In my last report I was working on ports for the various platforms I wanted to release my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.
I put in some major effort to finish the porting work, and I have released the game!
Sprints 2024-34 and 2024-35: Polish, Porting, and Publication Preparations
Completed:
- Create iOS port
- Create Windows port
- Create Mac port
- Create Player’s Guide
That’s right. I released Clown Alley Creator! You can get it right now.
But if you want to learn about the end of the project’s development, read on.
But seriously, go get it! It’s free, and it’s available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. And when you create your own clowns, please take a screenshot and send them to me! I’d love to see what you come up with.
Anyway, I found the porting work in general was simultaneously straightforward thanks to the earlier porting work I’ve done on previous projects and also frustrating because each year there seems to be something new that I didn’t have to worry about.
The iOS port was fairly quick, once I got the latest SDL2 libraries. I had essentially made some scripts that handle most of the work for me, and so I was able to get the build up and in the App Store using Mac in Cloud without too much trouble.
The Windows port was similarly quick.
The Mac port, however, didn’t have as many scripts to handle things for me, and so most of the time was spent trying to automate and cross-compile, and ultimately I did a lot by hand. I will unfortunately need to replicate that manual effort for any updates in the future until I can figure out how to automate it. But I created a universal binary, which means it will run on Intel-based Macs as well as the new Silicon-based Macs.
Finally, I created the Clown Alley Creator Player’s Guide, which is a 18-page, full color PDF you can get for free if you sign up for the GBGames Curiosities Newsletter (see below), along with all of the other Player’s Guides I have created for other games.
With all of the ports done, I published Clown Alley Creator this past weekend, which if you were already subscribed to my newsletter you would have gotten an announcement about because I told subscribers about the release first! Another reason to subscribe, right?
All that’s left is telling people about the game. You know, the other 90% of the work.
So other than needing to address any issues as they come up and potentially creating a patch for the game, I anticipate that my current efforts are exclusively focused on reaching out to players, reviewers, and various other people in roles involved in talking about games.
If you know a favorite reviewer who covers creativity tools, cozy games, and such, please let me know!
Thanks for reading, and stay curious!
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Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!