This past weekend was a rather eventful one for Smiling Cat. Soon after the official release of Thrust or Bust Challenge Edition, a friend and former co-worker of mine submitted a post on Reddit, which took on a life of its own for a while. If you missed it, you can check it out now. The feedback ranged from praise to profanity, from profound to petty.
Thank you to everyone that provided useful, actionable feedback about the game. You are being listened to, and I am doing everything within my power to incorporate your suggestions into my current and future plans for Smiling Cat. I will share with you some highlights about what this will mean for Smiling Cat in the near future.
One message that I heard loud and clear was that many of you want your indie games for free, especially the first few offerings from a new developer. In light of this, I will continue to move forward with my current plans to release several games under the web-based, ad-supported, free-to-play model. It will probably be quite some time until Smiling Cat undertakes another retail release.
To this end, the release of Chroma Invader is only weeks away. Hopefully, I can get the logistics of my ad-supported model worked out in time to release the game before Christmas. After that, I am planning on undertaking several more smaller-scale projects, hopefully releasing a new game every month or two.
Despite the move away from retail releases, I stand behind the quality and playability of Thrust or Bust Challenge Edition, and it will remain supported and on sale in the Smiling Cat Store as a premium offering for those who like Smiling Cat games enough to want to take the experience off-line.
One request that I get a LOT is to provide games on mobile platforms, such as iPhone and Android. I would love to do this at some point in the future. In order to do so, though, Smiling Cat needs to make a considerable investment in hardware and software, especially on the iOS side, in order to do this type of development. So, mobile plans will unfortunately have to wait until Smiling Cat has the necessary capital to invest.
Also, it is clear that Smiling Cat has outgrown its current minimalist web site design. Over the coming weeks, I will be looking to roll out a new version of the site, hopefully one that will be easier to maintain and more appealing to view.
Please look forward to all of the upcoming developments here at Smiling Cat!