Fina-fricken-ly

So after about 10 years in development, my (all adults now) kids finally gave Mx. Pet Rock a try, and also gave me a metric ton of excellent feedback!  

One was upset that their name does not yet appear on an item, but I immediately collected their specs for it, and will be remedying that omission a.s.a.p.

Some of the feedback highlighted that the concept for the game needs some explaining.  A really key concept for the game is: Mx. is literally just a rock.  Putting accessories on your pet rock is meant to be ridiculously sloppy and unpredictable. The game is not meant to give you slick superhuman abilities like perfect alignment, rotation and other things that highly produced games often give you. 

It’s a bit of a physics playground, and some of the fun is meant to be discovering the quirks, such as that when you accidentally stack two items, one might fly off into space, never to be seen again. That said, I do want it to be accommodating and accessible.

My kids are disabled like me (it's a collection of genetic conditions called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome), so they had lots of great quality of life feedback that I will definitely be weighing and implementing as I am able (har!  a little disability joke there, yw).  One major surprise they alerted me to is that the game actually runs on (some) mobile devices!  WOOHOO!!!  

Mobile was always the target platform for Mx. Pet Rock, for ONE reason and one reason only: I want the googly eye physics to respond to the device's movements (shicka shicka!)  But mobile development is a very inaccessible space due to the variety of mobile specs, and the many hoops and costs imposed by app stores required for publishing.  So, I went with WebGL because browsers are so universal, and free publishing options abound, even though *technically* mobile is not supported.

But now that I know that Mx. Pet Rock sorta works on mobile, I need to figure out if I can support a better experience on those devices for which it works!  That means a keyboard, for renaming Mx. Pet Rock, at the very least, and maybe --JUST MAYBE -- gyro influenced googly eyes.  

Now my backlog is full-to-overflowing with new and improved suggestions, and I am super excited to get them implemented!  One of my favorites was the suggestion to allow gluing of certain parts, so they don't get nudged anymore by the physics.  Thank you to my amazing family for all the support and feedback!

Please stay tuned.