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Five months after we announced Circle of Sparks and us posting the post-mortem for SparkLine, so many have happened since then. In short, Circle of Sparks has finally launched on 29 November, and we have another game in development called “The Gambit Lost to Time“.
I forgot if we made an end-of-year update last year in the old website. If I did, I forgot what its contents were. But anyways, where it felt gloomy last year, I see next year with cautious optimism. Most of all, because we have built up the “Fundamentals” of our team, and by extension our games starting from Circle of Sparks.
You could argue that those fundamentals were built up since we did SparkLine, although I believe it ended up not applied to that particular game. Before we continue further though, let’s define what this “Fundamental” means.
I will keep this one short and simple. For us game developers, there are two main questions when we consider “end results”.
The first one is simple to say. Have a game that plays well, easy to navigate, feels “crunchy”, and… fun. The process is anything but simple, though.
The second one is deceptively difficult. I like the games that we have made, so at least someone likes it. Problem is, I can’t sell the game to myself. So we have to make games that we like, and you like too at the same time.
The third one… I would like to believe is the least of your concerns when compared to the first two. If you can’t make good games, and you can’t make good games that people want, then you should keep your expectations in check. After all, there’s only so much we can do to convince players to buy the game, when the game itself doesn’t fulfill the criterias above.
Please note that I don’t say “don’t sell if the game doesn’t fulfill the criterias above”. Put it out there, see how people react to it. There’s so much to learn from that experience that you just won’t get otherwise. It’ll be painful, but what doesn’t kill you… makes you stronger!
The one I am most confident in is obviously… the first one! That’s not the work of one person, but rather WizDream Games as a whole.
I am one person. There are things I can and cannot do. And amongst the things I can do, I can only do so much in a limited timeframe. And that’s why we must be a team that solves problems together. There are obviously plenty of room to improve, but I am happy with the team we have currently, and we have the potential to do something special.
As for the second one, we are getting there with both Circle of Sparks and TGLT. I wouldn’t say it’s the best, but we are on the right track. While Circle of Sparks is already pretty defined at this point as the “Decorative Rhythm Game“, TGLT is comparatively blank. Still a lot of time for us to decide what TGLT should be, but I think there’s something that can make it the game you want to play, when there are so many Turn-Based Strategy games around already.
The third one is where I believe we are the least capable in, out of the three. Best thing I can say is that we are not ignoring it, and we are gradually learning.
That’s all I can say in regards to our fundamentals. For the next part of the blog post, let’s talk about Circle of Sparks and what fundamentals we have learned from it.
Announced on 7 July, scheduled for October, and eventually launching in 29 November. It was a short schedule (even if accounting the delay), and I’m glad that I can post like this in our end-of-year update.
Launching with a whopping 25 original songs (including 5 from SparkLine), Circle of Sparks is the only rhythm game where decorating your room and adopting pets matter. I took that from the store description, but that’s the game I’m going to sell to you.
We decided to take this “cozy” direction because:
Therefore, this is a game made for the present (itself) and the future (future games… and of course itself, again).
The game properly started development in mid-April, after Lebaran (Eid) holidays. We tried to get it done within 6 months, but it ended up being 7. Launching in late November, where we are so close to holidays, is also not the best of times. The biggest reason for this delay is reworking the decoration feature as seen in the announcement trailer.
The decoration feature at that time will have place 2 versions of each decoration. One for the full room, and another when Sophia is painting due to the different angles. In addition, we had to draw an almost full-body render for Sophia AND animate her for this painting animation.
We feel this is so much work, for what likely would end up disappointing. As we speak about this, what happens to the pets too? They were not supposed to appear in the room, which feels so… weird, I guess?
After we discuss it with the team, we decided to completely rework the decoration feature. The plan is as follows:
It took at least a month to rework this, but I’m happy with what we have now, and the identity we shaped for this feature.
The other major reason for the delay is us developing another game at the same time. That game is…
We announced TGLT about 2 weeks before CoS’s eventual launch. This marks an exciting period for us as we are entering a new phase in our game-dev journey! I always maintain our long term goal is to branch out from rhythm games, and we are doing just that.
What is “TGLT”, you wonder? *Brings out narrator voice…*
It’s the turn-based strategy games where you as a time-travelling advisor is capable of using your future knowledge to drastically alter the course of past battles in other timelines! Choosing between four kingdoms to support, fight with the realization that today’s enemy is a friend in another timeline and vice versa.
As we will dedicate our resources to two games at once, concerns over whether we can really do that are warranted given our team size (less than 10). I initially envisioned that TGLT can complete development in June 2025, but it doesn’t look likely at this point.
What we have at this point, however, is the “fundamentals” we keep speaking about in this blog. Today we are much more confident in making good games, but what we have to do next will be:
As I have iterated before, these are things much easier said that done. This time, I believe we can rise up to that challenge. Although there is not much we can show at the moment, please look forward to the game’s release and its drip marketing next year!
Back to Circle of Sparks again, we see many Rooms for improvement. Many of these have been detailed in this Twitter/X post I made some time ago, so feel free to check that out along with our way of solving the problems. Beyond this, we do receive more feedback (such as player-to-player interaction) and while we can’t action on them in a single update, we’ll eventually get to them one by one.
All in all though, I feel the issues are not ones that require tearing the game down and making a new one to solve… And that’s probably one of the nicest things I can say about Circle of Sparks. Is it reassuring? Our actions will determine that.
Even polishing the game to better states, comes as considerably unfamiliar territory to us. I am happy that we can be in such position. It’s a game we are proud of the result, but more importantly the process we took to get it. While the game’s download count and revenue are far from our goals, I believe we have a game that can get there, and we have a team that can bring the game there.
Before we go to this post’s summary. I would like to thank AKA Virtual for the collaboration opportunity we have. A song pack spanning 5 songs (with more coming), the game was played by 10 VTubers with varying degrees of experience with rhythm games. Their streams have provided very valuable insights into how different players approach the game… From themselves, and their fans, who downloaded the game as well.
This collaboration was in the works since… October, I think? Come to think of it, the deal ended up sealed pretty fast. As we bring the game in front of many eyes, I always worry whether the game is in a good enough state yet… Or worse, have it crash live on-stream. Thankfully, the latter didn’t happen.
However, the former is true to an extent. Thanks to their playing experiences and feedback, we become far more aware of where the game can improve. Arguably, this could be done in a feedback form, but 2 hours worth of streaming from the start is an experience difficult to replicate. I heard that the VTubers genuinely enjoy the game and are willing to stream it again, so that’s a good… start!
As this batch of collaboration is concluding, I will have a chat with our PIC as we summarize this collaboration and see where we can improve for the next ones.
We are polishing Circle of Sparks even further, and we expect at least that level of polish in TGLT that we wish to launch next year. As much as I’d love to lay out our plans for next year… I’ll keep my mouth shut this time. I would like to talk about the conventions we attended, but this post would be too long if we include that.
If there’s something I’d like to say, it’ll be to fellow game developers (or to myself only a year ago). Much like us with SparkLine, we see lots of games that didn’t take off, or not do as expected. Those points are amongst the toughest times we can get as game developers. It’s difficult, it’s dark, and it certainly can be lonely.
But, I would like to say… It’s not the end of the world. As someone who’s been there, perhaps we are never truly alone. It’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to cry, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to quit. At the end of the day, it’s everyone’s choice. But hey, I hope we can see each other again, making the games we love.
I consider it a blessing that there were people who were there for me in the darkest times.
![[Circle of Sparks] 1.0.0 Final Song Preview - AKAVirtual Collaboration!](https://img.youtube.com/vi/2JrA-QhGVw8/maxresdefault.jpg)
![[Circle of Sparks] 1.1.0 Preview - AKA Virtual Collab featuring Frederett + Alona Driad!](https://img.youtube.com/vi/FuLzPXhncuw/maxresdefault.jpg)