Seduce lovers, snub enemies, and survive the French revolution in a new, roguelike game for PC and Mac.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Mesdames et Messieurs,
While we don't yet have a release date for Ambition: A Minuet in Power on the Nintendo Switch, I'm excited to tell you that we're now able to pursue getting you your physical Kickstarter rewards with all haste!
The production orders recently went in for nearly all of the physical Kickstarter rewards, and most of them are already in production. In fact, we recently received the vinyl stickers in the mail!
As we get each set of items, we'll start bundling them together and getting them ready to mail out to all of you.
In addition to that, I've started a TikTok channel where I've been posting videos about French Revolutionary history, including this six part series on the real life and times of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas! Give it a watch, if that piques your interest:
The 2022 G.A.N.G. Awards have come and gone, and while Ambition didn't walk away with any trophies, we're still honored to have been nominated at all. It's admittedly surreal to hear 'Ambition: A Minuet in Power' mentioned by judges in the same breath as 'Call of Duty: Vanguard', 'Halo: Infinite' and 'Returnal' (admittedly, they said 'Returnal' a LOT during that ceremony).
Thanks for reading this, and as always, if you'd like to discuss your excitement with like minded persons of quality, please consider joining our Discord channel via the link below!
Thanks again for your support!
- Luther
Game Designer
Joy Manufacturing Co.
Mesdames et Messieurs,
It's been quite some time, but we wanted to give you an update on the latest with Ambition: A Minuet in Power! As you can see, our Steam review score is holding strong at a solid 91% positive.
After some initial difficulties with the unique idiosyncrasies of Nintendo hardware, the Ambition port is moving full steam ahead! Just last week, we finished our rounds of professional QA, where expert testers picked over the game for any potential flaws, and had only a few minor issues which we've almost resolved (mostly about making sure the game is still easy to read in the Switch's handheld mode). We'll be submitting the game for final review from Nintendo soon, so keep your eyes open for announcements on an official release date!
However, it's not just about the Switch, some of these quality of life improvements will be making their way over to the PC and Mac versions of the game as well. Once we have that squared away, we'll be sure to post about it here soon!
As some of you may know, Ambition: A Minuet in Power recently picked up nominations for not one, but three different GANG Awards. Being recognized by the Game Audio Network Guild like this is an enormous honor, and we're beyond elated. To be specific, Ambition has been nominated for:
The awards ceremony will be held virtually on May 25th via the GANG Twitch channel. We'll be watching there, and we hope you will be too!
Thanks for reading this, and as always, if you'd like to discuss your excitement with like minded persons of quality, please consider joining our Discord channel via the link below!
Thanks again for your support!
- Luther
Game Designer
Joy Manufacturing Co.
Mesdames et Messieurs,
As you can imagine, with the game being out on Steam, Humble Bundle, GOG and now itch.io, there will be less updates from us, going forward. However, we still have a few bits of news for you!
In our last update we mentioned that Ambition was having a hard time picking up Steam reviews, which was making it difficult to get noticed on the platform. However, we've managed to pass that hurdle and Ambition: A Minuet in Power is now officially ranked as 'Very Positive' on Steam. In fact, our rating on Steam isn't just good, it's a staggering 93% Positive! Needless to say, we're very proud of this.
While it turns out that reviews obtained via Steam keys don't get tabulated in the % total, we're still extremely glad to have your unwavering support.
Having now experienced this situation firsthand, I can say with utter certainty that if you like an indie game, dropping a quick positive review for them on Steam will help them far more than you think.
Some of our lovely backers backed Ambition at tiers where we'll be sending them physical rewards for supporting the campaign, such as post cards, art books, t-shirts and more. We have yet to acquire these items to send them out, as the current global shipping crisis is making things pretty difficult, especially for a small business like ours.
We apologize for the delay and will be approaching this with a renewed vigor once we've finished porting Ambition to the Nintendo Switch. Fear not! You're treasured rewards will arrive, they'll just be fashionably late.
As of right now, porting Ambition: A Minuet in Power to the Nintendo Switch is our main focus, as we've had many players tell us how excited they are for a Switch port of the game. This focus also comes with the added benefit of requiring us to make the game work smoothly with a gamepad controller, which is something we plan on patching into the PC and Mac version of the game.
Here are some early mock ups of the UI for the Nintendo Switch version of the game.
Getting the game to work with a controller is taking longer than initially expected, as Ambition's UI was never designed with a controller in mind. While we looked into visual novel ports that used the simplified scheme where the game was controlled via a 'mouse' that was moved around via a thumb stick, we just didn't like it. It felt sluggish, unresponsive, and we think our players deserve better than that.
We have no set release date for the port at this time, as this port involves several things that our team has never done before, but we'll keep you all in the loop as the situation evolves.
In other news, we've still been supporting the PC and Mac versions of the game since our launch. Here's a list of some of the major patches, and the various improvements that came with them!
We've also been lucky enough to have some delightful streamers play Ambition live, which you might find very entertaining (warning: some NSFW language may appear in the Steams). They include, but aren't limited to:
Thanks for reading this, and as always, if you'd like to discuss your excitement with like minded persons of quality, please consider joining our Discord channel via the link below!
Thanks again for your support!
- Luther
Game Designer
Joy Manufacturing Co.
Mesdames et Messieurs,
As you already know, Ambition: A Minuet in Power has successfully launched on August 18th, 2021 on Steam, Humble Bundle and GOG! However, a team of our diminutive size can never truly rest on their laurels, so we're currently focused on patching bugs (2 patches have already been released!), starting work on the Nintendo Switch release of the game, and getting ready to focus on our physical Kickstarter Backer rewards.
However, one of the biggest problems Ambition has always faced is getting people to find out about it.
Steam is the largest online market for games. Being 'discoverable' on Steam is a major part of how a game's future success is determined (beyond simply making a good game, of course). A large part of this is determined by the game's review rating. This is a rating determined by both the positivity and the number of reviews.
Right now, despite having a 96% positivity rating, Ambition is locked at simply 'Positive', as we only have 32 reviews. We need at least 50 total reviews to quality for 'Very Positive', and 500 to quality for 'Overwhelmingly Positive'. While I doubt we'll ever reach the vaunted heights of the second one, I feel like we could easily reach the first.
So, I'm asking. If you own the game on Steam, can you please review Ambition?
Now, please understand: I am not asking you to just write positive reviews of Ambition. That's dishonest and simply not what we're about. What I am asking, is if our backers on Steam can review the game at all, no matter how they feel. I stand by what we've made, it's just hard to get people to talk about it. Very few people write reviews on Steam at all, and with the amount of games coming out every day, it's easy to get lost in the flow.
To this point, other than buying the game, writing reviews on Steam is one of the most powerful ways you can support independent developers. It supports their work in a huge way and allows them to keep making the unique things that you love.
Thanks for reading this, and as always, if you'd like to discuss your excitement with like minded persons of quality, please consider joining our Discord channel via the link below!
Thanks again for your support!
- Luther
Game Designer
Joy Manufacturing Co.