Here’s the deal.

The Submachine Universe HD is actually ready and I’d be able to put it up in my shop even tomorrow. However, there are several non-development related problems with the idea of selling it.

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Problem 1: Creation of parallel versions of the Submachine Universe.

The first and biggest hurdle is that such a release would create a net of parallel universes of Submachine.  You see – all previous games I released were all done and finished. This one is not. It’s an open project, and I don’t mean it’s unfinished. It’s just open for future expansions, it always has been, it’s being expanded since 2010 up until this day. Yes, I changed something today in it. In it’s HD version, that is. The one that actually resides on my hard drive. I added main menu and in-game menu. You can control music, sound effects, window mode and so on. That’s because it’s fit to act like a standalone application. And here’s the issue. By releasing the HD version I’d be splitting the Subnet existence into two identities – the free online version, and the HD, paid version. Since I stepped away from flash, Subnet remains my only project that I still go back to in flash. I moved all other game design to Game Maker last year. This project is the only living reminiscence of previous era. But I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to maintain two different versions of it at once. You see, the online version differs from the HD version. Releasing the HD would have to mean abandonment of the free online. I’m not sure that’s what you guys would want.

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Problem 2: Inevitable Steam version in the future.

Moreover, I feel that in time all Submachines will have to end up on Steam, which means they will have to be recreated in Game Maker (or some other, non-flash engine I’ll be sporting by then). That means a third version of  it would be created. And by then, previous, flash versions of Subnet would have to be abandoned as well. You see where I’m going with this? Releasing the HD version now creates more problems down the way and also renders the free online version obsolete. The problem really is with it’s ability to expand. If it was jut a simple game – no problem there. I’d just create a legacy build of a finished game, release it and move on. But here, things are different. Creating new version means future expansions will be created on that new version, previous ones are obsolete. I feel, I’m repeating myself here, but that’s the most important issue I’m  tackling here, that the online version would have to be abandoned.

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Problem 3: Simultaneous selling and giving out for free doesn’t make sense.

Adding to that, I’d also have to leave behind my terrible, terrible politics of trying to sell you something, and at the same time giving it you for free. I explained that before, I felt like you guys deserved free versions of all Submachines from main story line up until the end of main series, just because that’s the way the series started. As free online. However, during those 10 years monetisation profile changed several times, but this philosophy haven’t. Up until Submachine 10, you can play all these games free online, even as that model doesn’t generate any income for me anymore whatsoever. But now? It would be completely idiotic for me to try to sell you Submachine Universe with all it’s free upcoming updates that can go on forever, and at the same time give it for free. Again, we’re back to the subject of it being an expandable project. I can’t give it for free anymore. Therefore, releasing the HD version would mean the end of free online. So I ask once again – are you guys ready for this? I’m not sure I am.

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Problem 4: User generated content.

There’s also another problem. Submachine Universe utilizes content created not by me, but by fans of Submachine. I’m not sure whether they would find it fine for me to sell this project.

First and foremost I’m talking about Submachine theories, all written by players trying to get the hold of this whole Submachine mess. Besides theories, the project also has fans’ drawings, photographs, maps, schematics, 3D renderings and so on. So the question is: should I be allowed to sell all of this as a part of my game, or not? Should I remove all user-created content from it and replace with something I’ve written myself? That would be like ripping the heart out. Again, I’m torn on this. Need your opinion.

And here it is. All issues related to the release of Submachine Universe. There are several paths I can take from here, I’d like you to chime in and tell me what’s your thoughts on all of this.

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Solutions:

What can I do:

• Business smart: release HD version now, effectively abandoning free online version. All future updates would appear on that paid version;
• Legacy and free expansions:  release HD version as a legacy build, but keep updates free online, meaning the project would expand for free, but paid version would be frozen in time and left for dead.
• Steam option: don’t release HD version now, wait until I’ll be able to create Game Maker version and drop it on Steam alongside all other Submachine games as one combo pack;
• do nothing: keep things as they are now, which means project stays free online as is, Subnet HD stays on my drive and no one ever sees it.

And that’s all. As you can see the problem is a bit more complicated than one might think.

On the other hand, I might be overthinking all of this.

What do you think?

Let me know, the future of the Universe depends on it!

Ok people, let’s do this. I know it’s a bit late this year but there’s an explanation. Hear me out. For no particular reason I decided to fight Apple tooth and nail in order to create legal and legit Mac OS X builds of my games from 2016 by becoming a certified Apple developer and I also decided to do it right after New Years. Why not. After banging my head against the wall for next few days I finally managed to do it, with help from much more skilled friend (thanks, Mike). Skilled, as in: more apt in deciphering what exactly it is that Apple wants you to do now: pay up, jump the hoop or roll over. Now that it’s done, and it’s a REAL milestone in my book, the only regret I have is that I can’t put it on my to-do list for 2017. Because… it’s already done. Oh well.

Let’s look back at 2016.

(more…)

Hey Mac OSX users! Finally some good news from me!
I managed to become a certified Mac Developer, which means I can bring you totally legit and legal versions of my games created in 2016. In other words: Happy New Year!
Before I let you go, there’s one important thing I have to say:

If you are on Mac OSX Sierra (the newest one) and these games are not working for you, there’s a simple solution. Just move those game files from Downloads to Applications. That fixes the problem and everything works fine.

Also: 10 Gnomes is a big file (all those photographs, you know), please give it some 5 seconds to load properly before deciding it’s not working at all…
Than You for your time and, well, here are all four .zip files for you:

Mission to the Sun

Mission to Earth

10 Gnomes in Pothia

Where is 2017?

download the game (PC and Mac)

let’s play: MarshmallowMatt

download the game (PC and Mac)

this is the last game in this series. it reflects the first one. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

download the game (PC and Mac)

watch movie from location

download the game (PC and Mac)

5 reasons why Mission to the Sun is more important than you think!

Here we are. Mission to the Sun (MttS for short). The game that has become a meme over the years. The game that I’ve been putting on my yearly to-do list for… let me check… last four years. Yep, it’s marked as plan-B on my 2012 wrap-up (alongside another game from this series: Mission to Earth). Would you believe, that previous “mission” game was released four years ago. That was during the 2012 game creation madness, when I set out to create one small game every month. Those were the days… However, there were some heavy hitters in the meantime, like gigantic Daymare Town 4 and two last games from the Submachine series, the last one taking whole of 2015 to finish. And those “mission to…” games were being pushed to the side. However,  creating those games was a part of a bigger plan, namely finishing up my 10-year long adventure with Adobe Flash.

1. Finishing up the Flash era. This game was kind of destined to be the transitional one since all those years back. My last (as in: the Last) game made in flash was Submachine 10 – for multiple reasons, one of them being I didn’t want to abandon people still playing flash games online right before the big conclusion to the series. That wouldn’t be right. However – after that was done it was time to move on. And here’s where MttS stepped in.
2. Being my biggest gamedev experiment to date. Yes. As I was switching from Flash to Game Maker – it was obvious that before going big and bold – I’d need to create something small just to test things out, or to check whether I’m even able to do anything in the new software. Remember – I’m just an old fart used to comfy surroundings of Adobe Flash, switching to Game Maker could’ve been a fiasco.
3. Being a successful endeavour, proving I can still do it. That’s right. It can be just a little avoider game, but to me it’s so much more. Now, knowing what I know about this new software, I can move to larger projects.
4. Opening door to larger projects. Coming up next – new 10 Gnomes game. Some might argue that mechanically gnomes are way easier than MttS, and you would be right, however time-consuming-wise gnomes will take much more work. I already have the engine for gnomes, that wasn’t that hard, but now, adding about 70 locations and gnomes to them – that is a hard, blue-collar work right there. Ok, maybe I went a bit overboard with that blue collar, but still, lots of work to do. After that I’m taking on something that will create foundations for the inevitable big game – the platformer.
5. Creating foundations for the big game. Right now, after finishing creation process of MttS I feel I can tackle something bigger and more complex. I’m still learning the language of Game Maker, I know that the code of MttS is a mess, but that’s why I still have three more games to do this year, to polish my skills and become prepared for what’s to come in 2017.

So this is it. This game was very important in my gamedev life, while still being so small. Do not underestimate the importance of this game. And go play it. Again: fun times ahead. Three more games this year.

You can help me create more games via donations on Patreon.

I’ll try to keep it short, however we’ve got a lot to cover here, so bear with me. The Submachine is over, and with it, an actual era of my career. 10-year long era. I’ll explain in detail what will happen right now and the reasons why it’s happening. It’s all caused by the patreon-induced transparency, as this is the first year where I feel obliged to keep you guys in the loop about what’s going on and why. I’ll break the wall of text into smaller chapters, each named appropriately. That being said, here’s the first one:

1. Flash is dead.

As you can see, no beating about the bush in this article. Some of you might find this statement shocking, or perhaps shocking that I’m talking about this now and not like, couple of years ago. Well, there is a big reason why I waited until today, and the name of this reason is Submachine 10. You see, flash gaming was slowly dying ever since the advent of smartphone market and mobile gaming, around 2008. Yeah, 8 years ago. And I was fully aware of it happening back then too. But as long as I was creating Submachine series – I couldn’t ditch the flash platform. Submachine was born in 2005 as a free browser game and it was just impossible for me to carry on with the series for ten years, and then, when the last Submachine comes, switch the platform and turn my back on all those people who have been playing that game free online for the last ten years. The last Submachine had to be created in flash and it had to be free online. And it is. I went through the entire series as it started ten years ago, and now it’s done. Meanwhile, as I said, flash gaming was slowly dying ever since 2008 and I was stuck in the flash limbo, not allowing my work to evolve into something else on another platform. But it was my decision to stay that way and I have no regrets. Thanks to that decision I feel I earned your trust and respect. I feel that wherever I go in the future, you guys will follow. Those last few years were not wasted on flash. They were a foundation for something bigger. Closing statement on flash gaming is – while the one-day record of downloads on one of my games is 300 000, that was one of the Covert Fronts, perhaps the third one (imagine, more than a quarter million people played it in one day), right now those online numbers are abysmal compared. Flash is really finished, it was abandoned as soon as mobiles crashed the gaming market. If you say: “Wait a minute! I’ve been playing Submachine on my computer all along until now!” – well, yes, you have, but all those hundreds of thousands that are missing are playing on their smartphones and have forgotten browser games even existed. That’s ok, but there are serious implications  for my work and what comes next.

2. So, if flash is dead, what’s next?

First of all, let’s clear one major thing – I will not jump to the mobile/smartphone market. We’ve tried that before and every time it ended ugly. There’ll be no games for iPhone nor Android from me, at least not for now. I want to go in a different direction. Namely – proper PC (and Mac, and Linux) gaming. That’s what I’ve been doing for last couple of years with my HD versions of older flash games, but it’s time to make a proper switch. Basically there are three options for me to choose from. These are three engines that I looked at. Unreal Engine, Unity and Game Maker. I tried all of them, and the most accessible for a flash developer is actually Game Maker.

Unreal and Unity are great, don’t get me wrong, but for what I want to do right now, they’re kind of an overkill. These are mostly 3D gaming engines, and I still want to stay in the realm of 2D hand-drawn games. These bear my signature style and it would be lost when translated into 3D. Maybe, in time, I’ll switch to proper 3D gaming, but not just yet. The Game Maker seems to meet my expectations, and me being a self-learner I found it easiest for me to transition from flash. Take a look at this code snippet from Flash and Game Maker and notice the similarities.

I can easily find my way around this software. Actually, I never told you that before, but while I was developing Submachine 10 in Flash, I was also trying to do something in Game Maker already. You can take a look at this small sketch of a Mothball game, it was just for the sake of trying the software out. There’s nothing much to do but shoot enemies.

Closing statement on Game Maker is – remember, it’s not the tool that’s important, it’s who is using it. Game Maker is a proper game development software (unlike Flash which primary function was to create websites and animations), it uses sprites created from png files, which means I can still create my graphics in Flash and create games that look exactly as before, you wouldn’t even see the change in engine except that those wouldn’t be browser games anymore. But on the other hand – I can create sprites in Photoshop, or even paint them by hand and visibly change the style of what I do. This is the moment when creating a game that looks like one of my comic books is possible. I don’t know if I want to do this yet though. There’s a long time of rethinking my creative process ahead of me.

3. So, the Game Maker, but what you want to do with it?

Now you can stop laughing about those two missing “Mission to…” games. I’m talking about “Mission to the Sun” and “Mission to Earth”. I know I’ve been saying that I’ll create these games since, uhm… 2012? But this year it’ll be different. You see, I kind of feel like I went back ten years. Right now I’m facing an (mostly) unknown to me software and I’m not sure what I can do with it. It’s a great place to be for a creative mind. Ever since I created a coherent engine for creating point and click games in flash (my so called float engine) I lost the actual intellectual challenge of the process. And that’s a big thing for me – the challenge. You might have missed it, but ever since 2010 each year I had some sort of challenge that I tried to achieve and actually achieving that was the most fulfilling thing for me as a creative person. But being kind of stuck in the polished flash engine was slowly wearing on me. Right now I can shake all the dust off my brain, oil the gears and restart the intellectual machine. I remember one of most creative times were when I had an unsolvable (at the time) problem, and I couldn’t even go to sleep properly because my brain was working full speed on solving the problem. But in time – I just got too good at creating point and click games in flash. There was no more challenge for me. But right now, we’re back to square one, yeah, sure, I’ve got ten years of experience behind me, but I’m starting a new adventure right now. Ditching flash is probably the best thing that will happen to my brain this year. That being said – I’m ready for a long time of learning the new software. Learning – meaning trying to create few smaller games, and here’s where “Mission to…” games come in. I’ll try to create those in the new engine as an exercise before creating something bigger. Besides that, two more games will be created – that is if I’ll be able to create them. Do you see how unstable all of this is right now? It’s all hanging on a thread named: me being able to learn game development on a new engine quick enough. I’m actually excited for game development again. Anyway, those two games are naturally new “10 Gnomes” game (“10 Gnomes in Pothia”) and another “Where is?…” game (“Where is 2017?”). So at the least – you’ll get four games this year, none of which will be point and click games. You happy? Probably not, but we just have to power through that period of me learning new things before I can create something bigger.

4. Something bigger? What is it?

Yeah, sure, you had to ask. You just HAD TO ask that question. Well, if you have to know, the answer is – I don’t know yet. Firstly – I want to learn the new software while creating smaller games, and then I want to go BIG. I don’t know what it will be, but I can tell you the rough outline of what it might me. Basically I want it to evolve into something better. That means – taking all things that worked in previous games and put it all into one, big game. What it might be? Imagine – a daymare-like world, but in full color, that houses submachine-like puzzles, while having a main character that you control as in Daymare Cat. Maybe throw something painted in watercolor like in my Revolutions comic book series. Imagine that.

A clash of all goods I delivered during last ten years. In my mind that’s a proper way to evolve. Not creating something never seen before, but learning from your previous experiences, taking everything that was good and further improving it. Just as Submachine 10 was way bigger than it’s predecessors, I want to create something even bigger and better than that. I don’t know what it will be for now. Ask me in a year. I’ll probably have an answer by then. Did I mention it’s kind of important that you stick by me, or even support me through the Patreon page? Yeah, it is crucial. You’re still getting four games this year anyway. All of them free. Too small to attack Steam though.

5. Steam?

Yeah, with that bigger, better, newer, evolved game I’ll try to finally tackle Steam. I’ll probably put that game on Steam Greenlight and will need your support in putting it through the process. But that’s a long time from now, like 2017. Many of you suggested that I should port Submachine games to Steam, but the thing is – I don’t want to start my presence there with an old, ported flash game series, that’s also free online. Steam community would kill me for trying to pull such a stunt. I really need to and want to create something new. Yes, that means the era of free games is over. I know it’s kind of strange to hear, but guys, let’s be real, I don’t want to go for the free-to-play model and basically destroy my games with ads and annoying prompts to buy more lives, or hints or tries or whatever. I’d rather give you an opportunity to buy a single piece of my work that’s complete, like a book, and ready for you to read. I mean play. That’s all.

6. So why should I consider supporting you on Patreon.

Because I’ll be using my patrons as members of my development team. They will be getting samples of graphics and game sketches to play and express their opinions. Everytime I come up with something significant gameplay wise I’ll let them see it first hand. If you’re following me on facebook or twitter – you’ll get the same amount of info as before about new releases, games, comic books, everything. But on Patreon I’ll let people inside my workshop to see the process of creation and be a part of it.

7. Why am I still reading this?

You must really like what I do if you’re still reading this article. Thanks! We’ve already covered all the essentials of what will be happening in 2016 – 2017 and all that’s left is for me to thank you all more in depth. Firstly, all of you that support me on Patreon – thank you from the bottom of my heart, as this Patreon thing is really the heart of this whole operation.  Secondly – big shout out goes to all people that bought Submachine 10 from my store. You guys turned up and basically allowed me to take the entire year off for learning and just creating small free games before going onto that bigger project. I’m really thankful for your donations and purchases as it’s the definitive way to know whether people actually like your creations so much that they’re willing to throw some money at it. I feel that right now is the best situation I put myself into since all those 10 years. We have a direct connection, me, the games developer, and you, the player. The money flow can’t be more direct. That’s really ensuring that the future ahead of us is bright.

Final thoughts: if I haven’t explained everything in full detail and you have any questions for me after reading this article, ask them on facebook or twitter. I’ll try to address them all in a separate post.

I’m very optimistic about the future, yet I’m not sure about your feelings concerning our relationship. Just know this – I’m always creating and my brain is always working and coming up with new ideas, stories and ways to awe all of you. That’s something I observed in me long time ago, that there are actually no off-time periods, even on vacation or when procrastinating hard – in the back of my head I’m always thinking of something new to create.

Remember that as I set off to create something bigger and better – it’ll also take longer to finish. There’s no schedule as of now, but it might take a year or two. The era of short free games will probably be over after this year, maybe with the exception of “10 Gnomes” and “Where is?…” games, which I may or may not continue after 2016.

10 years of Submachine are over. Let’s see what next 10 years bring us.

I’m curious. That’s the best mindset I could be in right now and it’s all thanks to you and your support.

Waiting for your questions.

Thank You for everything that happened so far.

Mateusz Skutnik