Valve Publishes the Wonderful End of the World

I am very pleased to announce that Valve has published The Wonderful End of the World. As of this evening, it's become available via their Steam digital distribution network. I believe it's one of the first (if not the first) Gamestudio title they've published.

This game took about 9 months to complete, with 6 people (1 Ichiro, 1 gameplay consultant, and 4 artists) on the team.

Thanks to everyone who's helped -- some of you guys don't even know you did, but I've spent many hours searching through these forums to find solutions to our technical issues. We wouldn't have been able to finish the game without your shared expertise.

And now... Now, I think it's time to make another game. But first: sleep.

Wow congratulations! Thats amazing!

You made a brilliant game, and now the whole world can enjoy it

Awesome work!

Adoado

save 10% when you buy before july 24th

Congratulatios Ichiro and the others of course :P!

Booyeah!!!

Double-plus good even.

Success may be a derivative of hard work, patience, persistence, and a good mindset.
(Actually, never sampling success myself, it could involve zebras, and I probably wouldn't know about it.)
Here, 75+ years of digital game production experience is probably a plus also.

He11 yeah!!!

When I read the title for this I thought that perhaps the last half-life 2 episode had come....and the aliens win, but now that I know it is your game I am much happier to know:

1)A hardworking gamestudio developer has produced another game
2)There will be more world to save


...Awesome job and congratulations, hopefully you have some great sales!

great! congratulations for such a big step and huge success

Thats amazing! I wonder what would've happened with 2 ichiros...

Anyways, going to get as soon as I can =)

great work.

Congratulations! What a success!

Good work...

You should do one of your Indy video episodes on this game.

I hope it sells well for you on Steam. Hopefully you will be eating much steak soon....

Once you get done with you sleep, this game needs to be on the iPhone and DS.....

Time to get back to work.

You will have to let us know if Steam is where all the PC game buyers have skittered off to... Because they are rare at retail...


Ken

Congrats Ichiro.

cool ichiro, now you just need to accept our affiliate request (jokingly serious)

By the way, I couldn't help but blog this on ItBGames: See it

sick one. looking good!

julz

I noticed that as well. I also see you have ItBGames open ( kidding)

This is really good for you Ichiro, I'll bet your sales will definitely multiply. The game is really good. When mpdeveloper_A did his spotlight on it he looked at me and said "I want this game, I want to buy it!" and so do I.

and "the wonderfull end of the world" beats the "cs", the "Gmod10" and the "GRID"




great job!

purchased!

Congrats Ichiro! It's a great game and I encourage anyone to buy it. I think everyone will love this game. Your game popped up on my steam today! Hooray!

The world in only the way the book of revelations could describe:

purchased and downloading now. good on you ichiro!

julz

EDIT: btw, first gstudio game i've ever purchased, and largely because it's so easy to buy games on steam.

same here ^^

Congrats Ichiro!

Nice one

I hate Steam, though...

jeah, played the demo today, relly nice UI, music and player controls. it's fun!

if you allow me one question, how much of the $9,99 does an indie developer get on steam? or did you get a fixed amount of money.

...or did you pay a fixed amount of money (like, renting shelf-space for your game)?

julz

Congratulations Ichiro!

I will make sure I will play this game in my lunchtime at work to make my colleagues get so curious they will buy it too!

according to what they told me, Valve takes a percentage per sale.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

It's been an interesting experience getting it out on Steam, but the guys over at Valve are really great. To answer Broozar's question: they just take a percentage off the top, and pass the rest through to us. It's a pretty good deal.

Agreed. They are very nice and straight to the point. They seriously do care about Indies, talking with them just renews your faith in their Indie spirit.

Very nice and congratulations! Only just spotted this thread here.

Ohh, by the way, any plans on doing a new indiesuperstar video?

purchased. Love this exchange rate.
Excellent game Ichiro, great during boring lectures

Wow,awesome job dude! well done! i was played inago rage,good job on it,and cann't wait for the second one

Ohh, by the way, any plans on doing a new indiesuperstar video?

I'd like to, but the form will have to change somehow -- it took something like 8 hours to produce one stinking 4-minute ep!

How about a: stick the camera in front of your face [talk] insert Ichiro's inspiring words here [/talk]. No editing just pure raw Ichiro Lamb!

An Acknex game on Steam? Surely this means the End of the World!


... Please kill me now for this horrible, horrible pun.

Still, I've said it before, and I'm definately not getting tired of saying it again and again and again: TWEOTW is a great game, and definately one of my forum-favorites, enjoyed the full version a lot! Great work, and very encouraging to see your sucess here!

I googled it recently and saw that it had a few reviews and articles here and there, and I was happy to see many happy customers - you really deserved it!

I still wonder what that "Most refreshing"-thing means, though...

"I still wonder what that "Most refreshing"-thing means, though..."

me too

"Still, I've said it before, and I'm definately not getting tired of saying it again and again and again: TWEOTW is a great game, and definately one of my forum-favorites, enjoyed the full version a lot! smile Great work, and very encouraging to see your sucess here!"

I loved it as well but my only problem was that it was over waayyyy too quick.

How many hours?

~3-5 but for someone who doesnt game much, it'd prolly take from 10-15 hours.

Ah, okey, thanks.

We're thinking "level editor" next, but I'm a very lazy person. I'm really not sure what to think.

my brother wants to fight other puppets, and as you get bigger you get stronger but so do they if you don't beat them fast enough if that was multi-player that could get really crazy, though potentially an indie programmer's nightmare.

co-op and mini-games could stretch the game out longer (what about a simple side-scrolling survival mode where objects fall from the top of the screen and you need to catch ones smaller than you and dodge ones bigger), and level editor sounds like a good idea. will a7 be used for the next one?

and what does the "most refreshing" mean? is that an award you got at an indie conference or something?

julz

Long delayed, but many congrats Ichiro!

I ran across the game a few weeks ago and was like 'holy shit... that's Ichiro's game... on steam. that little bastard!'

Hope you get some good sales, Steam definitely is a great market!

We really otta grab a beer in beantown sometime and catch up .

Ahh lost innocence...

I remember when you were such a nice Christian boy... Now you sound like a pirate.

Haha... missed you too too Nitro . I'd say I was more opinionated than nice back then...

No worries, I even drink with my priest (he's a pretty awesome guy)! So... perhaps more of a Christian pirate?

cool!

> We really otta grab a beer in beantown sometime and catch up.

I thought you left Beantown? Anyway, I am not yet old enough to drink beer in this country; you must be thinking of someone else. A younger person. Not an old person who now has some grey hair in his beard and is going, "What the heck is this nonsense? Who ok'ed this?"

Make it a sasparilla, and you have a deal!

I'm up on the North Shore now, working out of Beverly.. at least until we get roped in with the rest of MS in Cambridge..

Pssh... not old enough? Nonsense you old man! I forget, you're just south of Boston, right?

Cambridge; just NW of Boston. Soon to be Watertown, just W of NW of Boston. I'm moving west.

Ahhh... that's right

hey, congrats!

i finally downloaded the demo, i'm very impressed
you've achieved the whole concept so well

couldn't believe i saw an ad for it pop up on steam at a friend's house, steam being such a huge games platform

i'd get it if i had money to spare : (

Gratz.

Good thing to hear.
I think the engine (acknex) does not play a role when the
game is good and works stable.
(why should anyone care on what it runs ...when it runs...)
Apart from Multiplayer, acknex is a good engine for casual games.

Was it hard to get the deal with Steam?
Or where they pleased to get an indy game in the portfolio?

Was it hard to get the deal with Steam? Or where they pleased to get an indy game in the portfolio?

Good question -- I think Wonderful was unique enough for the PC such that they were looking forward to adding it to their roster. However, I have heard stories from other developers (who, I would argue, had more polished games than we did), that Valve just wasn't interested.

I think what counted more for them was the gameidea, and to add it to their portfolio,
rather than adding some (more polished) usual shooter or racing game.

-> kind of the "we are cool, we also support unusual Indy games".

In the end its good for all 3 sides
-you
-valve
-the customers

i downloaded it the other day... was very very well done... i was very impressed with the presentation, the implementation... the whole look and feel was just perfect... and the game ran smoothly and worked very well....

it's obviously in the vein of katamari damacy, which i'm not particularly a fan of, and so i wouldn't really call this my kind of game... but even so, i was very impressed with it overall. you did a great job i can see why valve picked it up. congrats and well done.

@Ichiro
big respect from my side. very great game.

can you tell us, how much you already sold.

Thanks.

We don't publish sales figures directly, but what I am allowed to say is that we hit #5 on Steam's top sellers list, so we're very happy.

Now, I want to sell more. Always more.

You´re welcome.

Gordon Freeman + Crowbar + Combine = Dead Combine.

I personally can't wait for Episode 3.

With that said, congratulations to Ichiro and your team.

First, a big congratulations to you and your team!

Second, and less pleasently, I'm saddened and disappointed in you Ichiro.

It seems that whenever someone from these forums gets a big jump on their game, usually by a publisher, they suddenly pull in their limbs like a turtle.

Usually they start to get a big head, and suddenly become 'better' than the rest of us struggling dregs.

You know, so many of us developers who are not yet on the same high pedestal still need information and feedback.

To shut us out once you get to that 'promised land' is disappointing. In fact, I remember an incident with Nardulus after he got his fishing game sold at Wal Mart stores. Suddenly, in my opinion, he thought he was god or something.

OK, what am I rambling about?

Your sales.

I can understand some people don't want to spell out every dollar they've earned, but dear lord, noone here is from the IRS, and if the IRS was truly interested in your sales, they would find out.



Oh Come ON! What the hell is THAT? That's not an answer at all. Does that mean youve sold more copies than Counterstrike? was that sales for the day or sales EVER on Steam?

I mean really, people want to hear the success stories, they want to be proud of you (which they are) but they also need the HOPE. They want to say "Hey, hopefully one day i'll get published on Steam, and if I do half as good as game 'x' I'll be happy!"

But instead, you give us some cryptic nonsense... shutting out your fellow game makers now that you've made it 'big'.

You don't publish sales figures publicly... why not? Can't you even give us a hint? was it more than 100 copies, but less than 500 copies? more than 1,000 but less than 2,000?

It would be a nice incentive for others to have a star to shoot for. Looking forward to the hope of success of some sort.

If I ever generate sales with my next project, I swear to god i'll be so happy i'll shout from the rooftops how many copies I sold. I'll NEVER act like I'm so good that i don't need to share my success with the people who have struggled with me.

And you can bet I'll be updating my webpage every week with the new totals! It's a great selling point to display something like 'Over 5,000 copies sold worldwide!' or some such thing.

It's sad to see such a great guy change into one of 'those' people once they taste success.

Sorry to ramble like this, but when such a simple thing is treated like some sacred secret, it really burns my toast.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop

- Jason

Professionals normally won't just blare out their sales on a public forum.

There are many reasons, but certainly not the IRS because they do tell their sales to the IRS! A simple reason could be that Steam does not allow to publish sales. Another simple reason is that after founding a company, you normally need permission from the shareholders to publish sales.

So stop rambling and make a good game and then you can see your own sales.

Awesome work Ichiro! congrats.

Please ignore BlueBeast. I have a feeling he had a few to many drinks that night lol

lol... well it was a bit more lengthy than I had planned... but still, that kind of stuff is damn irritating :P

If it's a matter of a contract, then I understand, but it would be nice to at least find out how many copies of counter-strike were sold at Valve/Steam just to get an idea...

It's just important for some of us to hear the stories of success so we can hope for x number of sales ourselves someday. It gives a lot of incentive to continue work on projects.

- Jason

I'll give you incentive Jason. I have a 12 pack around here, I'll deliver it in February when I come visit.

Incentive enough to keep on with your project? lol

there's "i love katamari" for the iPhone/iPod Touch now

LOL Just bring your car, that's all the incentive I need :P

Thanks, guys. To address earlier comments:

> But instead, you give us some cryptic nonsense... shutting out your fellow game makers now that you've made it 'big'.
> ...
> I'll NEVER act like I'm so good that i don't need to share my success with the people who have struggled with me.
> ...
> It's sad to see such a great guy change into one of 'those' people once they taste success.

I guess I see things differently here. I've tried to give back to the community in tangible ways; for example, I think these are some nice contributions that may have helped people:

* Cinematic Swooping Camera Code
* Flexible Earth Globe Viewer
* A7oogle

It may be that sales figures are more valuable to one person than tidbits of code are (for example, they can give people an idea of what's possible with the engine). And you may hate me and think that I have a big head for not sharing more. But it's just the way I feel comfortable giving back to the community.

Is it enough? I'm not sure. But I've always thought we'd keep doing it, however long we used 3DGS.

just played through it again. i have to say it is fun having a small game i can sit down and spend 45min beating :P

Don't worry about it Ichiro, I still love you.
That's all that matters, right?

That's all that matters, right?

Yes!

just played through it again. i have to say it is fun having a small game i can sit down and spend 45min beating :P

Man. Do you do q/a testing? It takes me an hour to beat it.

Well Ichiro, it's not about sharing.

Like I said before, If you're bound by some contract, then you
can't give out sales figures.

Just thought as long as your announcing this event, it would be nice to give us the details.

I just don't know why people are so guarded with such things. It's just plain silly to me, that's all I'm saying.

BlueBeast: You probably know this already, but I thought I'd share that with you.


Ichiro: Is your next title gonna be CRAZY AWESOME!??

Because I like your crazy awesomeness