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.

Our Current Focus

Users! And more users! We currently have about 400 active players (about 2100 signups). For new users coming in they can often have problems finding a game. We secretly (evil laugh here) changed our algorithm for matchmaking the other day to broaden this criteria a bit – however – it’s still a population problem, and one we’re working hard to address.

Along these lines, we’ve found that we don’t do a great job of getting people to signup. Once they do however, most people really seem to enjoy things. To address this we are working on:

• A trailer showcasing the basic gameplay and tone.
• Sound effects to assist with the first impression and polish.
• Voice over for the trailer to help establish tone and guide users along the tutorial in a more vibrant fashion.

All of these efforts are largely being done by friends, or other talented people we’ve managed to snag. This means Ken and I can continue working on features, bugs, customer support, etc. Once these are in place we can push our marketing efforts a little harder – and hopefully find a bigger audience.

What’s Upcoming?

Over the past week or so we’ve been super busy with in-game support, minor bug fixes, and consuming turkey for Canadian thanksgiving. Here are some things that will be deployed in the next week:

• Number of cards remaining in your deck is now visible in-game
• Holy Water bugs with Hypnotic Watch bugs addressed
• Fresh Start has been fixed
• Login “remember me” functionality addressed
• League promotions / demotions can no longer occur on a loss/win respectively.

Plus a bunch more smaller tickets that we’ll get done over the next few days. Finally, here are some more interesting higher priority things which may make it in if time permits:

• Friends and public player profiles.
• Auto-cancellation of quick match when you leave site.
• Improved quick match functionality (perhaps a chess-clock like system, with auto end-turn, details pending).

Balance Problems

We get a lot of questions, comments about balance. Here are some common requests that we will likely address soon:

• Aggronium is a wee bit too good (currently Aggronium wins ~63% of its games).
• Shellinium is wee bit too bad (currently loses 65% of its games).
• Party Animal is a little over powered.

Not sure when/if or how we’ll address these – but I thought it would be interesting to list out these common concerns.

More Words!

I wanted to say that so far the game is going really well. People seem to be having a really good time. Ken and I are working our butts off to make the game better. We really appreciate all the feedback, support, and advice everyone has given us. We’ll continue to work to try to grow this into something amazing.

If you could help us by telling your friends, giving us a review in the Chrome App Store, or just helping us get the word out – we would love you long time.

More words next wednesday – keep brawling’.