Space Frigates
A browser based, multiplayer space shooter
Wow! I was watching TV last night with the family and got an alert that somebody logged in to play. So I grabbed my laptop and jumped on. There was somebody there and was enjoying playing against them.
Then, new players kept jumping in. Which is very unusual because I don't get any traffic yet. After like ten people joined I figured something most be going on. I checked out Google Analytics and saw that people were coming over from Hacker News! Somebody unexpectedly posted a link to the game there. Sweet!
I was up until 3:00am resizing and spinning up VMs on Digital Ocean to try to keep the game working as hundreds of people started joining. The game is still not really keeping up.
I'm still kind of in shock. You hear about this happening to other people but still was not expecting it. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what to even do next. The most I had ever tested with was like 5 users. My total visits last year was like 160 and since last night I've had over 8000 visitors!
Since www.SpaceFrigates.com is an online, multiplayer game I've been anxious to encounter somebody in the game for the first time. (somebody that is not a friend or family member that I begged to log on ;-) )
Tonight was that first encounter! It was brief but super rewarding anyway.
Because the game is new and I really have not marketed it at all I get very little traffic. So the odds of a random encounter is really small.
So what I did is put out an update today that integrates with Twillio. Then, whenever somebody connects I send an SMS warning message to myself.
A few hours later I got my first text and quickly in logged in. Sure enough, first contact!!! I don't think the folks at SETI will be more excited when they encounter their first ET! :-)
I really, really wish I had a way to communicate with that person. I think I am going to quickly add a chat feature. The game is already streaming data so shouldn't be too difficult.
I know I have a very long way to go from here but was a pretty awesome milestone anyway.
I future milestone is that I need to turn the SMS warning back off because of all the traffic! :-)
I've been working on Space Frigates as a hobby project for several years. Discovering Indie Hackers inspired me try to turn this project into something more. I'm hoping to figure out how to attract potential players to try to the game. And as I continue to improve the game, maybe generate a little revenue.
2 Comments
That's great news! I can't imagine how you must feel, but this is what happens when you dare to put yourself and your work out there. There's the possibility that it will be found, and for you it was! Congratulations on your hard work getting noticed and kudos for getting up and tending to your users!
Yea, it was very exciting! I do feel badly that I was not prepared better. My landing page horrible and the game is just not ready to handle that kind of scale yet.
But, I did learn a lot and got lots of feedback. Plus a definitive list of things to do next.
So hopeful I just keep pushing forwarding and be better prepared for next time.