Yep, it's finally happening! Next Monday June 15th, Super Chibi Knight will officially launch on Steam. If at all possible, I'd ask you to please share this trailer wherever you can to help spread the word: 

What a crazy-long process it has been. It was originally planned to be a web game, then the scope got SERIOUSLY out of hand and it became a kind of a monster.

I worked on it in my spare time for quite a while (probably 3 years). Then, the loss of my job prompted me to get more serious about it. I did a Kickstarter to raise extra funds which many of you generously donated to. At that point I thought I'd only need 6 months to finish the game. Unfortunately it took 6 MORE months on top of the original 6 month estimate... that means we're coming up on the 1 year anniversary of the original Kickstarter campaign. I stretched the KS funds as far as possible, but eventually ended up making some side games and working on some freelance projects to keep things moving (this robbed time from SCK, but was a necessary evil).

I released the game on Steam Early Access last December and those sales have helped to supplement the development costs, but I still needed extra cash to live.

On top of all that, I went back to school (very) part time to finish the degree I left unfinished 10 years ago. Fortunately, the government has lots of grants and scholarships in place to help pay for my schooling :-P

(We also added 2 new babies to the family along the way)

One funny thing is that the game was originally billed as being made by "a dad and his 8-year-old daughter." Well, 3 years of development hell later and that daughter will be turning 11 this fall... I had her record some missing voices the other day and I had to pitch them up in some audio-editing software to match the ones she originally made... 

I had a TON of technical problems along the way including the Flash IDE no longer handling the size of the files (which prompted a switch to FlashDevelop and a complete restructuring of the code base). I eventually ran into java heap stack problems with Flash Develop too which took some more finangling to get sorted out.

I also REALLY wanted controller support, and was fretting about having to use an "Adobe Native Extension" (ANE) to tie into C++ to get it working. Fortunately Adobe released its gamepad API which ended up saving the day. But alas, I was not totally free from ANEs...

When I finally got around to implementing the Steam API (Steamworks) to handle Steam cloud saves and Achievements, I ended up having to learn to use ANEs anyway. The windows implementation of the Steamworks ANE (FRESteamworks) was fairly easy (with a bit of help from @Mike) but the Mac version had me tearing my hair out.

Fortunately, some other friends with Macs (@the-exp and @joeybetz) helped me figure that out. I also had a local friend lend me his $1700 iMac to test out more Mac issues which has helped make the final product a ton more accessible.

I left putting in the majority of the music until the end, but Brian Holmes (@thatcomposerguy) really hit it out of the park. He ended up doing over 70 individual music tracks for the game's soundtrack that total over 2 hours of music... that's really insane if you think about it. The soundtrack is available for $4.99 through Steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/373780/

Something that really stands out to me now is how much better the art and programming both became the longer I worked on the project. You can see and feel a real difference in the art and the fun of the boss battles the further you go in the game. I learned SO much just by forging ahead MAKING something. That kind of learning process is in stark contrast to the "learning" I've been doing in the university that is 2 steps detached from reality, lost in a theoretical universe. The AUTHENTICITY of doing everything, art, code, sounds, promotional materials, social media, trailers, etc. made the learning real.

I really hope the game is successful and makes all the time invested worth it, but either way I'm really proud of the how it turned out. I made it the best I could within the contstraints I had and within my abilities. I definitely think it's worth the price tag.

I hope you guys get a few hours of fun out of it and will TELL YOUR FRIENDS about it :-D

http://store.steampowered.com/app/283080

Here's one last pic of the Kickstarter-exclusive armor and sword that backers above $17 will be getting: