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Indie game developer based in Liverpool. I love sketching and drawing. I have expertise in graphics software, mainly Maya and Photoshop. I'm a Keen mountain biker and gamer.

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Battle for Monsteca - Demo Release! (Week 2)

Onteca Blog

Battle for Monsteca - Demo Release! Please enjoy our beta demo of Monsters Vs Robots: Battle for Monsteca. Monsteca is a 3D, arena puzzle strategy game. We've included 4 levels with a tutorial. This demo has been modified from the mobile version so it is fairly limited in terms of content. We're looking for feedback and happy to receive any comments from users.

MonstersVsRobots pc

This past week has been great fun. We've fired up the old Wii and had a blast playing though some of the original Monsteca Corral. Everyone in the office had ideas and thoughts for the new game based off playing the original again. Personally I'd forgotten what a challenging game Monsteca Corral is. If you have a Wii it's well worth having a go for yourself, we bet you can't 100% complete it.

IMG 20151028 101807

Its clear a big challenge for us will be capturing the feel of original game due to its use of the Wii's unique control system. The slightly clumsy accelerometer actually works in our favour giving each level a feeling of tension, anticipation and even panic.

These screenshots show work I have been doing this week and are not representative of the demo in its current state. However please be assured we are planning regular demo updates.

MonstecaScreenshot

My main focus in the coming weeks will be level design. I've updated textures and I've been testing different scale factors on scenery objects and characters. Quickly I've started to see improvements using a more saturated colour pallet and ditching the noisy bump maps.

screnshot101


MonstersVsRobots pc

Monsters vs Robots : The Battle for Monsteca

Day 5 - After a week "marketing" Monsteca

Onteca Blog

So one of the first things I did yesterday was delete my blog post from the day before and it seems to be irretrievable. I've messaged the site admin, hopefully they can get that back.

I've been continuing to use TwitterDeck trying and drum up some support for Monsteca but I can see that Twitter it's more of long game. I've signed up to unfollowers.com which gave me a nice insight into the activity of followers and following however the real power of this application is in the subscription version. Nice video tutorial on Unfollows.com can be found here

Searching out suitable subreddits for posting my blog and game updates has proved tricky, I've been shot down in two sub-reddits for spamming :S Trying not to be spammy is a little difficult, so I'll be focusing on trying to give a little more in content next week.

I'm pleased with how my article was picked up with over 400 visits in a day. This helped to boost the Monsteca in popularity on Indie DB up to 19th at the end of yesterday. The disappointing thing about this week is that very little of the traffic generated to this site has transferred to the Greenlight page on steam. The other disappointing thing is the lack of interactions on-line from player or devs.

So in summery, new channels must be searched out to connect with players and new content must be created in order to bring in interest and not be a spammer.

MonstersVsRobots pc

Monsters vs Robots : The Battle for Monsteca

Making a Greenlight Widget

Onteca Blog

Always wondered how to make one of those nice looking links which posts back to Greenlight. It is dead easy just goto this link Steamcommunity.com and put in the details of your game or indeed any game you wish people to Greenlight. Steam will give you HTML code for an iFrame you can post into your website.

You can even post them straighting into IndieDB articles.

If you are interested here is ours, if you are really interested vote for us on Greenlight :)

MonstersVsRobots pc

Monsters vs Robots : The Battle for Monsteca


Monsteca -Twitter and The Viral Campaign

Onteca Blog

Good news this morning, our Greenlight moved up 5% without any analytic evidence of new votes. Strange but we'll take it.

I've spent the morning searching out more marketing tips and cheats. A big thank you to @DavidDiFranco for his 5 Tweeting Tips for Twitter video which pointed me to TwitterDeck.

TwitterDeck is fantastic, exactly what I need to mange the @Mosteca and @Onteca accounts simultaneously.

Another nice surprise was finding this article on www.wiiloveit.com giving Monsteca a very respectable 24/30 calling it very good. The Article also writes " There's something quite amazing about this game that not many games can pull off, and it's the fact that even when you don't manage to succeed at a level, you still have a lot of fun trying." (view the article)

Currently I'm working a more general article about the origins Monsteca in which I hope to explain some of the features and design decisions that were made back in early 2000.

Please add us on twitter and obviously we'd be thrilled if you supported our Greenlight

Sentry Walker


Monsters vs Robots : The Battle for Monsteca


Digging out the old toys - Greenlight

Onteca Blog

Today I've been setting up a game page for Monsters-vs-Robots: The Battle For Monsteca! Its been quite easy thanks to the helpful function within the "add game" tab.

Really hoping we can get the support needed to re-boot this title on Greenlight. It's never really had its time in the sun thanks to poor traffic/user numbers on WiiWare 5 years ago. It's also obvious the game desperately needs a graphical overhaul but underneath there is a solid tactical game with much potential for mastery.

Check out this link to a review of the original game. In answer to the quote "What were they smoking when they thought this up?" we're not telling ;)

Uk.ign.com

View the game on Greenlight

Monsteca Poster

MonstersVsRobots pc

Monsters vs Robots : The Battle for Monsteca

Day 1 - Marketing Manager! KickStarter and Crowdfunding

Onteca Blog

Today I've taken a side step in the company hierarchy and become the head of marketing! Working in a small team often requires us to be adaptive and take on unfamiliar roles and I'm very much looking forward to this challenge. I've found some amazing resources today and I will be using this blog to document those resources and give an incite into my other duties in the company.

We're planning a Kickstarter/crowd-sourcing project so today has focused on how this is best executed.

My best resource find has been The Ultimate Kickstarter And Steam Greenlight Guide. This guild is well organised and easy to follow, 10/10. I found this PDF in the Gamasutra article - 5 tips on running a successful Kickstarter campaign

If anyone has any other helpful tips, tricks or links I'd be most grateful to hear about them.

Cheers,

Si

MonstersVsRobots pc