
Show HN: We sold over 30,000 units of our HTML5/Electron game on Steam - riadd
http://store.steampowered.com/app/358130
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jstanley
This would be better if it was a discussion of the challenges you faced and
how you overcame them, rather than simply a link to the game. :)

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baq
steam helps a lot in the most important part which is monetizing an apparently
good product, judging by the reviews.

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riadd
Steam's market power is huge and extremely important for having any visibility
at all.

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sboselli
Yes, please give some insight into what went into it.

How many people were part of the project?

How long have you guys been coding?

Challenges with it being Electron based?

Did you use a JS framework?

Thoughts on Steam, early acces, etc?

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CryoLogic
I am very curious to know about the tech stack used as well.

Currently I am writing a pure-JavaScript engine using the HTML5 canvas because
packaging for electron gets complex with some of the popular dependencies for
other HTML5 game engines.

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riadd
No game engine was used. I render directly to canvas. Using CoffeeScript for
our custom engine. Electron is super thin layer to put it on Steam.

I'll prepare a blog post and will share more info there. Sorry for jumping the
gun here. I should have been better prepared.

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m_eiman
There's an episode of roguelike radio with the developers of this game:

[http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2016/02/episode-115-curious-
ex...](http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2016/02/episode-115-curious-
expedition.html)

"Topics Discussed:

The procedural 19th Century "Jules Verne etc" expedition simulator that is The
Curious Expedition, currently in alpha / early access on Steam or via the
Humble widget

How the roguelike mix of procedural content and permadeath helps enable the
exploration gameplay

Johannes and Riad's experience at Yager Development in Germany, where they
worked on Spec Ops: The Line

Minimalist presentation and text to encourage player imagination

Development history of the game

Representation of women and people of colour in a game set in a sexist and
racist time, and highlighting figures that popular history often forgets

Giant crabs, dinosaur steeds, and other fantastical elements that add colour
to the world

Multilayered goal design and how these integrate with the exploration
mechanics

Sanity and rivals acting as hunger clocks

Making combat optional

Communicating theme through unique items

Upcoming features and future plans for the game

When the game will be "complete"

Plans for modding support and having the community add to the game

Vague plans for future games and staying as sustainable independent
developers"

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tshannon
Games can be some very large complex projects. Did you guys write it in
javascript or some other language and compile to js?

If you guys did just write in js did you use any other tooling for features
like modules?

The game looks cool, and I'm thinking about buying it. It's nice to show that
electron is a viable platform for games, because you easily gain cross
platform compatibility with linux / mac.

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riadd
Its is written in CoffeeScript. I started about 4 years ago working on it. At
this point I would probably just use JS. No specific frameworks or module
architecture was used.

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_Codemonkeyism
Their AMA Reddit

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50ax32/we_left_aaa_to...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50ax32/we_left_aaa_to_make_indie_games_we_were/)

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ythl
More details, please. Right now it's just a link to steam.

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riadd
Yes, sorry I wasn't sure what the right amount of information is for this
platform. I see I jumped the gun a bit. I'll make a proper blog post with
detailed information.

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gr3yh47
Great relaxing game that is still challenging and different with every
playthrough

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nrjames
I've had a lot of fun with this game and agree that it would be nice to hear
more in this post about how it was made.

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riadd
Yes, sorry about that. I see this post was already (rightly) flagged, so I'll
do a proper blog post and will repost when it is done.

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mesozoic
Cool I played this game a bit and it was very fun. Looking forward to full
release.

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jeeva
Huh. I almost thought this would be Screeps, but no! Interesting...

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ayyn0n0n0
How large was your marketing budget?

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riadd
Around $5000. Most of that went into having a small booth at Gamescom.

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koder2016
I did not know it is possible to use a runtime environment, some platform
libraries and a scripting language to make a game!

