The first game I ever made was back in 2013 was called "The Sculptor”;an early idle clicker before it was a genre. I had barely opened Unity or knew how to code. Somehow, the game ended up as both a massive failure and success at the same time with over 500,000 players during its lifetime.
The concept was based on a game called “Tamago” where you tapped an egg 1 million times. It was super simple, and had lots of engaged players. I thought that was a simple enough scope for me to manage, and made the game in about 3 months, working an hour here and there every night after work.
I had pretty decent 3D skills, but very little programming skills. The whole game basically ran a massive nested if/else loop inside of the Update function. Bad idea, obviously. But mobile phones were pretty fast, so it didn’t really matter.
I created three levels; Amateur, Apprentice and Master. 10,000 taps. 100,000 taps, 1 000 000 taps. What you got at Amateur was a weird gurkin-like character I made in Zbrush, the others were two classical sculpts, Venus and David.
Reception on release
The players were DEEPLY divided in how they felt about the game. Most didn’t get that this was a Test of Patience; to see if you had the mental chops to create Art. The amount of time and effort a sculptor puts into her work is not for everyone, it requires a lot of disipline.
It was hilarious to read the fights in the reviews comments. Most people hated it, some people absolutely loved it. The early 1900s music was also deeply dividing, but I kept it because it was a part of the concept. The artist lived in a loft in Paris, and this was the type of music one should play in a loft in Paris. So the game basically died right before covid, I failed to update it and stay in tune with the app stores’ ever-increasing demands. I was entering the game development industry full-time to work on Skate City, and just didn’t have the energy for it and removed it from the stores.
The Return of The Sculptor
This year I revived it, and got it back to the Apple App Store and Google Play again. I added some new features, juiced the gameplay a little and updated it to the latest version of Unity. I’m looking forward to making more updates and keeping it going, despite the atrocious review scores!
To the players who got the game and stood through the Test of Patience; thank you so much for playing!
Read more about the game here
The product page is located at https://hellobard.com/games/thesculptor
Have a great summer, cheers
/Bard
