Dear Villagers of Blackwater,
As we reflect back on a crazy 2 weeks surrounding the launch of Castle of Blackwater, we’ve come out the other end with a clearer vision of our way forward than ever before.
Our goal going into launch was simple; create enough of a buzz to quickly scale the game to a couple hundred CCU, ensuring that any new player can login and find a lobby quickly.
Although we did everything we could think of to force our way into a stable foundation of player liquidity, we have to accept that the road ahead will be slightly more turbulent than we would have liked it to be. Nevertheless, the Castle of Blackwater team remains committed to the ongoing development of our game.
Before we dive into our plans for the next few months, let’s first take a moment to appreciate everyone who came out in support of our launch. From those who have been around for a long time, to those who have just discovered us through following their favourite streamer, Castle of Blackwater welcomes you all.
The amount of positivity we received from our early players has been nothing short of amazing. And though the active player count may not yet be where we wanted it to be, we’ve found a lot of energy from the many favourable comments and reviews we have thus far received.
That being said, watching large groups of inexperienced players play our game for the first time has also been eye-opening! Issues that we thought were easily overlooked became more glaringly problematic, and with an audience of tens of thousands of potential players, every slightest imperfection suddenly seemed like a massively missed opportunity.
Those of you who know us by now will know that we don’t give up easily! So, after some internal strategizing, here’s our game plan for the next few months:
Upgrading our core systems for increased stability
Due to our intense pace of development the past 2 years, we’ve slightly neglected on updating some of our core systems that we use to create Castle of Blackwater. Now that we have some more breathing room, we plan to upgrade our Unity and Networking services, so that we can find more stability and access additional quality of life features.
New smaller map
We’ve already started on designing a new map, that will be smaller and have fewer routes between key areas. We believe this will force more player-to-player interactions and create possibilities for a 5-player game.
Let’s go mobile
One of our big goals this year is to port Castle of Blackwater to mobile, as an ad-supported free-to-play game, with cross-play capability. Doing so will allow us to tap into a much bigger player base, with no barrier to entry, to ensure better player liquidity.
Host Settings Controls
Another piece of great feedback that we’ll soon be acting on is allowing lobby hosts to change different settings within their lobby, giving them control over balancing features and allowing them to set their own difficulties. This will solve many balancing issues and ensure that lobbies can play according to their preferred rule sets.
Miscellaneous
Beyond these major projects, we’ll also continue to push out new characters, minigames, powerups, and feature reworks. At the same time, we’ll also continue to experiment with different marketing initiatives in order to facilitate a steady player growth.
We really appreciate everyone’s support and patience as we enter this next chapter of our release. We promise to keep working hard and listening to your feedback, so that we can continue to evolve the game into the potential we all know it has.
While we do so, we’ll also continue to organise weekly game nights, events, challenges and other initiatives, as well as be around in Discord every day to talk with you all about our future.
Until then, we hope to see you in the Castle!
With love,
Team Blackwater. 🏰
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