Fireworks Mania News

The Steam Game Festival has begun - I hope to see a lot of new players in the Fireworks Mania community over the coming week.
If you are new, welcome, hope you will enjoy the Fireworks Mania Demo and wishlist it to get notified when its released in December 2020!

If you have been here for a while - happy you still hang around :)

To make the Steam Game Festival a little more special - also for the hardcore players that have been playing Fireworks Mania Demo for a while. I have decided to add a few "Festival Specials" to the demo.

These Festival Specials is only available from 7th to 13th of October 2020!



Now go have fun in the Fireworks Mania Demo.

- Enjoy!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/

FIREWORKS MANIA is a small casual explosive simulator game where you play around with fireworks, create beautiful firework shows or just blow stuff up.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

All this goes on in a strongly physics based sandbox.

Sounds fun? YES - keep reading!


The development of Fireworks Mania started around New Years Eve 2018/2019, when my son asked for help to find a game where he could play with fireworks.
As we couldn't find any games like that, the idea for Fireworks Mania was born.

I have made a little video about the first 1.5 years of the development of this game.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


My plan is to release Fireworks Mania in DECEMBER 2020 (so wishlist it now to get notified - just saying) with all the features, fireworks etc. I have at that point.
After that, I plan to keep developing the game as I have been doing for the past 1.5 years, adding new features, fireworks, dev logs on YouTube etc.

The only difference is that you don't have to wait for a long time to try out the new stuff after release, as I plan to have an "experimental" branch where you can try out the latest and greatest - but more about that after release.


The Firework Mania DEMO that you can try out right now, is a simplified version of the game.
The version of the game that is released in December have more fireworks, more features and more environments.
You can check out my dev logs on YouTube to get an idea of some of the things that are coming.
The demo shows the concept/idea, so if you like the demo, I'm sure you will enjoy the full game.


Wow, you made it all the way to read about me, the developer - well done!

I am a 37 years old solo game developer with a wife, two kids, a full time day job and a dog.
I am building this game in my sparetime like evenings, weekends and vacations.

About 1 year ago I made a little "A day in the life of" video. You might as well check that out, as you have gotten all the way down here anyway.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I hope you will enjoy the demo. Let me know what you think about it in the Community section.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260

UPDATE: As this event is over there are no more Live Stream to see - however - I do Live Streams on YouTube, here are some of the past ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oz_m-3oYkI&list=PLfRfKfCcFo_sJ0QntL0OpKGJUst67Bt3Q

Subscribe to my YouTube channel and check the bell to get notified when I go live next time - then come and say hi :)

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As part of the Steam Game Festival Autumn Edition I will be doing an live stream.

I plan to play the demo while talking about the idea behind the game, my plan for the game, release and answer questions from the chat.

Add a reminder to your calendar so you don't miss it.

Come say hi in the chat.

While you wait for the event to start, you can check out some of my videos on YouTube, like this one that shows the first 1.5 years of development of the game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/

It's been around 1.5 years since I started this sparetime game development project called - "Fireworks Mania".

It's still a sparetime project and I'm totally fine with that, I like my day job, but I also really like making games and this game seem to be the best I have ever made.

I am very surprised and happy that so many of you find the game interesting and entertaining!

I'm looking very much forward to the initial release in December 2020 and hear what you think.

On that note, remember to wishlist Fireworks Mania here on Steam if you haven't already - will help the game out at launch - thanks! :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/

Lets set expectations, the game won't have ALL the suggestions you guys are coming with in the initial release - I simply don't have the time as this is a sparetime project sadly.

However, I really look forward to continue iterating and building the game after the initial release, as I have been for the past 1.5 years, together with you guys - the big difference is that after release you guys will have access to the stuff I build must faster than now.

I also plan to have a "experimental" branch here on Steam, so once the game is out and you have it, you can switch to this branch and try out whatever new thing I'm working on, of cause knowing that it's experimental :)

Anyway, because I have been working on this game for around 1.5 years now and we are about 6 months from initial release, I made this little video to sum up the progress so far.

Hope you enjoy it and feel free to share the video where you share stuff on the interwebs :P

- Enjoy!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Summer vacation time is over and I'm back at the regular schedule of Fireworks Mania game dev time in the evenings.

My guess is that this will be the last update of the demo for a while, as I go back to focus on getting the full game ready for its initial release in december 2020.
I plan go get back and do dev logs again on Youtube and also post them here, but how often and how much I don't know - time will tell.

If you missed some of my previous dev logs you can find them on this play list.


Lets get to the more fun part - the change log for this update.
As the title says, it's a minor update, so don't get your expectations up too high.



[h2]UI[/h2]
Some players complained about the tooltips being too hard to see, at least the "tab" button.
The reason for this is that the images were forced to the same width, which resulted in wider key graphics to be fairly hard to see, depending on the resolution.

That has been fixed now - and for some reason it took me much longer to figure out how to fix than I care to admit :P



[h2]Fireworks[/h2]
The explosion force of the fireworks have been turned back up. It got turned down too much in last update, due to some changes to the logic. This wasn't intended!
So now, things starts flying around again.
(No flamingos was hurt during this test - they died right after of natural causes)

[h2]Audio[/h2]
All the UI sounds from buttons have been turned down a bit.

Sometimes if many of the same type of fireworks were ignited at the same time, some of the explosions were missing sounds. I made a few changes that should minimize the risk of this happening.

The jump sound of the player have been changed and is less annoying now.

[h2]Other[/h2]
The way object are outlined are now a little different. The object is self doesn't get a tint of a color anymore, only the outline is visible. I think this looks better and don't block your view and the old version could do some times.


Some potential performance improvements have been added, so the game should run just a tiny bit better now.

Thats all for this update - enjoy and have fun!