An eventful April is over. We exhibited our game in Leipzig and made our Steam page ready to be wishlisted! Of course we worked on a plethora of features as well, especially noteworthy are the Skill Board, Module Shop and Hangar. 9 Dystricts has a lot more depth now.

LNC Leipzig

On April 27th we exhibited 9 Dystricts at the Lange Nacht der Computerspiele in Leipzig.

It was my first time in Eastern Germany if I'm not counting Berlin, and it was a great experience. Well organised, many other friendly devs and countless visitors who stopped by our booth.

One of our younger visitors stayed for around 4 hours, dissected the game and tried out almost every combination of ship modules in the Hangar one could imagine. We were quite surprised what kind of ships can be built and view this enthusiasm as a good sign. He gave us really useful feedback as well.

Other people criticised our menus, user experience and ship maneuverability. We know there is room for improvement there, most of the menus are still in an early phase and only need to be functional. Once other aspects of the game are standing we will focus more on usability.

Most feedback was positive and/or constructive and it seems like a game suited for a younger audience, so we keep this in mind going forward.

After some time you will get a feeling what kind of feedback you should listen to in regards to features - it should connect to your core idea of what the game is about. Sometimes there is an agenda behind negative feedback or it's just from a lack of experience - especially when there is no substance behind it. But: Any kind of feedback is important, you just have to figure out in what way.

To sum it up: It was a wonderful experience and I cannot recommend enough how important showing your game on conventions is. It is always stressful, but so worth it to get an outside view of what you are working on.

What we have worked on

We have mainly worked on the Ship Hangar and Module Shop. Martin did the technical implementation of course and my part was building all the modules in Blender. The Skill Board was also a big new feature.

For me the most important thing was preparing our Steam page. There is a lot of room for improvement there, but the main point was getting it ready for Wishlists. A trailer is on the way in the coming weeks and then I can advertise our page more effectively.

What are the next steps?

The most imminent new things are additional districts, bosses, Announcement Trailer and eventually a new hangar design. We also had the idea of random variations of some module parts, so that bigger ships look more like space stations in the end.

Stay tuned! This time I was a bit behind due to sickness, but we are planning new devlog posts every month.

Download our current Test Build below. We would really appreciate your feedback in the comments section.