LonelyBond #54 - Game Hooks And Reevaluation

Thank you for joining me to the weekly LonelyBond blog, where each week I discuss with you about the struggles, achievements and behind the scenes of making the game come to life :)

I've done a lot of good work during the week, and while presenting it to you all will be cool and fun, this week I want to set all of that aside and to present you with an honest struggle.

I've been thinking for a long time now about the hooks of LonelyBond.

For those that do not know, a hook is anything that pulls someone that doesn't know about your game to want to know more about it. It can be a tease from the story, a game mechanic, art-style or anything else really. As a general rule of thumb, for a game to be successful it needs hooks. The better the hook, the better it will market itself (and also, the more hooks, the better).

When looking at LonelyBond, it has multiple hooks. cute and funny animal characters, a unique puzzle mechanic, the mystery of the school and... that is most of it. And while these are good hooks, they are not GREAT hooks.

So for the past 4 days, I've stopped working on progress for the game itself and decided to reevaluate my game. Do I have some hooks that I hid from the public eyes? Should the game change to include a better hook?

It's hard to stop and think "maybe I've done a mistake", and to scrap some of your work. You get attached to it. After all, I have some jokes and characters that I really don't want to let go of. But in order to make a better game I've decided to go on this quest, and to change the game. Nothing too drastic, but you will see some major differences in the next few upcoming weeks as I shape LonelyBond to be a better, more interesting and deep experience than it ever was.

In the meantime, I'll ask for your patience.

I don't want to go ahead and spill seven different versions of what the game might be - as these changes are still fresh and can easily change again in the coming week or so. What I will say is that you can expect a smaller amount of characters running around, so you can learn and explore them and their connections in a more meaningful way than you could (potentially) do before.

And whatever happens - don't worry. LonelyBond will always stay a funny and mysterious experience, filled with the hearts of its characters.

Talk to you again next week :)

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