Giraffe Town Available Today!

Giraffe Town is out now on Steam!

Get it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/941480/Giraffe_Town/

"A giraffe born with slippery feet sets out to find love..."

Take control of a giraffe who has had enough of being held back in life

by his weird feet as you slide your way through the town in a courageous

pursuit of love.

Welcome to Giraffe Town...

Steam Direct, The Fee & Thoughts.

     It's funny because just yesterday in my latest post I mentioned Steam Direct and how the fee was still a mystery. Today, it is no longer a mystery and if you haven't already heard the news from Steam's blog or any other gaming news website already, then you probably are not a game developer who want's to publish a game to Steam. Or you just don't care.

     Anyway, today Valve officially announced that the Steam Direct fee will only be $100 per game. Also, this $100 fee is recoupable according to Valve.
Steam Blog: Link

     After weeks of indie developers stressing out and being on edge about the Direct price point and waiting for the news to come out, everyone can finally relax.

     At first, I was really surprised to see Valve's decision. Personally, I was expecting the fee to be between $300 and $500 myself actually. However, Valve decided to set the fee at the lowest price point possible so that smaller indies (me being a small indie as well) wouldn't get barred out and that is pretty awesome of them. I am really happy with this price point and I am sure many other indie developers are as well. This is a very fair and more than reasonable price to pay to have your game on the largest PC gaming store front in the world. I believe that this small fee gives every indie game developer the opportunity to shine and possibly become a success on Steam. Also, it just makes everything so much more simpler for everyone. No more running Greenlight campaigns, getting votes and waiting months to see if the game passes. Developers simply pay the fee, fill out some paper work (I think there will be paperwork), set up the game page and release on Steam.

     Of course at the same time this low price point might worry some people because now the Steam platform is available to publish on to anyone with $100. It brings up the argument that the platform could possibly become over flooded with low quality games, joke games, asset flips, etc. The argument that shady developers might abuse this new system and exploit it to set up cash farms just like they did with Greenlight. Developers worry that their games will just become buried under the hundreds of other games submitted making it hard to become visible to potential customers. And gamers worry that they will become overwhelmed with loads of games flooding the storefront pages making it more difficult to browse for games that they would be interested in.

     With a low price point of just $100 it is possible for any of these points that I brought up to happen however, no one knows for sure yet. With that said, the people over at Valve have also taken these potential possibilities into consideration. I have been keeping up with Valve's more recent blog post and it truly does sound like they are working hard to avoid any possible exploitation of the new system. Valve has already made changes to the trading card system, navigating the site, what content is recommended to which users depending on their interest and making changes to the sites algorithms to just make the entire platform the best it can be. Valve really does care about giving the end user an enjoyable store browsing experience and giving the developer the best platform to work on and it shows that they are working hard to constantly improve the site. And this is why in my opinion they are the best. Why they are the number one storefront in the world. With all that said, nothing is perfect and I am sure there will always be users complaining about something and users giving praise.

    Only time will tell how the Steam Direct system will perform so we just have to wait and see.
As for me, I will definitely be using Steam Direct to publish my upcoming future games. I am excited about it and am really looking forward to seeing the changes Valve continues to make. What are your thoughts about all of this? Tweet at me @snowconesolid

See you all on Direct!

Update: 6/6/2017

Steam Greenlight official retired. Steam Direct confirmed for June 13th, 2017

The status of "Samer Hills"

Hey Samer, whatever happened to that one game project you were working on? You know, the one you posted to Steam GreenLight over here? Hmmm... I believe it was called Samer Hills? Yeah, this one. 

That is a good question Samer (just play along with me). Let me tell you what is going on because I believe I haven't been really been clear about it's progress and to be honest, I have been a bit confusing because I tend to say something different each time. I recently posted this update over at the game's Steam Greenlight page (yes, as of this post Steam Greenlight is still up and is still a thing. I posted links to my game's Greenlight page exactly 5 times already in this post......) 

Anyway! as I was saying, I recently posted this update on the Steam Greenlight page because I felt it was important to keep the page... well, updated with news relating to the project. However, with Valve's upcoming Steam Direct system, Steam Greenlight can be taken down any day now and who knows if anyone will ever be able to visit those dead Greenlight game pages anymore. 

With that said, I think it is a good idea to simply re-post the update over here on my blog for future reference. Now, I will shamelessly copy paste and quote myself:

Status of the project:

"Just a quick and possibly final update I post here on this game's Greenlight page. Since I have been going back and forth between saying that the game is "temporarily shelved" and the "game is still in development."

So that there isn't any confusion, I want to clarify the current status of this project and my plans. I don't want to sound like I am repeating what I have said in previous announcements, but here is what's going on.

-The game is NOT canceled.

-The game is still set to release/finish development this year (2017)

-I am reworking the game to be something more than what I originally had planned. I have a completely different vision for what I want this game to be and I want to implement all of my ideas into it and tweak it until I feel it is the game I want to put out there. This will be a bigger game with more than originally planned. I want to create an immersive world with multiple characters and multiple story-lines occurring.

-I am planning on changing the game's name to something entirely different. It will no longer be called "Samer Hills". Therefore if the game gets greenlit on here in time before Direct comes out, this game will launch under a different name.

-If greenlight is eventually taken down and replaced with Direct and this game has not passed it's greenlight campaign then that is okay. I will finish the game and look into my options for releasing it. As of this update there still is no exact information on how Direct will work or how much the fee will be. So I can't promise a direct release at this time. But again, I will look into my options for publishing and see if I can work with Direct.

Anyway, thank you everyone once again for the support and interest in this project. Admittedly this greenlight page isn't really getting much views or visits. However, for those few followers I feel it is important that I continue to share updates and the status on the project here on the greenlight page. At least while it is still up.

Thanks everyone once again. I appreciate all of you!

-Samer Khatib (snowconesolid)"

Originally posted on "Samer Hills" Steam Greenlight page here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/updates/868133785/1496360496

On 6/1/2017. Original Page may be removed in future.

Anyway, that's all I wanted to share today. Also, I finally setup an indiedb page for Samer Hills. You can find it here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/samer-hills

More updates soon. 

Thanks for reading.

Samer Hills On Steam GreenLight!

     Here it is everyone. My second ever Steam GreenLight campaign for my newest and next upcoming game, "Samer Hills" 

(A game shamelessly named after me, the developer. Feel that big ego)

Samer Hills is a post-apocalyptic thriller about a man who decides to return home after being away for nine years to finish what he started...

Steam GreenLight Page Over Here: http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/samerhills

Trailer:

Plans, Thoughts, Release Date, Misc Info:

      I have been talking and posting about this new game project since late 2016 but never really wen't too in depth about it (don't worry, i'm not about to.) I have been constantly sharing development progress, screenshots and more behind the scenes stuff  here on the blog and twitter but never anything really about the final product or what to expect. The trailer above is really the first thing that does this. This is the first footage of gameplay, some characters are introduced and maybe you could get a good feel of the atmosphere and types of settings that can be expected from the game. 

     There is still a lot of work that needs to be done on the game. However, after months of development I finally feel like I have a sufficient amount of content created to showcase on Steam and to run my next GreenLight. This is essentially only an introduction and the first step of many that lay ahead. With that said, there is no set release date. But this game is planned for this year, 2017. Keep in mind that I am just one guy after all and there are some days that I just can't spend on developing the game. Just being honest, but I am working really hard on this project and I plan on delivering a really unique experience (said every other indie ever...) Jokes aside, I am really proud of what I have created here so far and I am really proud of the trailer I put together to demonstrate some of the game. I am really excited about this one and having a great time creating it. I truly do look forward to finishing the game and sharing with the world. 

I am always active online and will continue to keep you guys updated on the project. Also, this is kind of off topic, but I am working on transitioning to posting video updates instead of just here on the blog (no one likes reading)

So more updates to follow down the road. YouTube vlogs as well as other miscellaneous none related videos all coming to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/snowconesolid