Posted February 15, 2023 by bandaloo
##desktop ##windows ##mac ##linux ##electron ##web ##html5
After consulting with my most trusted advisors... I have decided.
Decided that if Vampire Survivors can wrap up their HTML5 game in Electron without immediately being banished to hell (teleported there, in zero seconds) then the risk is ultimately low for me.
What I mean to say is you can now play DEAD PETALS outside of the browser in a standalone binary for Windows, Mac and Linux! Don't be fooled; it's got no extra bells and whistles over the browser version. But I'm sure it's how some people will prefer to play the game.
Quite frankly I am screaming and crying and throwing up because the file size of the Electron-wrapped game is literally over a thousand times larger than the original browser bundle. But I am mostly over it, and really the only person that cares about that is me so... get your dead petals.exe and dead petals.app fresh off the press!
The Web is an amazing platform. I've stuck with it for so long because it really felt like the only way for people to check out my stuff, but building something for the Web stack has *plenty* of drawbacks. Somewhere along the way, we all agreed to not think too hard about Electron (Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, VS Code have frontends built in it) so it *is* possible to ship a standalone "app" just written with HTML, JS and CSS. However, if I wanted to get anything I made in HTML5 on another platform other than browser and desktop, it would either require a herculean engineering feat (see the Javascript game CrossCode port for Nintendo Switch) or rebuilding it from the ground up.
It's not 2003 anymore; it's not possible to keep a roof over your head with ad revenue generated from free browser games. Which makes me genuinely sad, because I like playing free browser games. I spent a happy chunk of my youth playing countless Flash games at home and in the school computer lab; it was awesome! And now with open standards we have Flash without Flash but it's too damn late. It sucks but I don't see it changing — many people just don't like playing browser games. And this version of DEAD PETALS will remain free.
So...
I've been spending time moving away from the web and growing my software development/game dev skills in other domains.
Which brings me to my last point. You'll notice I stuck a suggested price on the downloadable version, which you're free to ignore. However, if you decide to pay any amount over or under the suggested price, I really really appreciate it! I've been pouring my time into the next project — not solo this time — and any money I make from itch.io will let me focus on it for more hours in the day. If you're not in a position to buy the game, what I appreciate even MORE is just sharing it! Just copy it around or share the link to Newgrounds or itch.io to any friends that might enjoy a weird game like this.
I hope to share more news soon! Take care and thanks for playing.