Quick set-up: In June of last year, a started making a game called 'Shoot-a Story', which is, to put it simply, a Space Invaders-esque game where you shoot at classic literature. Oh, and everything in made out of text. And you can destroy the menus. Last September, I wrote about how development had gone up until this point, expecting development of the game to be over. Now, seven months on, I talk about how development very much didn't end and where the game has ended up going in the time since.
Well, yeah... about that. Seven months ago, I fully expected Shoot-a Story to be a thing that happened and then nothing else to ever come from it. Maybe a few downloads on Android here and a couple plays on GameJolt there, but not much else. The game worked and was, as far as I was concerned at the time, 'done'. As it turns out, I was quite wrong about that.
In October, I brought out a Halloween update for the game, bringing in five new horror themed passages and three new 'scary' fonts (Comic Sans not included, even though it is of course the scariest of all font styles). The game also released on Windows Phone at the same time, and, to my shock and delight, got a positive review from Windows Central, resulting in total mobile downloads (on all platforms) jumping from around 100 to around 2,000 and making Windows Phone the most popular platform for the game by far. To say I was pleased to get a positive review would be an understatement! Equally pleasing, I also found out recently that the Windows Phone version was positively covered by Iranian website Digiato alongside Five Night's at Freddy 2 and Kingdom Rush Origins, which is a fact that will never become not surreal.
Another update arrived around Christmas, bringing five further levels themed for the holidays and a change to Christmas-themed music. This update also led to another new platform for the game, Windows 8. While the download numbers aren't exactly high for Windows 8, they are slowly catching up to Android and I'm fairly pleased with how they're doing.
So, onto today, where the third big update for the game is set to arrive tonight. This update brings in another six fonts to play in, improved menus and the 'Word Search Challenge' mode, which tasks players with finding and destroying 60 words from within the passages in the game. As per tradition, this update also brings the game to another new platform - Desura.
For those who don't know, Desura is a PC marketplace very much like Steam. Unlike Steam however Desura is still curated, so getting a game approved to appear on Desura is an impressive feat. The game launches at 11:00 PM BST tonight (just under five hours away at the time of publishing) and is as always free to download, so if you fancy playing the updated version of Shoot-a Story on PC you might want to pop over to its Desura page. The update will also be making its way to all other platforms over the next few days.
So, the new list of platforms Shoot-a Story is on is as follows:
Last time I wrote about the game, I expected development to be over. This time round... well, I expect development to be over again. Well, OK, only for a little while. There's still plenty more I want to add, so while no new features might make their way in May, maybe stay tuned in June?
As a final note, it would be amiss of me not to mention I now have a website! If you want to find links to play Shoot-a Story, Cyber Drop and a couple of things quickly created in game jams, with more set to be added fairly soon, you'll want to go over to http://ellisspice.com/.
Log in to comment