Hello drinkers!

When I decided to keep working on Trago ( after the GGJ 2016 ) to evolve my narrative skills I was sure about releasing the game as a commercial project. But in the middle of the development I started minding about how risked would be did not have a free version to exposure the game.

The idea of the Weekly version came from a friend of mine, he’s talking about how cool would be if the time inside Trago was related with the real clock, so players only play the monday chapters at real mondays. I took his concept and decided to test it here on Gamejolt.

Some points that encouraged me to test:

• Great context with the story flow of the game. Trago is a game about the last four days of Juca’s life, why don’t split the gameplay into four real days?

• Keep it free! The giraffe believes the power of free distribution will help bring new players to Trago, making the game more accessible.

• The free distribution will encourage people to bought the Premium version. (At least, that’s what I believe).

The Test Results

The test lasted 5 months with 386 download and with not much feedback about the distribution. I made a score board for each day so I could control who was coming back and who don’t, must part don’t.

The Hook

So “…why don’t split the gameplay into four real days? “. Well I can tell you why. I couldn’t create a big hook for all the chapters, a Hook is an important event in your narrative or gameplay that gets the player attention and make him curious or excited about something.

The Hook Timing

After almost an year developing Trago I figure out something, the biggest hook of my game only happen in the end of it, and that was causing a lot of problems.

Here’s what was happening: The player did not know what is their purpose with the bar until the last chapter, they spent all the chapters trying to find this purpose, and when it finally happened, the hook was not strong to cover the lack of goal in the previous chapters.

Not all games needs a Hook, but if you trying to build a narrative one, make sure the player will know what is his goal in the first 1/4 of story.

Why take out the Weekly Version?

Trago is evolving, and I understood a conflicting between the weekly and the premium version. I could not create four big hooks on my narrative to make people return next day, this would weaken my biggest hook and create a monotomy on the premium version.

That’s why I decided to end with this version. But I have plans for other way to distribute the game free, wait for it. (: