/devlog.aspx?blogid=7

Fun Infused Games started in 2009 and we released our first game in 2010. It is hard to believe it has already been over four years of full time operations. To date we have released 15 games for XBLIG, iOS, Ouya, and WP7. That’s not a bad run for the time we’ve been working. Sadly the elusive “runaway mega hit retire to the Bahamas game hasn’t come yet”. Most years I like to do these wrap-ups to talk about how the year went, what I’ve learned, and then tell a little bit about where I’m planning to take Fun Infused Games in the following year.

2010 Wrap-up
2011 Wrap-up
NOTE: The site these old wrap-ups are posted on currently has some database issues. You may have to reload a few times to get them to load without errors.

2012
You might notice a 2012 wrap-up isn’t linked. That is because I never posted one. I did actually write the wrap-up but 2012 overall wasn’t a good year and the wrap-up felt too much like sour grapes. Besides disappointing sales of released titles, games dev on projects went way over expectations so projects that didn’t sell well took too long to make. Thankfully 2013 went better.

Games released in 2013
In total we released four games in 2013. Trivia or Die: Movie Edition for XBLIG in January, Bad Caterpillar for XBLIG in February (Valentine’s Day!) and Abduction Action! Plus for Ouya in November and XBLIG in December. The first two were original titles and the second two (one?) were ports. Additionally we nearly released two other games, VolChaos for Ouya and Hypership Still Out of Control for iOS, but they slipped to become 2014 January releases. While I’m not going to give out specific sales numbers this year, ToD was the best selling of these new releases and continues to sell well today. Below are trailers for these titles (besides ToD since I didn’t make a trailer for that release).
 

Hypership Out of Control 2
Besides the titles we released in 2013, I also put significant work into the first true sequel I’ve ever made, Hypership Out of Control 2. I started work on this after Bad Caterpillar was released and before I worked on Ouya ports of Abduction Action! and VolChaos. This is a more ambitious project than anything I’ve worked on before and I have been taking my time to do it right. Also I’ve spent some time working on a Kickstarter campaign for it, since the game will require a lot more artwork, sound, and music than any of my current titles. I hope to do the Kickstarter most likely in March although I might let it slip a little later so that I can spend some time at PAX East trying to drum up more support for said Kickstarter.

GDC
I also attended my first Game Developers conference in 2013. It was awesome spending the day hearing various game developer talks and spending the nights interacting with my fellow indie devs whom I’ve only previously ever met online. I learned a ton and met a lot of cool people. I would really like to go again but logistically it probably won’t work in 2014. Thankfully at least I’ll be able to be at PAX East.

New Horizons
2013 was the first year where I’ve finally moved on from XNA and XBLIG. I expect Abduction Action! Plus on XBLIG will probably be my last XNA/XBLIG title. With new platforms available and a declining userbase on XBLIG, I spent a good amount of time in 2013 looking into what is next for Fun Infused Games. For the old games, a move to MonoGame and PC or Android platforms is likely. For new games going forward, I’m really liking the idea of Unity3D, which seems to be used everywhere these days. Besides the platforms I can already release for, I’m taking a hard look at next get consoles and I think there is a good chance we will release our games on one or more of those platforms too.

I did more ports in 2013 than any year before and being able to use something like Unity3D to make this process easier and quicker is a lot higher priority for me than it ever was in the past. Below is an earlier video of a game (currently in XNA) that I would like to get ported to run on Unity3D and release to PC and consoles.

Going Forward
As mentioned earlier, I will be working on Hypership Out of Control 2, a Kickstarter for Hypership Out of Control 2, and the unnamed Unity3D platformer in 2014. I would also like to get ports of Bad Caterpillar on Ouya and mobile devies, a port of 2D Voxel Madness on Ouya, and a port of Abduction Action! Plus on mobile devices. If that leaves me any time left, I’d like to try and get the original Hypership on PC and Android devices too. Of course this is just what I’m saying now. I could end up diving headfirst into Hypership 2 and ignore all these ports (porting isn’t as fun as working on new games) or maybe I have some other crazy cool idea I decide to sneak in instead. That’s the beauty of being an indie developer though, no one but me tells me what to do.

I also had the goal of when I started Fun Infused Games to be doing well by year 5. Year 1 and 2 went well enough, year 3 was a downer, and year 4 was a bit more of a return to form. This is the big year coming up. I think I can make great strides. While I haven’t had big successes recently, I believe the quality of my games now vs a few years ago is a significant improvement. Crossing my fingers this is the year that something finally breaks through. The biggest challenge may ultimately be determining what platform is the best place to release my future games on. This was much easier when I was just an XBLIG developer.