NAVIGATOR - Fast-Paced Puzzle Action [OUT NOW!]

[Alpha Six]

The "final checklist" for the current version of Navigator has been prepared and sent to our programmer. Expect an update in the next few days.

[Alpha Six]

Hey guys, our excellent musician GreenDragonXIII has composed some "remix" tracks for the Navigator OST. You can preview three of them right here.

Game progress news coming in a few days; stuff wasn't done last week but this week should definitely see some progress.

[ThePortalGuru]

Mega necro, but I just felt I'd let you guys know that the game's up for voting on Greenlight if you'd like to give it some support.

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

support good indie developers, destroy phil fish
(that means you better vote up)

[Alpha Six]

Mega necro, but I just felt I'd let you guys know that the game's up for voting on Greenlight if you'd like to give it some support.

lots more stuff aside from us being on Greenlight too;



we've got a real site now!
http://navigator.digitalhaven-ent.net

check out our Bandcamp to listen to the OST of the game! comes in 3 flavors; [blue side] (in-game OST), [RED SIDE] (remix OST), and [TWIN SYSTEMS] (both CDs in a package deal for less-- comes with exclusive music too!)

Navigator is currently on Desura for $4.99. We're looking into other digi-distributors as well (the game is awaiting approval from Indievania right now).

We're offering a special package on our Bandcamp called "The Nova Bundle"-- your $10 gets you a copy of the game (Desura CD key by default, but you can ask for a non-Desura version and I'll give it to you) and the full NAVIGATOR OST [TWIN SYSTEMS] 2-disc package!


Are you a brand-new Navigator? Check out our official NAVIGATOR: Player's Guide! Provided to you, the player, in a free .pdf download, NAVIGATOR: Player's Guide
introduces the player to the concept of the game, explains the mechanics, and provides some useful tips to help you become a master navigator!


Funding received through Navigator will be primarily used to fund further development of the game. If you remember correctly, our programmer became very busy with work around the initial planned release date of October 2011, forcing him to work almost exclusively on his paid contract work. If Navigator makes decent funding, I'll be able to pay him properly and continue developing the game even further, with more gameplay modes, new difficulty levels, gameplay improvements, and lots of other big updates that weren't able to make the release. And Navigator will never charge you for more game-- all of these updates are going to be coming to the player for free!



(hey PortalGuru thanks for posting our Greenlight link btw. i really appreciate the signal boost!)

[ThePortalGuru]

I really don't understand the people saying "LAWL TETRIS/TETRIS ATTACK RIPOFF", because it's not. Like, at all. I wish the Steam sheeple would at least LOOK at the games before blindly downvoting them.

[Alpha Six]

Gamers are spoiled. they don't give a shit about you or what you do unless it immediately appeals to them, and now that their tastes are heavily separated between genres, we have entire generations of gamers that only play certain genres, and vehemently tear apart anything that doesn't fit into their genre. obviously there's always going to be groups of people who just play what they enjoy and don't go out of their way to slander other games, but that is such a minority when it comes to Gamer Groups that it won't even register as a blip on the radar to most developers unless you've already established a fanbase of new users. becoming a new developer is incredibly difficult for this reason alone.

Those people have been given an uncensored, unfiltered, unmoderated "voice" in the indie games industry, via Greenlight. Greenlight is a very alpha product and it shows a lot in the overall execution, and the huge community of Gamers, that have now been given a voice, are using it to express their flawed point of views on video games (or; their extra flawed views on independent games).


watch this. right here. im about to blow your fraeken mind

the biggest mistake they made was allowing a "negative" feature; this isn't the same as a reputation system, or the ratings system from YouTube.

these "thumbs down" (which are now, thankfully, gone) affect the "community" rating of the game, and if the "community" seems to be saying "no", well guess what-- your hard work and time spent doesn't pay off, unless Steam themselves decided to take a look at your game... which would severely weaken the impact of "community approval," which is what the system was made for in the first place, right? because of this, Valve would probably have to take down the service for a little bit to do some major re-imagining, then bring it back up with what they've learned from this kitchen fire. (which is moderation, hopefully) the basic idea for Greenlight was to give power to the community and make adding new games easier, but i think Valve may have misfired and accidentally made it more difficult for them to do so (with this initial release of Greenlight, at least).

another flaw with the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system is that you don't have to give a comment about your rating. at all.
you didn't have to give a reason to downvote a game. it was as simple as going into a game, finding something you don't like about it, and pressing a button.
congratulations, you just negated a positive vote. and it took you maybe 10 seconds at the most to read the first sentence (or even just the genre of the game) in the synopsis, look at 2 screenshots, and decide "this is shit."
and guess what? people are bored enough to do this to your game. trust me. they are. it only takes seconds for them to tell you that they think your game isn't worth a dime, then go on and do it to the other 200+ games on Greenlight. it doesn't matter how good/bad your game is, because 70% of the market already thinks it's bad. and by looking through Greenlight's support forums, you can see the obvious bias against indie games that a lot of Steam users have.


there are little to no stats for the owner of Greenlight to look through, except comments, page views, approval rating (which is offensively high-- there isn't a single game on Greenlight that has over 20% approval so far, including the "big ones" who already have established fanbases like Project Zomboid, which has been on Desura for ages) and how many people have "favorited" your game-- all details which people can see anyway.

when thumbs-down was a thing, there was a bar in your stats that recorded how many thumbs-up and thumbs-down you have... which they also screwed up. thumbs-up/thumbs-down were measured on the same bar (like the YouTube ratings bar), but rather than see the precise number of upvotes to downvotes that you have, Greenlight decided to show it to you in the form of a percentage. this leaves the developer wondering who/how many people care(s) about their game, and a lot of developers were recording an offensive amount of 30/70 +- ratings. which, again, happened because thumbs-down was a concept in the first place.







so, Greenlight is a bad service?

no.

It's a great way to get publicity for your game and start building a fanbase through the people who aren't needlessly hating your game for dumb reasons. Steam pretty much dominates the PC market and has a lot of users that are almost exclusively Steam. by putting your game on Greenlight, you're letting these people know your game exists. (but remember that the publicity comes at a price; dealing with a bunch of shitty Gamers bashing you)

if you want to consider getting your game on Greenlight now, I would say do it-- but take the service with a grain of salt, because it's still a baby right now, and only has an idea of what it's doing.

[Previous]

While it's cool and all and I definitely upvoted, I guess I'd mention a thought. I feel like the Navigator character wasn't too well presented in the videos and screenshots. For someone who didn't look into the game yet, it may be hard to actually notice that he's there and not just there, but also does things. There isn't really any emphasise on this feature making Navigator different from other block matching games. The tiny blue guy doesn't catch much attention when he's mostly just standing there in the videos and only occasionally moves a block. Sure it's cute when he get's smashed by a block and then crawls up from behind it, but it may have been better if the first video on the queue would have been one of various short scenes that show him in action, like about 20 seconds into the fourth video. So viewers see that he's a key feature. Besides in the text he's only mentioned once somewhere in a subordinate clause.
Especially considering that most people only glance at it for a second and then proceed to downvote because it always feels great to express your disfavour.

Other than that, good luck with the further progress!

[Alpha Six]

thanks for the comment!

there's a lot of stuff i should probably do, but to be honest i'm learning all of this stuff as i go, haha. i tried putting more emphasis on him in the actual trailer (which i should probably upload to Greenlight, now that I think about it!) and i think it worked out well (albeit a little simple).

i'm not very fussed about Greenlight, but i'm really trying to impress with the current build of the game and get it shipped on as many places as possible, because there is so much more that i wanted to put in the game that just couldn't be done for the release. the game was made on basically a $0 budget, and our programmer of the game is a professional, too, so you can bet he's got to focus more time on the work that actually pays him, over a moderately-simple game that's been in development since January 2011.

i'm hopefully gonna be improving the pitch and such over time, it's very diffcult to manage 100 things at once

[Rosencrantz]

What pissed me off was that there were comments on Navigator that were mentioning thumbing the game down because it looked like some other puzzle/gem games already out on the market, and were being annoyingly vocal about it.

Like, okay, I understand that you can have opinions and shit about it, but you're complaining about this being an uninspired game without even fucking looking at the gameplay.

God damn, Tyvon, I'm glad you're taking this well, because some of that comment shit just isn't forgivable

[Proton]

the biggest mistake they made was allowing a "negative" feature; this isn't the same as a reputation system, or the ratings system from YouTube.

these "thumbs down" (which are now, thankfully, gone) affect the "community" rating of the game, and if the "community" seems to be saying "no", well guess what-- your hard work and time spent doesn't pay off, unless Steam themselves decided to take a look at your game... which would severely weaken the impact of "community approval," which is what the system was made for in the first place, right? because of this, Valve would probably have to take down the service for a little bit to do some major re-imagining, then bring it back up with what they've learned from this kitchen fire. (which is moderation, hopefully) the basic idea for Greenlight was to give power to the community and make adding new games easier, but i think Valve may have misfired and accidentally made it more difficult for them to do so (with this initial release of Greenlight, at least).

another flaw with the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system is that you don't have to give a comment about your rating. at all.
you didn't have to give a reason to downvote a game. it was as simple as going into a game, finding something you don't like about it, and pressing a button.
congratulations, you just negated a positive vote. and it took you maybe 10 seconds at the most to read the first sentence (or even just the genre of the game) in the synopsis, look at 2 screenshots, and decide "this is shit."
and guess what? people are bored enough to do this to your game. trust me. they are. it only takes seconds for them to tell you that they think your game isn't worth a dime, then go on and do it to the other 200+ games on Greenlight. it doesn't matter how good/bad your game is, because 70% of the market already thinks it's bad. and by looking through Greenlight's support forums, you can see the obvious bias against indie games that a lot of Steam users have.

Valve confirmed downvotes never did this.
They were to just remove titles from said voter's queue.
It was a filtering system, nothing more.


Unless you want to take it as "secret valve quality conspiracy."

As of an update that was,
what,
yesterday? It now says "Would you purchase it?"
This gives an option of "No thanks/not interested."
The only thing left wrong with that someone on a mission.