Hi everyone,
I'm Joé, a 28 y/o guy who loves volleyball but because of covid, couldn't play anymore...
FEBUARY 2021 - let's make a video game
I ask a dev friend (Clément) if he wants to make game with me. A game about (I'm sure you know) volleyball ! :D
We start to make a project in Unity with the "simple" idea to make a LITTLE game on itch.io. Because we are not professional, we can only meet the thursday evening. So every evening, after a good dinner with tons of private jokes, we work from 22:00 to 0:00 (or more...) on the project.
Besides the project, I'm playing almost all video games about volleball from consoles (old one ofc) to PC with mobile games. I want a game where you can control the whole team and because Clément and I are drummers, we're looking for a rythm game where timing is important :3
(A FPS, TPS, platformer would have been easier. We create a fully independent system for our game which is really hard to manage T-T)
AUGUST 2021 - Alpha release
We have a playable version of a game with "VolleyGamu" as project's name that we decide to call : SPIKAIR VOLLEYBALL
The game is an alpha but with a little bit of polish (menu, options, controller support, really rare bugs). We're really happy to share it with the community and our friends/family :D
LINK DEVLOG : https://le-jo.itch.io/spikair-volleyball-alpha/devlog/287195/alpha-release-d-
VIDEO FROM NOTHING TO ALPHA RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 2021 - the first update
Because we have "a lot" of feedbacks from players, we keep working on the project to improve the alpha. We use parallax and make an effect with the net with new skills we learnt in Unity during our trip.
LINK DEVLOG : https://le-jo.itch.io/spikair-volleyball-alpha/devlog/296790/1-month-later-
OCTOBER 2021 - things getting bigger
We're having so much fun doing it + a lot of good feedback, we decide to put it to Steam. For us, it's like a dream to have a Steam page and to think "wow you'll be able to play our game among all others, that's so cool" :D
We decide that we want to work with the community cause itch.io players helped us a lot so we think "let's make it an early access and build the game with the community". We know it's hard to make everyone happy but we want to talk with people and make a game which is really funny for players (especially volleyball players MOUHA HA HA) !
The name of the Studio "Choc Abyss" is choosen cause before the dev, we're playing Dark Souls 3 and eating chocolate together and the Abyss Watchers left their marks on our body... ♥
NOVEMBER 2021 - MacOS + Linux support
Few people talk about OS and because we like apples and pinguins (the first to eat and the second to pet... oh wait !!!), we make version of Spikair for MacOS and Linux platform. Yes, the world is big :O
JANUARY 2022 - going "viral"
We're working hard since november on a new version of the game. The idea is to change the graphixxxxxxx but we like our pixel art style :3
So we go for the new 2.5D style which means 2D sprites in 3D world and we add 1 big change : THE CAMERA
Because we're in 3D, we can have a lot of move to the camera. We try different trick to make it still playable but adding SO MUCH DYNAMIC to the game :D
We make a trailer and update the steam page. At this moment, we have a twitter account with 5 followers (us + family/friends).
We tweet the trailer with a little call to dev cause "There isn't enough volleyball games... T-T" and...
It's going almost viral. About 500 likes in few days with At0mium (a streamer FR and well knows YouTuber) seeing it and sharing it ♥
Here is the tweet : https://twitter.com/chocabyss/status/1482836455944822786
FEBRUARY 2022 - keep working and thinking of the future
We work on many aspect of the game and we think about improving the graphics/art.
I create a player with more details (beard) and for fun, I make a pixel art Hinata from Haikyuu!!
The main thing is that we're going for a new system for the game. The idea is being able to add move and changing stuff without breaking the whole game.
MARCH 2022 - New game system
We try to think of concept and when we got it, we start to create a full new system. This is probably the hardest moment of the dev journey because, we needed to break the game to make a new system so we couldn't play anymore :S
Also, we can't share stuff because the game doesn't change or even doesn't work. Really hard moment for motivation...
APRIL 2022 - the power of a good tool
We finish the new system and the fun is coming back really fast. We can add move easy and change parameters of everyone of them in a second. That's so powerful !
We work to get back the Alpha feeling of spike and everything else + we add new mechanics to the game
Because I wanna share stuff, I create 8 new teams and 4 terrains and share them to increase the National Teams of the game :D
MAY 2022 - it's time
We see that there is a Steam Next Festival in 1 month. The game is funny and almost ready (we were thinking...) so we submit and share with the community that there is few more weeks before being able to play Spikair :D
We work hard to make a playable demo of the game with the hardest thing to do for a game like Spikair : how to teach players ?
We make a first a tutorial which basically the control in the background while working the menu system :)
I'll continue the story later :)
Thank you for reading and have a nice day/evening/night ♥