On porting and meeting expectations

2016-03-10

After announcing Ittle Dew 2 for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, many have been happy the sequel is finally coming, but some have also expressed their disappointment in how it's not announced for their favorite platforms. Going back to the first Ittle Dew, we put it out on Steam (3 OS's), DRM-free on Windows, OSX and Linux (across a handful of dist. partners such as GOG and Humble), iOS, Android, Ouya and WiiU. That's a lot of platforms for such a small team as ours - we're only 6 people after all. For each platform there's a certain amount of added overhead such as implementing their special frameworks, certification, and especially maintaining updates. Even after release, it's not always a straight-forward experience to put out a patch, someties it's as much work as the initial certification. We were definitely spread too thin with so many platforms, so after assessing the launch of Ittle Dew we said to never again support so many platforms with one game. Now for the sequel, when we looked at which platforms we wanted to support we decided based on two things - how "nice" it is to develop for (regarding devkits, SDK's, Unity support, publishing process etc) and install-base/potential sales numbers, and decided on these three platforms. We realize that if you for example bought the game on Wii U you would like the sequel on the same platform - it's very understandable. However it's also a bit discouraging for us to see our posts and announcements filled with comments of what it isn't instead of what it is, when we're only trying to make the best game possible and hopefully make our investment back. I'm also personally surprised to see so many requesting it for mobile - we honestly didn't think those ports held the same level of quality as the others, plus they had inherent input problems. They also didn't sell enough copies, so the decision to cut out mobile this time was easy. There is a small chance that we'll still put Ittle Dew 2 on more platforms than the announced ones, but we're only exploring possibilities at this point. XOXO Joel