Hello!

Lots to cover time.... I’ve named my game, am in the development groove, and have started connecting with publishers. ... so let’s dive in!

INTRODUCING

As I said in my first newsletter, everyday at school we had a “kickabout” - the British slang term for a casual pickup game of soccer. It struck me that Kickabout would be the perfect name for my game, as it's so easy to pickup and play! This is NOT a "football simulator". There are no confusing options or buttons to learn. You just jump in, drag players around with your finger, and try and knock the ball into the goal. It's intensionally simple, and I love having a name that broadcasts this.

Everyone I ran it past loved it, including the Americans in my life who had never heard the term before. While Kickabout is a British slang term, it’s pretty self explanatory and appealing to non-Brits it seems. The connotation with British football fan culture is also a big win creatively, adding some flavor that's very much part of who I am.

I grew up in the 80's and 90's with the terrace wear of Adidas & Fila the epitome of cool. I also played as much Sensible Soccer and Subbuteo as I did Soccer, and these all influenced my design for the Kickabout logo which I had a lot of fun creating. I hope you like it.

IN THE SOLO DEV GROOVE

As I said in my last newsletter playtesting at the SF Game Dev winter indie expo helped me validate the concept/mechanics AND uncover areas for refinement. So I’ve been working on responding to these with feature iteration such as…

• Dragged player now more offset from finger (so can see them better)
• Big red/blue highlight around player as dragged (so clearer who controlling)
• Auto switch player on zone change (so don’t need to lift finger)
• Ball can no longer get stuck in the corner (bug fix)
• Countdown timer in real world minutes & seconds (so universally understood)

It’s the accumulation of feature refinements like this, especially when it addresses play testing comments, that elevates any game’s quality; and I’ll keep iterating like this based on play testing throughout the project. As I mentioned before, my next structured playtest will be a TestFlight on iOS, and to build for that platform you need a Mac… so I got one and am switching my daily development platform from PC to Mac.

LONDON CALLING

After I posted my prototype video on LinkedIn - a mobile publisher reached out and ask me if I was gonna be at Pocket Gamer Connects London, as they wanted to connect. It was nice to get the first signs of interest, and attending the Jan 19-20 conference struck me as a great idea! I want to learn more about publishing on mobile, and grow my connections in the mobile space, so I said yes.

While my first solo dev game Slope got 1 million downloads on the Google Play store, my partnership with Y8 was more luck than judgement (another fun story I’ll tell some time). For Kickabout I want to be more intentional about finding the right publishing partner, so I’m gonna get out there and start talking with people.

I’ve booked my tickets and will be heading to London in January for Pocket Gamer Connects. I’ll also be at the PockGamer Connects SF conference in March, and also at GDC the same month. Finding a publisher / platform that see the potential of Kickabout and know how to get eyeballs on it is my goal. If you, dear reader, happen to know someone I should talk to, please hit reply and let me know!

Finally, I’ll share clips from my London Pocket Gamer Connects trip, so be sure to subscribe on YouTube.

Until next time!

Rob