One Year Later: Reflections on Our First Game

It's been a year and a half since we started with my friend, our first project: a firefighter puzzle platformer where you save arrogant civilians by flooding their apartments. 

We gave everything we had, and we're proud of what we created. Like any first project, we learned countless lessons along the way, things we'll carry forward into future games.

What We'd Do Differently:

We made some rookie mistakes. Localizing into 10 languages when 80% of players use English and French. Building custom physics systems for mechanics that could've been simpler. Creating complex tools without proper initial design, leading to spaghetti code as we layered feature upon feature without a clear vision.

The Launch Reality:

The Steam launch has been challenging. The reviews are excellent, people genuinely like the game, but visibility has been our biggest struggle. We didn't invest enough in marketing to make this financially sustainable. After a few hundred sales in the first three days, things went flat.

What's Next:

We'll continue marketing Fire Hero and showing it to the world, but we're also starting work on our next project. We're hoping to attract publishers or find funding to keep this gamedev dream alive. If that doesn't work out, I'll need to return to traditional work to rebuild savings before jumping back into development.

Try It Yourself:

There's a free demo available on Steam if you'd like to see what we've created: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3403090/Fire_Hero__Pixel_Rescue/

Thank you for your support.

Florian