Releasing a video game: stress or excitement?

Our first ever video game, The Kaiyo Mission, released less than a fortnight ago. We are overjoyed to finally share our work with you, and we are really grateful to hear feedback from you all. Please do keep letting us know how you are finding the game - we would love to chat. Thank you so much again for all the support!

Today I will be deep diving into both the excitement and stress of what it was really like to publish a video game as a small studio. We had heard many horror stories about the behind the scenes of releasing a game, so we prepared extensively to avoid any major incidents. There were a few minor technical issues we had to overcome on launch day, especially given that we were publishing on several platforms at the same time. Nonetheless, it was mostly a joyous celebration of what we had achieved. There was a real buzz amongst our team, particularly as we could finally share the project fully with our networks and communities.

Our agile approach of working over the years certainly helped us because we had strong lines of communication and had been continuously refining the game already. Therefore, unlike some developers’ experience, we did not have overwhelmingly long work hours and panic leading up to the game. Equally, we had postponed the release of the game several times to protect the team emotionally and release it on a realistic timeline. This has been the right decision and showed us that sometimes one has to adjust and adapt, even if it is not the original plan. Overall, we are so appreciative of the team we have here at eXplore Studio and how we continued to support each other through such an exhilarating time.

Given the years of labour which went into The Kaiyo Mission, it has been incredibly cathartic to finally release it into the world. This also means we have more time to work on our two other video games in the pipeline. We look forward to developing these, with the experience and lessons from The Kaiyo Mission. The team gained emotional resilience and technical skills alike, so we are keen to apply these in our later works. Through thick and thin we know we can rely on each other and persevere. 

Here’s to The Kaiyo Mission’s launch, our wonderful team, and all the kind support we have received!