Miniature Minigolf

MINIATURE  MINIGOLF, originally, was a limited top-down minigolf game with miniature art visuals titled "Vivid Minigolf". 

It was first made, foolishly, in a program called 'Gamesalad' that imposed a very arbitrary 10mb limit on HTML5 games. The original version of this game was showcased on an old now-defunct site, now replaced with the [unfinished, only partly revised] MiniatureMinigolf.com, but the Gamesalad Arcade version - the original game - effectively no longer exists because Gamesalad was discontinued.

Well, since 2014 I have rebuilt that game's essential interactions in an entirely different engine for HD with largely the same but far less compressed charming scale miniature art graphics and new courses and holes in the works. The game is solved, essentially, in critical core interaction terms and design... now with only scattered minor bugs remaining to quash. And I think they can be fixed soon.

My aim now is to fix assorted remaining issues/bugs in the last few courses/holes, and get multiplayer - real online asynchronous multiplayer, not just hotseat - working across every course. As of summer 2023, the expansion of my ambitions with this project to make online multiplayer WORK in time for release, plus the month or so of delays sorting through the mess caused by the change in domain name and project title... I know, you're asking, how can there be that much work involved in changing a game title? And then the implications hit - Steam stuff all needs to be changed, ad graphics, banner graphics, ttile imagery in the game and on the website, on this Itch.IO page, all the links across my entire network replaced, a revised trailer posted on YouTube, and somehow, somehow making it clear what's going on across the existing audience to lose as few of them as possible - across email lists, social media, etc. I would NOT have changed the title if I had a choice, certainly not now, but the fact is that my old web HostGator held the original domain name hostage and then flat-out stole it from me. And there's a warning for you - don't use any visible, obvious hosting provider (GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost...) that's been bought out by EIG [ENDURANCE INTERNATIONAL GROUP] because they ruin everything they ever touch. DO NOT trust ads or random hosting review sites, those review sites are making money as affiliates of EIG and their recommendations are nearly always garbage. If your hosting platform is bought out by EIG, get out immediately. Transfer all your site content and domain names to a non-EIG provider and do not wait. FYI*

I now aim to get the base nine hole game posted here for free very soon. 

Plus the Steam page, will be visible along with new trailer, fixed website, in the next month or two. 

The base nine hole course version, free from the start, sooner than you'd think, but there is a plan to make an ongoing, expanding set of courses in a paid version. It is possible to pay for the full version even now at a discount (before even the free one is posted) and anybody doing so... you have my thanks.

I want to get the following six elaborate new courses in addition to the initial base nine hole course,   done for the initial total  batch of seven different  nine-hole courses:

- desert (Southwest, a lot of sand and cacti, rattlesnakes, rugged rock features, etc)

- Japan (think Japanese garden golf course where sand traps look more like a Zen garden, trees, bamboo, waterfalls..)

-a summer forest course that feels a bit more like a realistic standard styled golf course with emphasis on nature and greenery everywhere. Plus other 'amenities' of a suburban country club sort.

-winter (slope of a snowy mountain, snowy pines, ice as an occasional obstacle with lowered friction, opposite of sand that would slow the ball. This course even has a cabin with a campfire outside it...)

- Hawaiian tropical isle with lush palms, flowering bushes, ferns, water and beaches and a volcano even... )

-Autumn forest (fall trees, with colorful falling leaves and a creek, the occasional deer)

--- That is the first six planned new course additions. Nine holes each. I once hoped to have this ready to go by end of May 2023 but all the debugging processes are taking longer than expected, feature creep [multiplayer especially!], is slowing things down, and the domain thing sure did not help either. Every new playtesting session seems to be uncovering some sort of weird edge case that messes something up, so the progress towards 'completely bug free for most players' never seems to be achieved entirely. And realistically, likely never will be, but hopefully I'll get close enough that the game *works as expected most of the time for most of the players*.  

This title though, may be ready to release fairly soon. October or November 2023 is the current realistic target. No longer is Summer 2023 likely at all. As release approaches and more visuals are revealed, the price will climb further - topping out at $3.99 at launch here and on Steam, or $3.59 in the week leading up to release. For now though? Still under $3 given the preorder status and how little has so far been showed publicly.

Eventually, of course, the cost to buy the game will drop again, at least during sales, but the option to claim it will almost certainly not be this cheap again until 2024.

So the game's near ready... exciting? I have figured out a careful way to scratch build as much as possible and cheat cleverly wherever I could on the visuals without compromising the final visual result. Sometimes that means some objects are the wrong scale because that is cheaper and they're *frequently* now photographed as separate elements against flat keyable backing, scaled to match the rest of the scene. Often the materials are cheap stuff that is carefully built into a form that looks a bit more impressive than what it was actually made with. And often I design courses around what I already have material and supply wise, some of that related to papercraft kit showcases or Miniature Multiverse, so all this brings additional (remaining) cost of assembling six new courses to, about $2 per hole or $18 more for each nine hole course. (On average - some cost less, some a bit more)

Beyond that, even, more courses, some more costly and impressive, may be added over time in free updates for all existing buyers. I'm also aiming for a Steam release of the full game too, roughly coinciding with the full itch.io release. I considered waiting on Steam due to the fee involved but decided to go for that at the same time as the itch.io and Gamejolt releases. 

Plus, the free base demo version could also end up somewhere like Newgrounds, Kongregate, and of course VividMinigolf.com. I have the ability to make it run in a web browser, so... yeah. I might even have an .apk Android app version available at some point down the road. 

Any assistance you all can provide with preorders or later purchases around launch could have some big impact on this, but it will also have an effect on the other titles I'm developing. I am financing this myself as usual, but... if it succeeds I will make sure to add more courses to this game. 

$1000+ in sales: American course with focus on various natural regions of the US from the bayous of Louisiana, to the Midwest heartland, to Alaskan wilderness, Yellowstone, California, NY & Texas. 

$2300+ in sales: European course showcasing numerous locales from Italy to France, Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Iceland, Scotland... and more.

$3500+ in sales: Around the rest of the world - jungles of the Amazon, Australian outback, India, China, Russia, Egypt, and some other surprise spots! 

$5000+: Imagined future settings from cyberpunk to solarpunk to various planets! Minigolf on the moon, Mars and more. Of course lasers and robots will be involved.

These may seem like high sales thresholds the game would have to reach but actually half the games tagged 'mini golf' on Steam have exceeded $5000 in sales so all I really have to do is somehow get this just barely in the top 50% in this niche and it will not be a problem. But whether it even gets close to there depends on all of you and whether the handcrafted aesthetic is appealing to any of you. If it is, and you buy and review the game positively at launch, it could (I hope) be expanded massively over the next two years or so, while also propelling future projects to massively improved speed of development, larger scope, and higher quality.

I'll be posting a new trailer and a Steam game page this month (March 2023), just a few weeks before the release. Note that right now it's still possible to preorder for $2.75 (or less during sales) and that for St. Parrick's Day in particular you can preorder this while also doing so with all my other indie game projects, and grab a MASSIVE amount of stock media stuff in the process,

I've done my research. I do have a strategy in place. But it won't work without your decision to help make this game and other later games of mine, thrive.

Get ready to wishlist Miniature Minigolf on Steam soon!