Back when Ken and I started Atomic Brawl, we aimed to create our ideal game. A fun, humorous, tactics-CCG that we could play quickly and easily, on our own terms. And we feel like we succeeded in that goal. We’ve enjoyed it immensely, and have had heart-warming feedback from many happy fans.

Since launching over a year ago, we’ve had about four thousand people roll through the Atomic Brawl gates. We were thrilled to see that many people loved what they saw and played the game fanatically. As game creators, having people love what you create was, and is, an amazing feeling.

Anything of value has an inherent monetary equivalent. When you present someone with an item and then offer it for free, it’s not uncommon for them to think “what’s the catch?”. The phycology of free has been well documented, in most cases “free” implies a level of quality that is not worth charging for. So how can you sell a free video game?

Who’s this shady “Ken” character, you ask? Why, it’s me! Chris came down with the flu this week, so I’ll be bringing you the State of the Game in his stead.

This week we cover the deck size changes, and some plans for getting more people into the land of Atomic Brawl.

You may of noticed the absence of the State of the Game last week. We’ve decided to move to a guaranteed State of the Game every two weeks. This will allow us to devote more time to development while still keeping everyone in the loop.

This week we cover the most recent patch, along with what didn’t make it into the patch.

Balance week! This week we talk about the upcoming balance patch. We know that a lot of the long-timers are quite excited about this one since it should shake up the metagame.

Another week, another weekly update. This week we talk a bit about our philosophy on how we balance, our new friends feature, sounds, leagues and cosplay.

When Ken and I started Atomic Brawl, we had many discussions about the type of game we wanted to build. This of course included mechanics, art, and tech – but it also included what we wanted the game to become.

Throughout development, this vision became more clear. We wanted to build a game that people loved. We wanted to build a game that people obsessed over. We wanted to build a community.

We’ll let you in on a little secret. While we release these posts on Wednesdays, we actually write them on Tuesday. This Tuesday, however, Ken and I made our way to a local indie meetup to socialize, drink and let some people play Atomic Brawl. With that in mind, this one is briefer (and later) than usual.

Remember last week when we said week when we said we were going to make our State of the Game a weekly feature? We’re happy to report that we’re not dirty liars!

This week we’ll talk about what’s next in our work queue, highlight some interesting community goings-on, and introduce a Random Thing of the Week.

We’re bad at blogging. We admit it. A friend (tip of the hat to @mttalxndrgrrtt) recently advised us to write more – this is us taking that advice to heart.

The State of the Game posts will be posted weekly and lay out where the game stands, what we’re working on, or anything else that’s on our mind. Please let us know if you’d like to hear about anything specifically.