Demo Release!

Fun times this week as the GHOST MISSION trailer and demo drop on 7/13 coinciding with the launch of the GHOST MISSION Steam page and ahead of MGS Con in Los Angeles! I hope everyone attending MGS Con has a great time and I wish I could be there myself. If you’ll be in attendance, be sure to grab a GHOST MISSION sticker (and whether you’re attending or not, wish list the game on Steam – it helps massively).

It’s a great feeling to have the demo release, but it’s also anxiety-inducing on my end. I thought that this day would have come a lot sooner when I first started Ghost Mission’s development, but I’ve lived and learned since then and my prime takeaway still remains: everything in solo game development takes longer than you anticipate. It’s also both exciting and terrifying for people to finally try the game out. I know plenty of people interested in GHOST MISSION are fans of the original Metal Gear games on the MSX2 and their NES ports, but I want to make the disclaimer that, even though GHOST MISSION is inspired by those games, it is not trying to BE those games. There are plenty of functional differences between them. The GHOST MISSION demo is your chance to get a taste of what I mean. The key word there is “taste”.

As someone who’s never put out a game demo before, I found that deciding what content to actually go into the thing was a lot more difficult than anticipated. Ghost Mission’s full campaign is 10 levels/mission segments long, each with a boss fight(s) at its respective conclusion. The first and most obvious thought in my head was to release the first level, from inception to boss fight, as the demo. That would give player a sense of the game’s base mechanics, story establishment, level performance/rating system, etc. The game doesn’t have a tutorial in the modern sense, but “tutorial-like” cut-scene text does already exist in the first level to set the groundwork for things to come. With all that in mind, it was a no-brainer to use Level 1 for the demo.

The content within each of Ghost Mission’s levels is meant to be built upon, so mechanics/weapons/gear introduced in one segment will compound by the end of the game. With that in mind, Ghost Mission’s first level is the most basic. It covers Geist’s initial infiltration of Great Elephant Island. It gives the player access to the default pistol/knife combo, a shotgun pickup, and the ability to use G.H.O.S.T. tech and turn invisible. Its level layout is fairly straightforward and it’s also one of the shortest mission segments in the entire game. The story is established in the first level, but you don’t meet the more story-relevant boss characters in it. In short, it does what it sets out to do: it’s an introduction to the game.

But let’s go back to the word “taste”. Game demos should give you a sense of what to expect in a full release. Functionally, they let a player know if they want to spend their money immediately, wait for a discount, or skip a release at all. As a publisher the goal is to aim for the “spend immediately” option with option two as a decent backup, so you want to release a demo that whets the player’s appetite but leaves them wanting more – hence, “taste”. This entire thought process made me drastically overthink things, namely, does the first mission segment in Ghost Mission give players a good enough sense of the game and make them want to see the rest? Is it interesting enough?

My alternative was releasing a later level or mission segment for the demo – one with more weapons, more enemy types, a main story boss, etc. Doing this would give players a sense of the larger game and what they could expect once Geist was beyond his infiltration point. I thus started down that road…only to stop myself again. Later mission segments have more to them, yes, but they also lack the gameplay and story context to have them make sense in the first place. All of that would need to be built. All of that would have to be taken from level one and reworked to create…a new introduction.

…and I already have one of those…

So we’re back at square one. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Don’t overcomplicate things. A demo is a demo. It is a taste. If people like it, they’ll come back for more content and if they don’t, they don’t!

With all that said – go give the Ghost Mission demo a try!

Until next time,

Kevin

Burn Below

P.S. – ANOTHER REMINDER TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM!