Right, first week of release report. I’ve been doing mostly marketing work recently, a lot of that being contacting various press, YouTubers etc. That’s starting to wind down – there’s a point eventually where you’ve contacted and followed up everyone on your list – so I’ll be getting back into mostly working on the game from tomorrow.

Reception And Feedback

So far the reception has been excellent and I’m happy that people are enjoying this game that I’ve been working on for a long time. I’ve also got some valuable feedback, and the next few updates will focus on gameplay balance and improvements including:

A new firing mode that will only fire guns that are aiming near where you’re currently aiming (avoids wasting power/heat while easily switching around between weapons). This has been planned for a while but recently got suggested again, and the AI will like this feature too.

Improvements and reduction to physics effects from explosions, so vehicles are less likely to be stopped in their tracks completely.

Turret versions of the MMG and Medium Cannon, limited-movement version of the Large Cannon, and game balancing for turret vs. fixed weapons.

Some side movement for the SMG. I’ve held onto this not moving horizontally for a while but I’ve conceded that it needs it, even if it’s just a little bit.

A change to the XP system so it’s not just awarded on destroying a vehicle. Might be awarded for x amount of damage done or something similar.

Score multipliers for destroying multiple vehicles in a row without dying. This will help encourage staying alive and escaping to repair/upgrade rather than just fighting to the death.

Have spawning automatically try and happen away from other vehicles.

As I said though my time has been mostly taken up with marketing recently, but I’m getting back into game dev stuff now. I did have time to get out three updates this week with bug fixes, so the game is looking pretty stable as-is at least.

Exposure

The lack of response from press has been a bit disappointing. Hardly any games press got back to me or covered the Scraps release. A lot more covered the Scraps Kickstarter, including the likes of Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku, and the game is way better now than it was then. Maybe with the likes of Robocraft and TerraTech taking up residence the concept isn’t as novel anymore. Some YouTubers have checked it out, all have enjoyed it, and I have a few more lined up – but many more just never responded. Oh well.

I’m doing a little bit of paid advertising as well but the next phase after plan “contact all the people everywhere” is basically “keep working on the game and making it great and go for the slow build-up”, although I have a few other ideas as well. A lot of games like this take a while to gather steam.

Think a YouTuber/Twitch streamer would like Scraps? Want to tell them maybe? They can contact me for a key. Made an insane vehicle? Maybe post it on Reddit or something. That sort of thing always helps.

Game Tip

Makeshift “boss mode”:

Set a low-ish scrap limit

Add a bunch of AIs (so they auto-select low-ish value vehicles)

Make the scrap limit higher

Give yourself a fancy expensive vehicle

Uncheck “AI Infighting”

This post has a lot of text so here’s a series of images: