Shooter Monument. Update 5 years after release

Start. First version of the game

Development of the game began back in 2014 with the study of Unity. To learn a new engine or programming language, I usually do some project using this technology, in my case it works better than cramming. Such a project was Monument – an old-school shooter with a first-person view in the style of Doom, Quake and similar games (due to the love for this genre and old games from childhood). Because I had no experience in writing such large projects, so I took (seriously bought) “Fps Prefab” from the asset store as a basis and off I went.

It took a couple of months to create the mechanics of the game: selecting first aid kits, equipment, opening doors with keys, loading/saving, etc.. I made all the monsters and weapons myself in Zbrush and 3dmax for the first time, in fact, everything is visible in quality. I also did animations on my own, for which I am still ashamed to this day. Although many players even now say that the old guns were better.

This is where the levels went into development. After the creation of the first two locations, on January 5, 2015 (not to relax), a topic was created on gamedev.ru (https://gamedev.ru/projects/forum/?id=196847). Only now the zero post has been changed to accommodate the new version. A demo with the first two levels was available in the theme. The game was featured in DUCAT's very first review of indie games (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMr6jfAPZnNORCRp__S-tLA), who reviewed games exclusively from gamedev.ru. The game also appeared in the last review, only in a new version

At this moment, it was decided to post the game on Steam Greenlight, which is exactly what I did. After publication, the process of collecting votes was very slow. I tried to promote the game as best I could, as much as I had “knowledge” in marketing: I ordered advertising in VK, wrote posts on various forums, made a web demo for playgrounds and other small portals. As a result, closer to the summer of 2015, the game went through Greenlight and the active stage of finishing it began, because… a few months before, they had already given up.

The game was released on June 6, 2015. No miracle happened. No millions, blackjacks or mademoiselles. And at that time there seemed to be a summer sale (hand), but this is not certain. The game could only be sold at sales, with big discounts. They bought it, understandably, only because of the cards. After each such sale, negative reviews increased in large volumes, because… the game was bad, despite the fact that even this crooked version had its fans. Monument was very slow, buggy, uninteresting and ugly. The game lagged even on powerful computers. Everything was terrible.

You can see how bad it was in one of the game reviews from Jim Sterling (it's surprising that he didn't call the game very bad):

I suffered with sales for another year, updated the game a little and then finally became depressed and gave up on it, moving on to other projects with new experience. Reviews by this point were already negative.

From scratch. Second version of the game

By the beginning of the summer of 2019, having gained more experience, it was decided to rewrite the game from scratch, because… the first version was simply embarrassing. Everything was discarded except the monster models. The levels have become more interesting, more similar in gameplay to old games.

The appearance of the weapons has been changed. Added a new “Teleport Gun”, with which you can teleport to other parts of the level. A “Donor Station” has been added, where you can get ammunition in exchange for your health. Moving through levels has become very fast thanks to the addition of “Strafejump” like in Quake.

All these global changes were posted on Steam on January 24, 2020, almost 5 years after the release. Many were shocked because… Few of the “turkeys” update their projects on Steam so globally.

Ressurection. Second wind

After the release of the update, the situation with reviews began to change, many people began to like the game, but the problems did not decrease. There were a lot of bugs, shortcomings and other delights, because of which the statistics of reviews on the page suffered. The game was reviewed more often by “YouTubers” and the number of purchases for the full price increased. I tried marketing, lost about $1000 (I understand, this is funny), the effect was a little more than nothing. Advertising networks and YouTubers came into play.

Another year later, on April 25, 2021, I am releasing a new update with changes that I collected from reviews and topics on the game forum. All these problems were finally resolved. Also with this update I added a new level to the game where you can play with a “teleport gun”. An additional attack was added to each monster to make the gameplay more varied. Green candles now leave toxic smoke upon death, which damages the player. Jock chickens, after death, will spawn 2 identical chickens, only small ones. Hatchers can now periodically fire a fire spray. Large jock chickens began to throw huge fireballs at the player at a certain distance, and the alien can teleport to different places, but more often behind his back (yes, mean, I know). All enemies' animations have changed (finally). These are the main changes, in fact there are more of them and they are all listed on the game page. This update is most likely the last, but this is not certain :). In the next post I will show early sketches and drafts; there is a lot of different material left.

Thank you all for your attention!

Finally, a few funny reviews of the game: