Another early retrospective...REDUXED

There is absolutely no better feeling than when you get to finally push that 'publish' button on a game you've created and get to show it to the world. People get into game development for all sort of reasons but for me it's a way for me to express myself and it feel amazing to be able to share that with people and to (hopefully) get a positive response.

So after about almost a year of development (on and off) for Aliens: Redacted REDUX I was finally able to release the game and put an end to that chapter. It was a mix of excitement and so much relief.

Development pitfalls...

I think it would be wrong for anyone creating a game to think that the development cycle of a project would resemble anything remotely seen as 'smooth', and of the minimal experience I have in actually seeing a project through to the end I have had only minor success in this regard. However, saying all that, when I created the original version of Aliens: Redacted I was mind-blown by just how 'right' every aspect of development was, it was honestly like nothing I had experienced before, aspects that I wanted to implement I did (even with my limited knowledge at the time) and I did not come across almost any pitfalls during that initial game development (no seriously, I wrote about it HERE back in 2024).

I can honestly sit here and write that in regard to the development of the REDUX...It was absolutely nothing like the original. I came across MANY pitfalls. Both in the development of the game itself and real life aspects that affected the former. You can read about my mixed 2025 HERE so I won't tread over things I've already said before so I'll just say that moving to a new house, mixed with my GPU biting the dust near the end of 2025 meant that development was almost completed halted for a good 4-5 months and it was a near constant grind to get the game out on Alien day which I was adamant it would be released on, no matter the state it was in.

The familiar tropes of 'feature creep' and 'skill issues' became something of a regular occurrence during the creation of the remake. One of my missteps during development was not taking the time to layout specific features that I wanted in the game. I knew generally what I wanted to change and what I felt would be 'cool' to add but not taking that time to map anything out really did have an affect later into development which led to a lengthier development time as I became bogged down with attempting to implement features that did not really add much to the game itself.

A couple of examples that I have for this is that quite late on into development I had the idea of implementing a weapon wheel into the game. Something that I believed would better help the quality of life of the player who'd be able to quickly switch weapons and also add to the 'cool' factor. Now in other, more main stream engine a weapon wheel is something of an easy implementation but for the EFPSE engine it was something that had never really been done before so it would take quite a bit of trial and error to implement and make sure it functioned properly. This feature was probably something that I spent over a month trying to get into the game and also make it look nice and I never did quite achieve. It was a feature that by the end of development I ended up leaving out. I had some clarity on the project as a whole and figured that it was still kind of 'janky' and didn't really add much to the game. It was about a month of development that could have been spent either polishing an existing aspect of the game or working on something that would add a meaningful mechanic to the game.

Another feature that I did actually implement but, with hindsight, probably wouldn't have, was the 'bullet-time' ability. This was something that I had seen featured in other projects and thought it would be an amazing addition to my game. I've always loved 'slow-mo' all the way back in Max Payne where it was made popular and I spent a good 4 weeks or so creating, implementing and attempting to perfect the mechanic so that every kill seemed 'cool' if it was activated. It was also heavily used in the marketing of the game (included in the trailer HERE) and I honestly thought it was going to be seen by players as one of the more interesting additions to the REDUX version of the game.

However, what I found after starting to receive feedback after the games release was that the 'bullet-time' feature was barely used by the players. Many felt it was a mechanic that was not integral to the game and one that they would often forget to use in the heat of combat. I realised from the whole experience that it is always best to plan out what features and mechanics you want to implement into your game and if there's something you think of while during development, that you thoroughly do research into whether It adds anything to the core experience or not. Things can always be implemented after launch in subsequent version updates.

Preparing to launch...

so, the game was finally in a state that I was happy to release it in, not that it mattered much, my hard release date of Alien day (26th April) was here and no matter what state the game was in it was going to be released. Unlike the first game, in which I had zero strategy for post launch I actually went into the launch of the REDUX with a bit of a plan.

I looked at the avenues in which I got traction from the original version and decided to target that for this new version. I decided to look towards Reddit which, if used correctly, can be an amazing tool for marketing without having to pay a penny. I collated all of the sub-reddits that relate to either indie game development, or discuss the universe of the Alien franchise and I created tailor-made posts that conformed to each sub-reddit. it's worth noting that all sub-reddits have their own rules when it comes to promotion so it is always best to read the rules and re-write each post to best fit within those rules. If the rules seem confusing or you're unsure on any of them always consider giving the mods a message to clarify.

One of the things the was a real surprise with the launch of the first game was that I actually had website write articles about the launch, this was completely unexpected and honestly, some of these website boosted the visibility of the game to heights that I never expected (for me anyway). So i did a little digging into what website wrote articles by either checking what URL the traffic was coming from or by literally Googling the game name and seeing what results came up. Once I had my list of websites and their contact info (there was about 4 websites in total) I once again wrote a bespoke email to each website. Laying out who i was, why I was emailing and if they'd be interested in covering my new game.

Post-launch statistics...

I came to the end of the project fully knowing how much of a 'fluke' the originals minor popularity was and the chances of this version of the game surpassing that was very slim so in terms of my post-launch expectations. I wanted it to do better, I knew it was a better game, but I did not have any expectations that it was going to surpass the original in terms views and downloads.

This expectation turned out to be correct, although that is not to say that I was disappointed by the numbers the game done. I was actually very happy, my marketing on Reddit and various websites worked as the first day saw a huge spike in views and downloads with Aliens: Redacted REDUX quickly becoming my second most viewed and downloaded game after the original.

A list of my games Views and Downloads on itch.io as of 30.05.26

I was also very happy with the feedback I received for the game. I had made some core changes to the gameplay compared to the original so I was slightly nervous of how it would be received but for the most part, players reacted very positively to the changes especially the manual save feature and the changes that were made to the enemy AI.

Views and download graph since the beginning of the launch of the REDUX version and the expected drop-off after that.

All in all I would say that the launch and the feedback for the game went very well. It is closer to the original vision of the game that I had and I am happy to be able to close this chapter of game development knowing that I gave people the version of the game that I originally intended and hopefully, both versions are different enough (and enjoyable enough) to be played seperately without one needing to overtake the other.

What I learned...

The whole experience of making this game is something that I feel will stick with me for a while. For both good and bad reasons and the lessons learnt from this development cycle will carry forward into any future projects. I learnt that having an actual pre-production cycle works really well with keeping yourself on the straight and narrow and avoiding the dreaded feature creep from rearing it's ugly head. I also found some inner fortitude from myself, the ability to dive back in to the project and actually get it finished after such a long hiatus away. I had no idea it was inside of me and that gives me so much positivity knowing that just because you stop working on a project doesn't mean that it's dead in the water. Projects can always be revisited with the right motivation.

Thank you for reading :)