Publishing our Game to Itch.io
Creating and Organising our Page
In our group, we created an itch.io page together to publish our game when it was completed, as well as to advertise ourselves as a games dev team. We organised our main page using assets we had previously created for our first PowerPoint pitch, incorporating the background assets and logo I made for our team. Louie worked on creating the game icon that appears on our homepage for our visual novel.
On the visual novels page, we each worked together to create different parts of our site. Originally, it was very plain and didn't really tell much about our game, or look interesting to play to attract new players. So, Louie compiled some assets we had previously used for our game to reuse as the background, as well as Making a banner showcasing our games name. I gathered the assets and adjusted everything to fit, as well as grabbing screenshots of our games gameplay to showcase what type of story our players would be in for. I also wrote a brief description about our game, so that players would get a general idea of what our game was about before downloading it. Katie worked on uploading the game files, adding tags and categories to our games page and making sure everything worked correctly. As well as this, they also created a feedback form requesting our players to give us any feedback if they liked to help us improve our game.
Game Itch.io Page
Company Itch.io Page
Creating Work Profiles
In the games industry, while having an itch.io page is a good start, it is also a good idea to create pages for either yourself or your company such as ArtStation, LinkedIn, Personal Company sites and social medias. These not only help you to reach a larger target audience and share more with your follower base or people who are interested in your work, but they also allow you a better chance for companies to see your work and creations, and can even lead to new job opportunities.
As a group, we only made an Itch.io page for our game, but individually I made an ArtStation. As well as this, I also have public social medias where I share my original artwork and designs, as well as a website where I take commission work occasionally. These types of things aren't mandatory, but they greatly help in getting your name out into the community and industry and also act as a great way to showcase your work and be noticed.
Currently, I don't have any work uploaded to my Art Station, however I am planning on uploading some personal work and uni work upon there soon. Some of my personal artwork and commissions can be found upon my personal website
My personal ArtStation
My Personal Site
Uploading our Game
We originally uploaded an alpha and beta test of our game to our itch.io pages as we created them, and asked for a few people to help us by playing through them and helping to uncover any bugs, glitches, spelling mistakes or things that could be fixed.
After we had received feedback from our alpha testing, we fixed the mistakes and issues that were found and moved onto our beta testing. The main issues we were told about were grammar and spelling issues, or some issues with sprites glitching or textboxes showing the wrong characters names for example.
During our Beta testing, we pushed our game out to a few more people and once again asked for more feedback. The feedback we received during this period was much less impactful on the actual gameplay, and more so smaller tweaks or things we could slightly change to improve our game. These were things such as changing text colours in certain areas, changing the music or experimenting with more endings. These were things we once again discussed as a group, and fixed together to make slight improvements to our game. When we were finally happy with everything and had tested it all worked, we uploaded our final proper released version of our game. We uploaded the game as two variants, a version for Mac and a version for Windows.
Within Itch.io, it is possible to embed games, making them playable through the site and more accessible. While we didn't do this yet, it is something we could look into to make our game easier to access and more available to a larger audience of people.
References:
Anon, Jaffieverse - art & stories [online]. jaffieverse - art & stories. Available at: https://jaffieverse.crd.co [Accessed 16 May 2025].
Anon, Whisper in the walls [online]. itch.io. Available at: https://uncanny-valley-studios.itch.io/whisper-in-the-walls [Accessed 16 May 2025].
Anon, Artstation.com. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/jaffies [Accessed 16 May 2025].
Studios, U.V., Uncanny valley studios [online]. itch.io. Available at: https://uncanny-valley-studios.itch.io/ [Accessed 16 May 2025].
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