Welcome to Draftical

Today we are going to talk about what I and my project have been up to the last few months.

So what has happened?

• We've branded "Project Storymaker" with the now official name "Draftical".
• We've founded the company Ice Bear Labs for real.
• There is an Alpha version of Draftical running with test users
• We've entered two competitions with Draftical to promote the project and maybe get funding / support for the company
• I've started working one day a week on the Ice Bear Labs project, while staying with my current employer for the remaining four daysThere is now a Landing Page for Draftical

Momentum

So you see, there was much to do. I'm very happy that this project is gaining momentum. The company now exists, which feels awesome. It's not just a concept, or an idea, it's something that exists in the real world. Two years ago there was just a name and now I've created something from all of that.

I've read a lot about getting the user to use the product as early as possible. Even though I knew about this, I still struggled with giving the project into the hands of my users this early. The app is up and running and supports the most basic features that I wanted to create before the users can actually get some value out of this. Even though, it's still barebones, the users are hard at work and started to plan a few story ideas immediately. Wanna take a look?

You can organize your scene content, your characters, your items and your locations, per scene. You can move them around to change the order of the scenes. All the items, locations and characters can also be edited, created and deleted in a separate list view.

Landing Page

Creating the landing page also took way to long and I put it off too long. It's just great to be able to send someone to a page, every time somebody remembers a friend or colleague who could use the product. We had some missed opportunities because of this, so another tip: Create your landing page early. Another lesson learned.

Beta Plans

We're planning on releasing a Beta in September, so there is a lot more to program. We're going to introduce act structure, to divide your scenes even more. We're planning on user settings, payment system and the first few intelligent tips, the system will give you to help. It's going to be a very interesting time.

I'm also excited what the competitions will have brought to the table. There have been some new contacts arisen from that and we'll see where that leads. It's an exciting time for the project. See you for the Beta update ;)