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In the opening cut scene from my game Slip Space: The Burma-Shave
Analogy, a character offers the observation “In our line of work,
you never know what you are until you become it.”

This could easily become
the motto of bad planners and wishful thinkers everywhere. It certainly
applies to me.

Apparently, I have become
an independent developer in the service of the “cognitive gamer”.
It’s as if I’m the virtual younger brother of Knut Mueller, the developer
of Rhem. Note: I’m probably older than Knut.

Put simply, a cognitive
gamer is one who likes puzzles that are challenging but ultimately
solvable because they are logical. It’s not that my game is like Rhem,
but those who enjoy Rhem-like game play will likely enjoy Slip Space.

Adventure games are appealing
for more than just the puzzles. Atmosphere and story also rank high.
If one merely seeks a puzzle-fix, they can work through a book of
sudoku or logic puzzles. The appeal of a good adventure-game puzzle
is that it exists within an immersive 3D environment and solving it
forwards a story line.

Designing puzzles is at
least as fun as solving them. As one would expect, inspiration comes
from the story and the environment, but I also credit unusual circumstances
and strange conversations from my own life.

Years ago, a fellow came
into my office with what he thought was a great idea for a rescue
device. As a product for the real world, it was absolutely silly.
However, the elements of his design rattled around in my head and
morphed into the puzzle in my game that I refer to as the balloon
trap.

For another puzzle, I
built a clay model to test both the possible predicaments the gamer
would fall into and to validate the solution.

My game has been available
via download for several weeks. Up to now, I have marketed it very
timidly in order to test the reliability of its delivery and to have
the opportunity to work very closely with a manageable number of gamers.

From this process, I isolated
a problem regarding download authorization and fixed it.

Delivery via download
is now reliable. The buyer gets the instant gratification of immediate
access to the download after purchasing the game through PayPal.

It is still possible that
an instant authorization will not occur if the customer fails to follow
the provided link from PayPal back to the download page. In that hopefully
rare case, authorization will need to be set manually causing a slight
delay.

Nevertheless, the process
is 100 percent reliable thanks to the method PayPal uses to document
the sale.

It has been over a year
since I started promoting this game. I started early because I thought
I would need to attract a publisher to physically distribute it. However,
none were willing to take the risk. I’m not complaining. It forced
me to explore other options. I selected distribution via digital download.

Clearly, I expect the number
of those willing to download the game is less than the number of those
who would be willing to buy a boxed version. Thus, sales of my game
will come from the intersection of the universe of cognitive gamers
with the universe of those comfortable with downloading.

Hopefully, that number
will be large enough to make this game a success. In which case there
will be another.

For those needing a bit
more convincing that Slip Space is for them, there is a downloadable
demo
available on the official website.

Installment
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2 | Installment
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