This post was originally posted a few days ago over on my blog. You can find it and other small writings over there.

2025-05-25

Wee Boats is coming together!

The start of the year felt like slow going. This is the slog towards the end of the project. Setting up a sole trader company, trying to get the Steam page up and running and small progress on the game here and there. But now over the last month, the engines feel like they are running again and we are having fun with the boats once more!

A Maze

Holy Moly did we need A Maze right now. It is truly something special where I always come away with a drive to keep going. We submitted Wee Boats for a two hour demo at the Open Screens. Even though it was a small period of time, we got so much great feedback from everyone who tried out the game and we were buzzing. We then set up the game outside in the garden of Silent Green where folks could play in the fresh air.

We saw a lot of things that we can improve about the game. Fantastic! We are working on it now! Feels like the first time we are adding fun improvements to the game in some time.

People were excited about the game. Fantastic! That's been good for the old self belief. This is a silly, small game. I go through cycles of thinking that people are going to really not like it for its smallness but maybe there is a place for this too. Hopefully it translates to the Steam audience!

Steam

About a month ago we got our Steam page up and online as Coming Soon (You can go there now and wishlist :) ). So now we need to play the game of Steam and get them wishlists up! If you want a game to make any bit of a splash on Steam, you need a rake of wishlists. I feel like 1000 wishlists is the minimum you need for Steam to bother giving you a glance and between 7000-10,000 is when you may start popping up in some Discovery Queues or something like that.

We are currently way off those numbers but we are giving it a go to get the word out there!

How are we playing the wishlist game?

• We are on the TikToks babyyy
  • I've actually been having good craic putting together videos over the last month of the game and how we are making it. It's mad to see how the algorithms are ticking away doing crazy shit. I'll put up a video, watch an episode of Adventure Time, then look back at my phone and itll have gotten 1000 views in those minutes, but then it won't be seen by another soul ever again. We are going to keep plugging away at it and see if we can build up some interest.
• Festivals
  • I've been applying to game festivals as their submissions open up. We are going to be sharing our work at Spillkonventet in Norway in June and hopefully a few more in the coming months after that. Hopefully some of these come through and maybe come with a Steam featuring.
• Demo
  • We want to get a Wee Boats demo out over the summer! Test the wheels of the game out in the wild and sort out any server issues before the launch of the full game. This might help build a bit of momentum over the coming months that we can charge into the Next Fest with!

Boat Party

This coming week we are bringing the game onboard one of the boats that we are featuring in the game! Litteraturbåten Epos, which is a library boat that travels the west of Norway, is hosting a boat party in Bergen and we can join in! It'll be interesting to see how it goes down in a party setting with a crowd that isn't a gamer crowd. I'm hyped to bring it to the boat anyway!

Ok, right, back to it! Let's feckn go!