11 years ago I released my 1st ever game on the Wii U - ZaciSa's Last Stand - A Tower Defense game
11 years ago I released my 1st ever game on the Wii U - ZaciSa's Last Stand - A Tower Defense game
Wanted to share this little anniversary with everyone here with the game that started it all for my little gamedev hobby of mine. Originally released as "ZaciSa's Last Stand" in North America on July 3rd, 2014 on the Nintendo Wii U eShop and eventually renamed to "ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension!" for European/Australian release a year later and kept that new name when it came to Steam many years later.
This was a Tower Defense game that I hand drew with crayons where I had no idea what I was doing for it when it released. Originally had only 4 maps, 2 game modes and was laggy/had performance issues. Nintendo Life gave it a 4/10 when i released, and honestly that was accurate lol. Over the years, and by the time it released in EU/AU, I greatly improved it with more game modes, over 10 maps and the performance was finally smooth with mostly being 60fps (only dipping in late game levels). By that point Nintendo Life gave it a 6/10 for it's EU/AU release, progress!
This was a fun 1st introduction to me as a gamedev hobby and I worked on the game for years to come with even more features and fun additions. Eventually even re-released the game on Steam recently with a redesigned interface and even more maps & now 5 game modes to have fun with. Was fun reworking and adding onto the game over these last 11 years.
I wonder about the development process how hard it was to Get it on Wii U (cause publishing to console isn't easy)
I entered Nintendo ecosystem on the Wii U via the "Nintendo Web Framework" program, which was for Unity/HTML5 devs (My games, even the current Steam ones are HTML5 code). Actually, getting into the program was pretty easy. (Maybe a little too easy with some questionable devs posting petty stuff in the Nintendo private dev forums lol).
The Wii U devkit cost $2,000 which didn't have to be paid back for a year (helped a lot). The whole Nintendo Lotcheck process was def the hardest part. A lot of paperwork (excel docs) and setup required. Plus once you compile & submit, even more info is needed, then you wait like 2 weeks to make sure all is good. Took me like 6 tries to get it approved first, I had NO IDEA what I was doing at first, I was a big newb.
Steam in comparison is super super easy (maybe a little confusing and took me a little bit to set up first, but now I can set up new games super quickly).
Very interesting insights. Thank you for sharing!
Having a game out there on any platform is super cool. I love the art style, too!
Thanks! I had no graphical abilities, so was fun hand drawing these abstract things and all the various colorful maps haha