What launch week taught us
A week after Warden's Lantern went out the door: the numbers, the bugs, the emails, and the one puzzle everyone got stuck on.
Warden's Lantern has been out for about four weeks now. Here's what we learned.
The numbers (as much as we'll say)
Enough to keep the lights on and pay rent. Not enough to hire anyone. About what we hoped for and slightly less than we feared. We're not breaking it out by platform because the numbers would be boring — they're in line with every small indie release you've ever read about.
The bugs
We shipped with one soft-lock on iPad. Patched in 24 hours. We shipped with a fog-memory counter that reset on chapter transitions — that one was our fault and we fixed it in 1.0.2. No save corruption, which we are quietly very proud of.
The emails
We read about 600 emails in the first week. Most were lovely. A few were bug reports we acted on. Two were from people who wrote to say the game reminded them of their grandparents' house, which is the reason we make games.
The puzzle
Chapter three, room six — the one with two mirrors and a shutter — is the one 40% of players got stuck on. We talked about patching it. We're not going to. It's hard on purpose. The keeper whose journal accompanies that chapter writes about being stuck on the same problem for eleven days in 1938, and we think if you're going to be stuck somewhere, you might as well be stuck there.
What's next
Free winter chapter ("The Drowned Keeper") coming in December. Paperline work starts in earnest this month. See you then.