Loca Deserta

The Loca Deserta interactive fiction game has almost reached 900 registered users. New players mainly use web version of the game. I am more than happy I selected Flutter as the framework for buildings this application. I can now share identical code between iOS, Android and Web targets.

The fourth interactive story 'Last battle at Berestechko, 1651' was published just few days ago. Currently only available in Ukrainian.

I also started a new game in city building genre: 'Loca Deserta: Sloboda'. In this game you will lead the new settlement on the edge of Ukrainian Wild Frontier in XVII century. The main feature of the game is events. They are generated based on stats of your settlement and on your actions. For example, if you raid the enemies lands, then you can get resources and glory, but at the same time enemy can revenge you next Spring...

The goal of the game is to send resources to the Cossack Sich. Efforts from all players are added and you will be able to reach certain achievements.

The Loca Deserta interactive fiction game has almost reached 900 registered users. New players mainly use web version of the game. I am more than happy I selected Flutter as the framework for buildings this application. I can now share identical code between iOS, Android and Web targets.

The fourth interactive story 'Last battle at Berestechko, 1651' was published just few days ago. Currently only available in Ukrainian.

I also started a new game in city building genre: 'Loca Deserta: Sloboda'. In this game you will lead the new settlement on the edge of Ukrainian Wild Frontier in XVII century. The main feature of the game is events. They are generated based on stats of your settlement and on your actions. For example, if you raid the enemies lands, then you can get resources and glory, but at the same time enemy can revenge you next Spring...

The goal of the game is to send resources to the Cossack Sich. Efforts from all players are added and you will be able to reach certain achievements.

This week we reached 360 of total sign ups (and plays) for our interactive fiction game.

We released "Creator update" a month ago. It allows to create your own interactive stories on your mobile with a simple interface. Our second story "Massacre in Hotin (1621 year)" was 100% written in it. This proves that an interactive story can be written by using the smartphone. The second story is available only in Ukrainian, but the translation to English is on the way.

Another major development is done for the web version of the interactive story platform: a beta version of online editor is available: https://locadeserta.com/beta/#/. It has two stories for example. We plan to invest all our time in it, so the features will appear daily.

Writing our second story exclusively in our app on the smartphone was a huge verification point for our product.

Users of the Loca Deserta interactive fiction app can now create their own stories and play them. We have huge plans to allow to publish stories for public access.

The interface is simple and anyone can create story by using only his/her smartphone!

You can download it from Google Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gladimdim.locadeserta&hl=en_US

and from Apple App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/locad-deserta/id1468068398

This week we have finished translation of the main story in English language.

Also we got 250 registered users. They generated more than 70 saved stories.

I also added a new feature: export of the story to the PDF document. I have plans on creating a central place where readers can post their stories and view others.

In September we plan to have a fully translated into English version the first chapter. The UI already supports three languages: Ukrainian, English, Polish. The second chapter is being in the development too, so there will be some delay between releasing Ukrainian and English versions.

Our interactive fiction game has crossed 220 sign ups this week! The numbers are amazing, as the story is not yet translated to the English and is available only in Ukrainian. There are 50+ stories saved. This means at least 25% of signed up users played the game.

We checked the saved stories, a lot of people finished Chapter 1! That means we have to plan the Chapter 2 for the autumn.

I spent a couple weeks to port interactive-fiction engine API to the Objective-C and we were finally ready to release the game on Apple App Store. The game was approved pretty fast. We were surprised with the amount app store impressions: 16000 in first day.

After several months of night coding and writing, we finally managed to release our interactive fiction game to the Google Play. The selection of Flutter framework for native development was a great choice. As we shared the same code base for iOS and Google Play.

The released version has only Ukrainian version of the story, but we have plans to translate it to the English and Polski.

It all started with a random talk with my colleague, Konstantin. I wanted to created some interactive fiction game about 17th century. I told him about the idea, and so he thought - why not. After some discussion we came to an interactive fiction format, which is even more interesting, because he got a chance to write multiple variations of the story and let the reader choose what happens. Like in any creative process, there are ups and downs, but working in collaboration makes things easier for me, because there’s always a partner to discuss any issue or help staying committed to the result. This project really helps me to vent some of my untapped ideas and expectations and brings that feeling of fulfillment required to stay afloat in a turbulent stream of daily grinds.

We agreed that the game was designed to be consumed on mobile devices. I noticed that I used less and less the 'classic' PC/laptop to read books or articles, play games. Almost all of my consumption of information is done via smartphone. So the choice to be mobile first was obvious for us.