Friday Fails is a place for you to share your failures with the community and more importantly, what you’ve learned from them. Let’s learn from each other, share creative solutions and try to make new mistakes!
In the world of indie game development, challenges are often part of the journey. This week, we dive into the experience of Laia Bee and her team at Pincer Games, whose first project, Fighters of Fate, not only won the National Video Game Competition of Uruguay but also caught the attention of Google’s Indie Game Accelerator. Despite their successes, the team faced significant hurdles that taught them valuable lessons.
One of the most striking challenges they encountered was related to their publishing agreement. Laia shares, “We reviewed the contract with a lawyer and colleagues, but we overlooked the fact that it lacked an exit clause for the publisher. This mistake froze our production for almost a year and proved to be costly both financially and morally for the team.” This experience underscores the importance of thoroughly understanding contractual obligations and ensuring that all aspects of an agreement are beneficial and transparent.
From this setback, Laia emphasizes the critical lesson learned: “I advise teams to carefully examine deadlines on both sides in detail.” This advice serves as a reminder to all indie developers that due diligence in contracts can save time, resources, and morale in the long run. By sharing their story, Laia hopes to encourage others to navigate the complexities of the industry with caution and foresight.
Laia continues: “the second major challenge occurred when we launched the game. We had a list of 160,000 pre-registered users, and at the last moment, the store requested a technical change. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that there were a number of devices that wouldn’t work with this change, which resulted in thousands of negative reviews because people wanted to play but couldn’t.”
After panicking and consulting with the local uruguayan indie colleagues, they took action “We spent days responding to all the reviews personally one by one and managed to increase our rating from 1.3 to 4.4 in the United States. It took us months, but we achieved it.”
The main lesson learned in this case is: “be honest. Even if everything is thoroughly tested, the smallest oversight can lead to a huge bug, and it can happen to anyone. Communicating sincerely with the community is crucial for gaining their support as you navigate challenges and grow.”
We invite all indie developers reading this to join the conversation in our “Friday Fails” section. Your experiences, whether triumphs or challenges, can provide invaluable insights and support to others in the community. Share your stories with us in the comments, and let’s learn and grow together!
About “Fighters of Fate”: is an RPG mobile game that combines collectible trading cards with fighting games, where you can customize everything about your Fighters. In Fighters of Fate you can create your character and customize its appearance, weapon, and abilities all in the form of collectible cards. You can play on competitive mode, adventure mode, real time PVP and participate in tournaments. You’ll be able to fulfill daily missions, edit your deck, and level up your cards in the alchemy mode You can enjoy the game in this link.
About the team: Pincer Games is a 3 person indie studio founded by friends in Punta del Este, Uruguay that collaborated with many talented artists throughout different stages of development. Fighters of Fate won best game in the national contest of Uruguay, best experimental game at EXPOVIT Costa Rica. They are very active in their local gamedev community, organize events (such as a GGJ site) and volunteer in their local gamedev association CAVI. Their CEO Laia Bee is President of the Uruguayan Gamedev Association, part of the GAME AWARDS Future Class and coordinator of the Latam Videogames Federation.