Biology Battle has been the hard work of me and my team for the last 11 months.

It’s come a long way, from being a Geometry Wars clone, to today, just 19 days from it’s launch on Xbox Live Community Games.

SCRUM

About a month ago, we switched to SCRUM, an agile development methodology. This was so we could optimize our schedule to work towards what was then an “unknown launch date” for XBLCG. Only a few days later, the November 19th go live date for XBLCG was announced, so we had tangable dates to work towards.

We are using sprints of 2 weeks in durration, with the last sprint set to end November 14th, and as our last sprint, it focuses on polishing everything to 110%. especially gameplay mechanics.

We are currently on our 2nd to last sprint, ending tomorrow. This sprint we are finishing up the remaining major feature work: the global leaderboard and the last multiplayer versus level.

After launch i’ll spend some time to do a post mortum of the game, and include some more in-depth technical details, but for the next 19 days I’m in crunch time, and so wont be around much to enjoy this grand old internet

One of the main reasons I decided to pursue a “full, retail version” of Biology Battle is that I wanted to submit a game to Microsoft’s Dream Build Play (DBP) contest.

The submission deadline for DBP was back in September. My team was busy working right up to the deadline to put out as great of a game as possible.

Technically, I really believe that Biology Battle is one of the, or perhaps *the* most sophisticated XNA game. There is really so much going on that it is astounding. This required a huge amount of effort performance tuning for the XBox’s Compact.NET (CF) framework, and I hope this technical feat wasnt lost on the DBP judges.

The gameplay, well honestly the game still isnt done, so the version we sent to DBP over a month ago is playable, but lacks a lot of the polish that makes the current version really shine. So while I would honestly be supprised if we get first place at DBP, we are still busy adding some really great features to improve the gamer experience, such as a global topscore list and local VERSUS multiplayer tournements. So I’m sure that the release this November 19th (3 weeks!) will be fantastic, and I hope will be *THE* best XBLCG game out at launch.

That said, the DBP finalists will be announced in a few days. If we make the top 10, I will be very, very happy, and I think it will help get the word out about Biology Battle.

If we do not make the top 10, I’ll actually be quite surprised, but I will otherwise reserve judgment until I see the games that do make the top 10

One of the biggest reasons we got around to fixing our blogs website is the need for marketing.

We have spent about 1 year working on Biology Battle, and so it would be a shame if all that hard work (and great game) went to waste because the gamers (Be them “core” or “casual”) dont even know the game exists, and will be on xbox360 in less than a month.

I’ve spent some time on the XNA forums asking questions like “how much do you think this game is worth?” in an attempt to figure out a proper price point. (FYI, MSFT will allow us to charge 200, 400, or 800 points for our game: $2.5, $5, or $10 respectively). So far, I’m starting to think the $10 price would be best, just because of the awesome features we are rolling out into the game over the next month (which are only hinted at in the PC demo).

This post is about marketing?

So yes, back to marketing. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• Forum Posts: We have started posting to various game related forums,
• Sent PC Demo to review sites: we sent copies of the PC demo for review at various game sites. Though in order to get better responses, we will probably have to send them the full version as soon as it’s done, including sending them msft points to play the game “for real” on xbox live come launch date.
• XBLCG Launch Title: Our game is scheduled to be one of the launch titles of the new XBox Live Experience, this Nov 19th, and so hopefully the novelty of XBLCG will get it some attention
• Dream Build Play (DBP) entry: we entered as a contestant in the September DBP contest sponsored by Microsoft. Unfortunately we haven’t heard the results of this yet, so it’s still unknown if we will get any positive press release from this, but I’m hopeful our game will be in the top 10 (at least) so there’s a chance for press coverage due to this.
• Google Adwords: we are going to do an adwords campaign, hopefully to get the word out about our game to what I consider the “target market” via words I think the target searches for. Since this will by first foray into Adwords, I’m sure we’ll miss the target the first few weeks/months, but we better start learning this system now, “it’s a strange new world” out there folks.
• Blog: And last but not least, this blog. I wanted to have a blog for myself, my company, and my employees for a long time, and we did for a short while, but for various reasons the old system didn’t work. This time around I’m going for the “hosted site/service” model, which I’m hoping means we wont suffer the technical problems that plagued the old site. Though unfortunately this also means less customization options, which is rather disappointing as I want this blog to be shared by perhaps 15 people at my company…

In conclusion:

I’m not a marketing guy, Phil (our marketing guy) is. I have enough business experience to recognize this as being critical to a successful launch and lifetime for any product, and I recognize (and now fully appreciate) how difficult it is to market effectively. Let’s see how the next month, leading up to our Nov 19th launch goes. It’ll be an interesting ride, to say the least.

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Biology Battle is a fun and addictive shooting arcade, will be launching on XBLA Community this coming November.

Be the first to try this game on PC! Even before its official release on Xbox Live!

Download the PC pre-release version here.

And in the full version, enjoy the multiplayer fun, dazzling effects, and win a prize for the top scorers in the global leader board.

October 2008

games.novaleaf.com

We have released a PC Demo of our first game:  Biology Battle!

You can download the demo from the game’s main page:  http://games.novaleaf.com/biology-battle

Please give it a try, and let us know what you think!  (A feedback form will popup at the end of the demo)

Biology Battle is a launch title of XBLCG, and will be available for all XBox 360’s worldwide this November 19th.