Goldbar Games Store and Patreon

Overview

During the latter half of last year, we tried developing some smaller games to test the waters on mobile devices. While these games were insightful from a development perspective, it still seemed apparent that people want more of Detective Butler 2 than anything else. Therefore, we've been spending all of 2018 working on Detective Butler 2 thus far, and we will continue doing so until the game is finished.

However, as development will likely take several more months, it only makes sense that we need some other means of funding development. Otherwise, development could slow down to a crawl because of taking on other responsibilities. We do need to pay the bills and put food on the table, after all.

So after months of consideration, and weeks of preparation, we are excited to reveal the new and improved Goldbar Games Store, as well as our brand-new Patreon account.

The Store

The Goldbar Games Store is where you will find all kinds of fun merchandise related to your favorite Goldbar Games title. As of right now we have a small but varied selection of items. We plan to add many more items over time. Let us know what else you'd like to see, we'll put it up on the storefront!

Each page on the store groups items together by game. So at the moment we have sections dedicated to Detective Butler and Snowball Saves Christmas. We also have a general section for the company logo, if you really like it that much. More sections will be added as we release more games.

By the way, make sure to subscribe to our mailing list to be alerted of any discounts or sales going on. There is also a button near the bottom of the store page that lets you view prices in your local currency (if it is not automatically detected). And if you do purchase something, don't forget to leave a review to let other customers know what you think of it!

Patreon

Several blog posts ago, I mentioned that Patreon had been a consideration of mine. At the time, I felt like it would not be a wise decision, because I did not want to promise anything I couldn't deliver. But now I am confident in a release date for Detective Butler 2 later this year, and I will be posting plenty of screenshots and videos to make joining Patreon worth your time.

I tried to make the Patreon perks things that wouldn't detract from development time. Also, I generally dislike the idea of locking out content to fans, so I tried to come up with some perks that wouldn't drive forth any sort of "elitism" in the community. However, these perks are well worth having, so let me go over them a bit here.

The smallest level (one dollar) is a simple thank-you, as well as access to anything I might post on Patreon. I don't have any specific plans for what I might post, but I will likely run polls to determine plans for the near future, and so if you want a say in those polls then it's only fair to make a small investment into our business.

At three dollars, your name will be placed in the credits of any game we release while your pledge is active. This rule is defined so that we can continue making monthly games (and so, if you want to be included in the credits of every monthly game, you should pledge on this level). However, as I said, due to the increased interest in Detective Butler 2, that is what we are currently focusing on right now. If you're truly more interested in small monthly games, then let us know and we'll make one happen.

At five dollars, you will earn a 25% discount at the Goldbar Games Store, regardless of the time of year. You can also earn a 40% discount at the 15-dollar tier. So if you really want to go on a shopping spree, it might be better to pledge on this tier before doing so!

At ten dollars, you will gain beta access to any game that enters the beta testing phase while your pledge is active. Again, this rule was primarily designed for monthly games, but if you are interested in playing the beta version of Detective Butler 2 then you might want to board this tier.

Finally, at the $20 tier you will gain access to a behind the scenes documentary video showing our progress over the past month. In these videos we will explain our design choices and how we implemented things into whatever game we were currently working on. These videos are intended to be interesting looks into game development as well as partial tutorials for those who are interested in learning about what we do.

Conclusion

For the month of March we will continue to work on Detective Butler 2, and so we'll do a write-up about it closer toward the end of the month. Primarily so far we have focused on integrating last month's writing with the gameplay elements. It's going to be fun!

Thank you very much for your support. See you then!