Hello, I’m Crafty Olive.
Shrimprium, the shrimp aquarium simulation game I’ve been making, has finally reached a reasonable level of completion as a game and is moving into the app stage.
Every feature I built sparked another idea, and every bug I fixed revealed something else I wanted to improve. So, honestly, it wasn’t easy to say the game was done. But amid the endless cycle of game development, I judged that I had reached a point I could be reasonably satisfied with, and decided to move on to the next stage.
What I’ve newly run into at this stage isn’t simply wrapping a web game in an app. It’s all the preparation needed to run the game as a service.
Shrimprium includes community features that let players share and visit each other’s tanks. That meant I had to consider reporting, blocking and moderation tools to keep inappropriate content from being shown, and also think through sanctions for players who cheat or abuse the system.
I also built a number of safeguards so that no player loses shrimp they’ve worked hard to raise because of an unexpected bug or a save error. Autosave, recovery structures, server-side saving: I’m finding that these operational features, which were hard to see while I was making the game, matter more than I expected.
For now, I’m planning to launch on the App Store first. That required a MacBook, so a few days ago I took the plunge and bought one. It felt like a bit much to invest in a side project, but I think it will come in handy for the follow-up projects I have in mind. Whether it’s experimental development tied to research papers or utility development, next time I’d like to try a project closer to the refrigeration and HVAC industry.
As a solo developer, I clearly have limits when it comes to marketing, but I’m spreading the word little by little in the ways I can. I don’t plan to spend money on marketing. I’m making short videos and uploading them to YouTube, and posting development updates on indie game platforms such as itch.io. These are still small steps, but perhaps thanks to them, players have recently begun to trickle in.
I’ve also entered Indiecraft, an indie game competition. As far as I know, it’s a fairly significant competition in the Korean indie game industry. I don’t know yet whether I’ll get through the first round, but if I don’t, I can simply prepare for the next opportunity. The result matters to me, but the process itself was a valuable experience: organizing the game, creating presentation materials and rethinking the direction my game is heading.
The results should be out soon. Whether I pass or not, I’ll share what preparing for the competition was like and what I took away from it.
I’m realizing that making a game demands far more than I had imagined.
Development, operations, saving, security, marketing, App Store policies and countless other things. Even so, learning as I run into each of them has been quite enjoyable.
I’ll keep documenting what a game made by a refrigeration and HVAC engineer through vibe coding turns into.