Cats on the Head & Other Start-up Tales

When I get discouraged about the pace of ‘traction’ at 7 Generation Games, I remember an interview with one of the founders of Google. He said that it did not bother him in the early years that Google did not have a lot of users because they were working on improvements every day and he figured that someone who tried Google a year later was going to be testing a much better version of the product, so it was actually better for them.

I was thinking about that today as I was starting on the last part of our latest update on Forgotten Trail. We meant to have it out June 1st but we ended up debuting Making Camp for the Native Innovation Ed Tech Summit instead.

I’m actually quite proud of our team for that, since there is a lot of talk about diversity in tech but not much action. Doing our worldwide reveal of a new game at a conference focused on Native American education is putting our money where our mouth is.

So, back to Forgotten Trail – one of the major improvements we have been making is building the game out, adding side quests, options for earning more points by attempting harder problems. One of these improvements is the option to play a prank on another player in the game by bringing 10 cats on to the farm. The neighboring farmer, Mario, agrees to lend you 2 cats for every problem you help him solve.

To make the game more fun, I made cats that walk around the farm and you can move around and place on the farm wherever you like.

We’re testing the improvements before releasing our update. Oddly, the first thing all of the testers do is put a cat on Brinley’s head. Why DO they do that? I don’t know.

Speaking of improvements, I know that our games have gotten better and better with each release and each update. I will be forever grateful to the teachers and students at Spirit Lake and Turtle Mountain who were willing to help us out with testing in the very beginning. 

It’s because of that gratitude that we provide free updates forever.

So … if you bought  Forgotten Trail even in the pre-sale back in our Kickstarter days, you’ll be getting an update soon.

Okay … back to work.  If you want to learn more about our games and buy one for yourself, a child or a classroom – check them out here.