Sakawochi Devlog #1 - Launch

Welcome to my devlog about Sakawochi -A game you would probably never touch.

In case you haven't heard of it, and I am pretty sure you haven't I'll give you a small introduction:
Sakawochi is a real-time aquarium simulation where you need to nurture your fish until it grows up. The bigger your fish the more you get when you decide to sell it. From the earned coins you can buy additional fish of different type or decorations for your aquarium.

You can find the product page here: https://wend1go.itch.io/sakawochi
Sakawochi runs on Android, Ubuntu Touch, Windows, Linux and OSX.
It is currently available in English, German and French (EDIT: Now also in Italian and Spanish).

The idea to this game came to me after I got myself a new smart phone and installed Ubuntu Touch on it. While I really like the operation system and the fact that you can install both mobile apps and Linux desktop applications that you can run when plugging the phone to a display or television, I was a little disappointed about the emptiness of the OpenStore app store which as of today still has only about 120 games in total. So I decided to increase the number by at least 1. ;)
After digging through a lot of game engines I found GDevelop5 Beta to be the easyest one to create games for Ubuntu Touch since it is pretty simple to turn an HTML5 game into an app that runs locally on a phone.
On the 22.07.2018 I released the game on Ubuntu Toch OpenStore and the success was greater than I would ever have imagined for a game from a niche genre on a niche operating system. After about 3 weeks I had 144 downloads. When I pushed the first update it was installed by 65.5% of the players. So I figure that more than every second player who downloaded the game is still playing which I consider an amazing number.
After I finally overcame a bug in PixiJS (on which GDevelop relies for mobile games) I was finally able to release Sakawochi for Android and Desktop (Windows, Linux, OSX) on Itch and Gamejolt yesterday, but to my surprise the number of downloads and even views was extremely scarse and stood way behind the numbers from Ubuntu Touch.
When I already had roughly 50 downloads on the first day after release on UT the numbers on Itch were just 27 views and 10 downloads, on Gamejolt even less (8 views, 0 downloads).
Posting about the game on Reddit and tooting on Mastodon increased the number of views by -> drum roll <- 3. (or 11%) Sounds much better, doesn't it ;) )

Since Sakawochi was pretty successful on Ubuntu Touch and all my friends who tested it are still actively playing several weeks later, I figure that it's not the game itself which is boring but the "aquarium simulation" genre. So the question is: How do I make players install a game from a genre that they usually don't play?

Due to the lack of content on OpenStore, people over at Ubuntu Touch are hungry for games, I think that makes them more likely try a game from a genre they usually wouldn't install.

I really need to find a solution for this problem but in the meantime I'm going to focus on improving the game.
Next on my roadmap is a rewrite of the localization system to make it easier to add additional languages. I already got offers for Italian and Spanish on the Ubuntu Touch forum.

Sakawochi Devlog #2 - All to waste

Welcome to the first update after the release last week.

Version 0.2.11 is now live on Itch

Changes:

• New feature: Earn some coins by collecting plastic waste that floats through the tank.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the activation of the fish food button when only crabs were in the tank.
• Fixed a bug that limited the size bar of fish to about 3/4 of its full size.
• Reduced price for decorations.
• Reworked the localization system to make it easier to add new languages

I had to push this update a little earlier as intended since the bug in the fish food button could have broken the game for those of you, who sold all their blow fish for a single crab. 

I hadn't got any time to create a tutorial for the new mini game about earning some extra cash by collecting floating plastic waste but i'm pretty sure you'll be able to figure it out yourself. Just pick up all the waste floating through your aquarium. When the trash can is full you earn a coin.

In the version prior to the release fish food wasn't a limited resource. Players could buy as many fish as they liked and so earn an exponentially growing amount of coins. This problem got solved with the introduction of snails so that I was able to lower the prices for decoration drastically.

Unfortunately the popularity of the game didn't rise in the course of the week after publishing. The number of views is falling day by day since the game left the "Recently added" page.

If you like Sakawochi please spread the word!

Here are some statistics by platform for the downloads during the first week after release:

Even though I'm developing Sakawochi on Linux I'm surprised that it is also the strongest platform. I guess it is because fewer games get released which granted me a longer time on the "Recently added" page for Linux. But it is a little strange that Android isn't leading since Sakawochi is basically a mobile game. 

With the background work done for further localisations I'll be working on additional translations for the next update and a new little critter for you to care for:

So stay tuned :)

Sakawochi Devlog #3 - Long live the community!

Version 0.2.12 is now live on Itch.

Changes:

• Italian and Spanish localization (BIG thanks to matteo and advocatux from the UBPorts community)
• A second backup save game for more reliability
• Sea grass now adds another snail for additional fish food
• Fixed save every frame bug in fish food logic
• Fixed fish sometimes turning multiple times
• Fixed wrong order in the language flags spinner
• New fix for screen flickering on some devices

The backup save game was originally made for the Ubuntu Touch on the Fairphone2 where closing of the browser or Web-Apps sometimes makes the Unity desktop or the whole phone reboot. Occasionally this seems to wipe the browsers local storage where the save games are stored. Unfortunately the patch didn't help against this issue but it should make the save games more reliable on other platforms and devices. I need to find a way to fix this issue on FP2 though. Since the local storage seems to get wiped about every two weeks when the memory bug reboots the phone I have to find a way to save the game to the file system instead.

A bug in the fish food logic made the game save every frame when spoiled fish food was lying on the ground. After the fix the game should run much faster. However the new fix for the flickering / black screen issue is said to cost a little performance so it might not be noticeable that much.

Unfortunately the sea horse didn't make it into this version since I got carried away and spent a lot of time adding new features to the GDevelop game engine instead. I decided to use the sea horses as test candidates for the upcoming breeding system. In the next version (if there aren't any bigger issues in 0.2.12) sea horses will be able to mate when they are grown up and have children whose colour varies a little from that of their parents. So you will be able to breed individuals of different colour. In the next step the economy will get an overhaul and I'll add a quest system where you get asked to breed a certain kind of fish to get a reward. Since this will be a really big update, it's going to take a bit longer to release.

So please be patient and stay tuned. :)