Making a game is hard, or so I’ve been told by those brave enough to give it a go. Mistakes happen, and sometimes your game just doesn’t work. That’s what happened to the developer behind Red Flag, a social deduction game about convincing your friends you’re fit to survive the apocalypse in a bunker with limited resources.
In a Reddit post last week (spotted by Automaton), the small, first-time team explains that it had unknowingly submitted a broken build of the game to Steam on the day of the deadline to get into June’s Next Fest. The review and approval process typically takes five to seven days, the developer explains, so it really was cutting it close.
“It was the weekend. [Steam] Partner Support doesn’t work weekends. We sent a desperate email to regular Steam Support, honestly just screaming into the void.”
Steam replied saying the build was sent for urgent review to, hopefully, get it into Next Fest in time. And a few hours later, viola, the Red Flag’s demo build had been approved.