Hey everyone! Been pretty busy over here, but I've got some exciting stuff to announce in the coming months...

Until then, here's some cool stuff that's happened since the last DevLog in April:

My Next Game

I've been trying to post screenshots and GIFs of my next game on my Bluesky account for Screenshot Saturday.

The game is currently referred to as "Codename: Blood" publicly, but I've settled on a title that I'll reveal at a later date. It's an arcade-y maze game with elements of Auto-Shooter/Bullet Heaven/Whatever we're calling works inspired by Vampire Survivors games.

I've brought on a pixel artist to make the game look fantastic, and I'm happy to announce here that the composer for Luck be a Landlord will be returning to make music tracks for Codename: Blood!

I'm really excited to share more with you once I'm able to, so keep an eye out in my discord or subscribe to this newsletter if you'd like to learn more.

Fantastic Fanworks

Here are some awesome creations made by fans of Luck be a Landlord:

A fun and open source emoji slots game, inspired by Luck be a Landlord

Emoji Slots

open-source mobile-friendly deckbuilder

My high score is 11,188. Can you beat it?

A symbol texture pack mod, by the lead pixel artist for Fields of Mistria

Steam Workshop::Alina’s Symbol Pack

STEAM

The pixel art in Fields of Mistria is fantastic, so it was extremely cool to see the lead pixel artist/animator for that game redesign every Luck be a Landlord in her style. It was even cooler to see her upload her work as a Steam Workshop mod that anyone can download and use!

A few academic papers by a PhD student

What Developers Want: Visualising game reviews analysis

ScienceOpenXinge Tong

View of Machine Learning Analysis of Player Reviews and Video Game Development: What Information is useful for Games Developers?

Unravelling Player’s Insights: A Comparative Analysis of Topic Modelling Techniques on Game Reviews and Video Game Developers’ Perspectives

Game reviews function as an important customercreated resource for game studies as they allow practitioners and developers to analyse players’opinions.Despite this,there are few studies that under take comparative evaluations of topic modelling approaches in the context of video game data analysis or assess the results’ practical efficacy. Accordingly, this paper aims to evaluate the performance of three topic modelling algorithms LDA, NMF and BERTopic–as utilised within game reviews study and further to examine the results’ reception within the video game industry. This study first uses the game No Man’s Sky as a case study to evaluate the performance of different models in the same game context. According to our experiments based on Steam game reviews, the topic’s Uci coherence score as identified by the BERTopic model can reach 0.279, which is higher than the other two models, with the extracted keywords allowing humans to interpret the themes when mapping them to original reviews. Semi-structured interviews with seven developers are then presented which demonstrate that the information we provided is useful to improve their games and track players’ opinions.

IEEE Xplore

I gave an interview with the aforementioned PhD student who was collecting research for her studies. I barely graduated from high school, so (indirectly) contributing to academic research is something I never imagined would happen to me. I don't understand most of the very intelligent writing in these papers, so let's move on to some much less intelligent writing!

Articles I've Written

Since the last DevLog I've written a few articles for this newsletter. Covering topics such as the game being banned in South Korea (again)...

Luck be a Landlord is banned in South Korea (again)

Previously, Luck be a Landlord was banned on the Google Play Store in 13 countries, with Google stating that Luck be a Landlord “contains content that doesn’t comply with the Gambling policy.” One of those countries was South Korea, where more than 20% of my game’s mobile revenue was coming

The TrampolineTales NewsletterDaniel DiIorio

...my first time having a booth at a convention...

My First Convention Booth - Postmortem

I showcased my game, Luck be a Landlord, at PopCon Indy last weekend! Was it worth it? Let’s crunch some numbers and find out! The Money One-time Expenses These are expenses that I have no way of re-using for future events. For example, the cost of electricity at the convention

The TrampolineTales NewsletterDaniel DiIorio

...how to email YouTubers and get them to play your game...

How to email YouTubers and get them to play your game

My game, Luck be a Landlord, has been featured in hundreds of YouTube videos. This contributed immensely to my overall sales, and the game would not have been a financial success if so many YouTubers hadn’t featured my game (thanks!). This begs the question many indie gamedevs ask: “How do

The TrampolineTales NewsletterDaniel DiIorio

...and the game being unbanned in South Korea (again). A lot's happened!

Luck be a Landlord is unbanned in South Korea (again)

Hopefully this is the last time I have to make a post about this. The Backstory Back in August of 2023, Luck be a Landlord was banned in 13 countries on the Google Play Store. One of these countries was South Korea, where a decent percentage of my game’s mobile

The TrampolineTales NewsletterDaniel DiIorio

I've gotten some nice emails about these articles, especially the one explaining the way I email YouTubers. If you've got any thoughts about these articles, my games, etc. feel free to shoot me an email. I try to respond to all of them.

Until next time!

-Dan