Mark's Month - July 2025

Hello Patrons!

So, July was a busy month for me as I finally launched my new game... Word Play!

Word Play

The game came out on July 14th, slap bang in the middle of the month, which basically meant that I spent the first half of July preparing for the release and the second half of July doing post-launch support!

I detailed the post-launch support in a previous post for Patrons, but the gist of it is that it was super stressful and intense. I didn't sleep properly for a week, I was stressed every day, and did more bug fixes and changes in a fortnight than I've done in forever. I also made new bugs every time I fixed bugs. And at one point I pushed a huge game-breaking issue to every single customer. Whoops!

There was also one recurring issue that I kept hearing about: the game didn't work properly with windows touchscreens. In fact, in some cases just tapping the touchscreen would brick the game entirely. That wasn't good!

Sadly I didn't have a Windows Surface or anything to test the game myself. But then suddenly realised... aha! I could buy a ROG Ally, an ASUS-powered Steam Deck-like handheld console which is literally just a tiny PC with a touchscreen and gamepad controls. So I ordered one of those and was able to see for myself that, yep, the game is totally busted.

After some trial and error - with me making builds on my Mac and then transferring them to the ROG Ally to test - I decided to just install Unity on the device itself so I could rapidly change things and create builds on the ROG. Which allowed me to diagnose the issue, and trial various fixes before finally discovering one that worked! Hooray. I just updated the game this morning on Steam with the new version that fixes this issue.

And with that (and various other fixes), the game is hopefully now pretty stable and I can finally move on from post-launch support. It will probably just be one patch a week for the foreseeable future as I fix small issues.

Otherwise the game has been going really well, though: 91% positive on Steam, lots of streams (including multiple by Northernlion!), and over 45,000 sales. Pretty sweet. Next I'll consider a more substantive update with the daily challenge and new perks and what not. And then, beyond that, the mobile version.

Mind Over Magnet on consoles

Back in March I did a deal with a publishing house in Brazil to bring Mind Over Magnet to Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. This month I could finally announce that it was happening as the game is now up for wish-list or pre-order on the various game storefronts!

Which is pretty wild. To see my silly little game alongside games like Astro Bot and Super Mario. In fact, as a life-long Nintendo nut it's practically a dream come true to have my creation on the same family of consoles I've been playing since I was like 5 years old. My younger self would not have believed me!

The game is due out on August 15th, and I plan to make a short YouTube video about it before then.

GMTK Game Jam

I'll talk about this in the next newsletter as the jam started on the last couple days of July and is still active right now (voting is underway), but a short note to say that the jam was super successful, surpassing all previous GMTK Game Jams with a whopping 9000+ submissions!

Other stuff

I popped to Brighton for the Develop conference. It was very much a flying visit - I took the train down in the afternoon, grabbed lunch with one friend, had dinner with another, went to bed, and got the train back early in the morning. To be honest I would have stayed longer but this was mere days before Word Play had come out and I still had many bugs to fix! Still it was nice to speak to lots of GMTK fans and catch up with various devs I've met at previous conferences.

I contributed an essay to an upcoming book about the NES. My article is about The Legend of Zelda - how it created a feeling of mystery, curiosity, and adventure. How that feeling was lost in later Zelda games. And how that feeling was captured by the developers behind games like Dark Souls, Fez, Outer Wilds, and Tunic. I'm happy with it - hopefully I can share the text with you all. I'll reach out to the editor and see what the terms are on that...

Last month I talked about playing Super Mario 64. This month I finished the game, for the first time, with all 120 stars! It really holds up!

However my retro kick finally finished as I started playing Donkey Kong Bananza. This game is super fun. As a quick refresher: it's the new game from the Mario Odyssey team, but features the dopey ape Donkey Kong. And it's all about destruction: you can smash through walls and floors and terrain and enemies with a barrage of frantic punches.

I have to admit, my initial impressions were a bit off - it felt hard to control, hard to grasp the shape and size of the levels, hard to take everything in. But now I've hit a really good stride with it. I'm playing it very methodically, trying to pick up all the bananas in a world before moving onto the next.

I also came to terms with the fact that it's less like a Mario game... and more like a Banjo Kazooie game! More focused on collecting stuff and puzzle solving and simple platforming. Which is interesting as DK has his roots with Banjo developer Rare. Oh and there was that Donkey Kong game on Nintendo 64 made by Rare that I've never actually played. Maybe one for when I'm next back on the retro games!

Anyway, that's me. As you can see, right now I'm just kinda juggling lots of stuff. Word Play, Mind Over Magnet, the Game Jam. I'm desperate for a break - I haven't stopped working all year. But I can't do that until all of these little things are wrapped up. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and have just booked a holiday at the end of August! Phew!

Chat to you after that!

Mark