life after us season 1. a look back.

Season 1 of Life After Us is out there and getting rather a lot of people playing the 3 short games. So, I wanted to make a post where I look back on what the Life After Us series has meant to me and whats come of having made it.

Well, I guess the first question is why did I decide to make Life After Us? The answer is really not that complicated and can be summed up in the words of Walter White.

Now, I never expected the response that the Life After Us game got and it has been amazing to see the number of people downloading the games and enjoying them. One other thing I didn't really expect was the amount of people doing lets plays of the games on Youtube and seeing complete strangers getting terrified playing a game I made became such a rush. I started to feel this great sense of accomplishment from scaring people. Basically, if you were freaking out, I did my job right.

One thing that was a big key to the games doing well was the feedback as each game released. The Gamejolt community was especially amazing in supporting the games and helping them grow and improve. When you look at Life After Us: Shipwrecked, it's pretty much a jumpscare game and that was all. While it did that really well, it didn't offer enough of a world or story to add to the immersion of the game. However with the feedback from fans, Life After Us: The System was much better and because the support from people who played the first game was so great, I felt confident to write a story that didn't play it safe and Life After Us: Fading Light had an atmosphere that made people feel so uneasy that I've even seen lets plays where people freak out and can't finish the game. 

My response when people ask how I came up with the story for Life After Us: The System

I've mentioned people doing lets plays of the games and I like most indie devs view lets plays as free advertising and when famous youtubers do lets plays, more people check out the games and that's great!

I've been lucky enough to have the likes of Yamimash and Markiplier play Life After Us and what's great is they really enjoyed them. So what does that mean for me? Well, like I said before, I view lets plays as free advertising and having so many people seeing the game suddenly meant more people were downloading the games to check it out for themselves and more people liked our Facebook page and followed our Twitter. At the end of the day that's what we want, we want more people to check out our games and enjoy them. Fun fact, as of the date of posting this blog, not a day has passed without new lets plays of Life After Us appearing on Youtube. Now that's pretty awesome!

So what has all this done for me as a developer? Well, since season 1 has released, Eyesodic Games has gotten a large amount of new fans and the support has honestly been amazing. The folks I get to interact with are such great fans and they are the reason that I want to keep working, improving and making games that are even more entertaining.

It's not easy trying to get your games noticed. Especially when you come from a small country that's still in the very early days of taking the games industry seriously and Games Ireland, the group that's meant to represent the game devs in Ireland have their heads up their ass doing nothing.

So, to wrap this post up I would like to say a huge thanks to all the folks who have supported me by playing the games a giving feedback to help not only improve the games but to help me grow. I'm just one of many Irish game devs working on my own games. There are countless awesome game devs on this little island and they're not getting the attention they deserve. So, if you're reading this post and want to see more of what we Irish can offer, check out the #IrishGameDev hashtag on Twitter. It's full of great folks with great games.

So, for now I'll get back to working on the new Life After Us game and thanks again for the awesome support folks!