Mind Over Magnet is now on consoles!

Hey all!

Today is a pretty big day - Mind Over Magnet just released on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch consoles.

And it's making me feel kinda emotional, to be honest. Especially the Nintendo release. As I'm sure you can imagine I've been a Nintendo fan all my life. Ever since I got a Game Boy (which, funnily enough, released in the same year as I was born!)

So to have something I made be on the same family of consoles is pretty wild. To have my game in the same eShop as Mario and Zelda. I never thought I'd see the day!

Thankfully, I didn't have to do the port myself. I don't think it would have ever happened if I had to. For one thing, as soon as Mind Over Magnet was released I didn't want to have to think about magnets ever again. And for another, a port is mostly just technical troubles, red tape, paperwork, and dealing with reps at the major platforms. That stuff sends me to sleep!

So instead I hooked up with a company in Brazil, Alchemy Games, who offered to port the game for me. I spoke to a bunch of people about the port but I liked Alchemy's pitch. A simple revenue split, with zero upfront payment from me. And I wouldn't have to do anything - just give them the Unity file and then collect the revenue when it was done!

It sounded like a dream come true. Sadly... it didn't quite work out like that!

I got some pre-release keys for the game last week and booted it up on my PS5 only to realise that there were some major issues with the port! The backgrounds were all blurry. The game had horrid vertical sync tearing. The speech bubbles were all too big. And worst of all: all the electro magnets (the red and blue beams) had no colour!

What the heck! That completely breaks the game! And it was the same on Switch and Xbox too.

Now, lemme assure you - I am not a fan of conflict. If I can avoid it, I will. But this was too big to let go. Every single person who played the game would get a crappy experience. And that would reflect badly on me.

So I let loose - possibly the most angry Discord message I've ever sent!

Thankfully, the porters were extremely apologetic. This was a big mess up in the way they did QA (quality assurance). And they went immediately into action to fix it. They put together a patch within 24 hours that fixed all of the issues, and sent it to the three console platforms as soon as possible.

Now Microsoft and Sony are easy going. Once they've approved the game, they'll let you update it without much hassle (as goes for Steam). But Nintendo has a team to check every single build that hits the Switch! So we'd have to wait for them to approve the new version.

Bear in mind... this was all happening one week before the game's release!

In fact, just last night I was told that Nintendo might not be able to approve things until Monday, and also couldn't delay the launch. So it would be broken all weekend. I was crushed.

But then I woke up this morning to discover that the Big N had pushed the patch through in record time and the game was fixed moments before it went on sale. It's like Mario himself put in a good word to help me out. Phew! Crisis averted!

Now I'm sure Alchemy Games has learned a lot from this process! But so have I.

Ultimately, if you care about something. And you have your name on it. You can't just give it to someone else and hope they'll do a good job with it. There's no fire-and-forget - you need to make sure you put yourself in the loop and you have to fight for the quality of your project.

If I was to do it again (and perhaps I'll do a console launch of Word Play one day...), I would stipulate in the contract itself that the game cannot go up for sale until I've had a chance to play it myself. And I would have final say on certain aspects of the porting process.

It also showed me that sometimes it's actually essential to have conflict (though not to be rude or impolite - just stern and extremely expressive about your feelings). Conflict cannot always be avoided and sometimes you have to write that awkward email or make that uncomfortable phone call to get stuff done. If I hadn't caught the problem when I did, and immediately lit a fire under their butts, this wouldn't have been fixed.

Now... none of this information is in the video above (which will be going out more widely on YouTube later today).

That was a personal decision for me. I think the story is interesting and could be valuable for indie devs to know about - but I don't want to hurt this company in the process by putting out a very public video about how they screwed up. I know you, as my backers, can be trusted with the information - but a random group of gamers on YouTube aren't so sensible.

Plus, the problem was resolved before anyone even knew there was a problem (if you buy the game on console, you'll simply be given the latest patched version). And it wasn't done in a malicious way - it was simply a (big!) mistake.

So I've made the choice to keep this out of the video, and focus on the positives. But if I ever get a proper chance to talk about the dos-and-don'ts of working with publishers or porting houses... I'll certainly give the advice from above (stay in the loop! Fight for quality!).

But anyway... with all that nonsense wrapped up and squared away, I can focus on the fun of having my game on six consoles! (PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, and Xbox Series). That's a pretty big milestone for someone who hadn't released ANY games this time last year.

As always - a big thank you to YOU for your support. I'll be back next week with the game jam results video. And then... well, I'll talk about what's coming next very soon!

Thanks again

Mark