PogoGirl Devlog #24: SAGE 2021 Happened

It’s been a while since the last devlog, hasn’t it? Well, no time like the present to get back into it!

The fact that I haven’t posted anything here doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working on the game, far from it. In fact, these past weeks have been some of the busiest I’ve had in a while.

And the big reason for that was SAGE 2021! Yes, Go! Go! PogoGirl was once again present at this year’s Sonic Amateur Games Expo with a brand new demo.

I probably should have written a devlog in the runup to the event, but I legit couldn’t find the time.

This was the first time the general public got to play the new, overhauled version of Go! Go! PogoGirl and that was both exciting and nerve-wracking to me. While the feedback I had received up to that point had always been positive, I just couldn’t really judge how the general SAGE-going public would react to the game.

Well, now I know! Kind of. The game got a lot of attention, with about 1200 views by the time the event closed. While I can’t say how these views translated into downloads (the counter on the page apparently isn’t accurate due to caching), that’s definitely the most eyes that have ever been on the game. And while I didn’t receive a lot of direct feedback, the lack of negative feedback was at least encouraging! Plus, the wishlists and tweets I got all painted a rather positive picture as well.

So, with SAGE come and gone once again, what’s next for Go! Go! PogoGirl? Well, I’m gonna finish it.

Okay, a bit more detail.

The positive reception of the game has confirmed my feeling that the game doesn’t need any more major additions or tweaks, at least as far as gameplay is concerned. So now, it’s time to finish up the rest of the content and add more polish. This content includes the rest of the levels (you might remember that I’ve not unveiled the Winter season yet), along with bosses. I also have ideas for a few more enemies and stage gimmicks, one of which I’m already working on. These shouldn’t turn out to be too major, but I do hope they’ll enrich the game a bit. Oh, and I’ll have to finish up (meaning, start work on) the rest of the cutscenes.

Yeah, that’s quite a lot of work left to do, but I’m hopeful that I can get it done soon. The path forward now seems pretty clear to me, and that is invaluable in gamedev, let me tell you. Some of the worst and most time-consuming phases during a game’s development are those times where you’re not sure where to go. Should you put this feature in? Is the game good enough? Should you change course completely to make the game the best it can be? The positive reception of the game at SAGE has helped me silence those voices. Well, okay, they’re not exactly silenced, but they are muffled, which counts for a lot.

With work getting back on track, you can also expect more regular devlogs and updates on the game again. And if you’re a Patreon supporter of mine, you can also expect regular(ish) early builds of the game to test before the rest of the world ever hears of it.

And that’s it for this post. Thank you everyone for playing the Go! Go! PogoGirl demo at SAGE, thank you everyone who supports me in whatever way, and thank you for reading! Be excellent to each other, and I’ll see you next time! (or on Twitter)

Buy the Game on Steam!