We began development for Black & White Bushido in 2015. At the time all of us worked for Endemol Shine Group, a global content creator, producer and distributor you may know from shows like Black Mirror, MasterChef and Big Brother. Legends of Gaming Live, one of their live events in which gaming influencers come together for a competitive gaming tournament, approached us to create a competitive multiplayer game for them.

We have released Black & White Bushido on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. In autumn 2018 we will release the game on Nintendo Switch, but first we wanted to take a look at what we have learnt so far on our journey, what went right and what we would do differently.


A Concept We Love

The concept we created was a couch brawler with a unique stealth twist. Black & White Bushido pits the forces of light and shadow against each other. Each team can disappear into their respective colours and move without being seen as they fight in Death Match or Capture the Flag mode. This stealth mechanic hadn't been done in an arena brawler before.

We created a prototype with the core mechanic, just cubes attacking each other in an arena with light and shadow areas, and we all fell in love with the game. We knew we had something good, because usually our taste in games is very different. We found something we were passionate about and we believe that’s the most important thing when choosing a project. Looking back, we could have done more research before choosing a genre, as this would have given us a better understanding of the audience for this game - something that we will touch on later when looking at what we could have done differently.

2. Black & White Art Style

Black & White Bushido’s light vs shadow mechanic didn't only add a nice twist to our brawler, it also inspired our game’s art style and marketing material. It was a great choice, because it made us stand out from other games in the market.

We considered multiple themes for our game, including spies in an urban setting and abstract monsters or aliens, but we wanted to find something that explained the brawling and stealth mechanics. Ninjas and samurai made sense, they sneak around, jump across buildings and fight. We also found it improved the learning curve of the game, because the player expected these actions to be possible.

We collaborated with a very talented artist, Tom Waterhouse, to make all of the artwork and it paid off well. Our artwork had a really positive impact on the first impressions of the game and the perceived quality.

3. Going to Game Conventions

Our most successful marketing was taking Black & White Bushido to game conventions. EGX 2015 in Birmingham was our first show, just before our Steam launch. We were nervous because we invested a lot of money into our stand and worried people wouldn’t like our game. By the end we had made the top 5 best indie games at EGX list!

Our booth was constantly full and very lively. The game naturally attracted a lot of people and we made sure to engage with everyone who walked by and invited them to try the game. We played the game with them to demonstrate the multiplayer experience and we organised daily tournaments with prizes which encouraged a lot of people to return to our booth.

Going to shows had a lot of benefits for us. Firstly, we got a better understanding of our target audience by looking at the type of people who enjoyed our game and how they were playing. The second benefit was receiving feedback. People gave us a lot of good suggestions, for example, to add a button which reveals your position in stealth if you lose track of your character. And even just watching them play revealed a lot. If they were laughing they were enjoying it, if they were staring at the screen, something was confusing them so we took note of that.

That first show is also where we noticed how much Black & White Bushido brought out the competitiveness in people, and it inspired the friendship breaker theme we used in our marketing.

Another invaluable benefit was making new contacts in the industry. We tried to meet as many people as possible to explore taking Black & White Bushido to the next level. Anil met an Xbox contact and brought him to our booth to try the game. He liked it enough to convince us to make a version for the Xbox One and Playstation consoles.

4. Partner with a Publisher

We knew we had a great game and were well received at shows, but we felt we needed to get the game out quickly to capitalise on the interest we were getting. We knew the Steam greenlight process could take a long time, so we partnered with Green Man Gaming which allowed us to skip greenlight and they also helped us publicise the game. There is no doubt this was the right decision for us.


Research

As mentioned earlier Black & White Bushido was a passion project, but looking back we could have done more research. From a business perspective, a local multiplayer brawler perhaps wasn’t the best choice. Given that it’s a niche genre, the target audience is relatively small and our initial sales numbers were lower than projected. However, the experience we gained was invaluable and allowed us to start our own studio.

We also should have done more research on the game’s name, Black & White Bushido. Although descriptive, it is too long, and adding an ampersand complicates search results and can make finding our game tricky.

2. Online Multiplayer

Black & White Bushido is a great local multiplayer brawler. Its strength lies in playing with your friends on the couch and experiencing the moment. That’s how it was originally designed. However, we received a lot of feedback to add online multiplayer to our game and we decided to add it for our console launch.

The development process for this took much longer than we had anticipated and we had several rounds of QA before getting certification on PlayStation and Xbox. This had a significant impact on our budget which we hadn’t originally planned for.

Having gone through the painstaking task of getting online multiplayer up and running, we didn’t have as many active players as we had hoped which were needed to keep the servers active and well populated. In hindsight we should have compared the sales numbers of successful multiplayer games to get an idea of how large our player base needed to be.

3. Marketing

We made the classic beginner’s mistake of waiting too long with marketing. Aside from taking it to shows we didn’t do enough marketing prelaunch to build hype around the game. We did get press coverage for launch and worked with a great agency to help us, but in future, we would want to bring all the press and marketing elements together to generate awareness both at launch, and also in the lead-up.

For our console launch we did some influencer marketing to help raise awareness. Our biggest learning was that by working with a number of smaller influencers, who’s audiences fit well with the game’s audience, proved much more valuable than spending all your budget on one big name.

Our console marketing also struggled with losing momentum following the Steam launch, as the development was over a year. Publications didn’t necessarily want to cover our game again and we had exhibited at most of the key shows already.

What did work well for us was our pricing and sales strategy. We made sure that our pricing gave us leeway to participate in sales without cutting into our margin. Since launch we have tried to be part of every relevant platform sale and have seen an impressive spike each time.


Our journey so far with Black & White Bushido has been full of highs and lows! We have gained so much knowledge from the experience and are applying all our learnings to our launch of the game on Nintendo Switch. We’re keeping our development cycle short to keep the budget reasonable and we now have a full marketing plan and team in place, to raise awareness for our Switch release.

We are taking Black & White Bushido back to its core, a local multiplayer, fun and addictive couch brawler, which fits perfectly with the Nintendo Switch console. Keep an eye out, this won’t be the last you hear of Black & White Bushido!

Hi ninjas!
Being the sneaky stealthy assassins you are, we have noticed that trying to find a sparring partner in the online servers has been a challenge. You've reached out to us and we hear you.

If you haven't joined our Community Discord (discord.gg/NDfAXwh), now is a great time to do that!

We're launching a regular Community League. A what now? A league! We open signups, when they are full-ish (you have till the 21st of July) we'll close them and you can get to the business of quickly dispatching your foes.

So what are you waiting for? Sign ups are now open!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdybGLvpAOMKi2Wkp7WZU_5B_6LldZP4qQy_XUKB7pIL5kYrA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Couch gaming, meets online action, meets stealth action, meets brawler in Black and White Bushido 2.0.5 is live right now, now with 100% more online multiplayer.

So what are you waiting for?
Pick a team, save the universe, be the ninja.

For more regular updates and info, follow us on:
Twitter https://twitter.com/BushidoGame
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bwbushido

- New Features

o Online Multiplayer
o New and Improved Challenge Mode
o 2 New Levels ‘Hell’ and ‘Village’
o Intro Animation
o Keyboard Control Remapping

- Tweaks

o Flag capture time increased
o Level Art improved
o Flag Capture time increased when multiple team members capture the flag

- Fixes

o Game crashing upon minimisation now fixed
o Controller disconnecting freezing the game now fixed
o Final form achievement not always triggering now fixed
o AI path finding improved
o Lighting aesthetic glitches fixed
o General performance fixes throughout the game
o Spawning on the smoke bomb position bug now fixed

Hi Guys,

On May 17th Black and White Bushido is going to get, so. much. better. This isn’t Black and White Bushido like you’ve known it, it’s got improvements all over, including the highly anticipated online multiplayer mode, new levels, keyboard remapping and a ton of other performance improvements. Are you hyped? Because we are mega hyped.

With this new and improved Bushido, comes a slight bump in price, from $9.99 to $12.99. But for all our loyal fans who have been waiting patiently for the promised online multiplayer mode, we’re offering a special lock-in price that guarantees all the new updates for no additional cost, if you purchase Black and White Bushido before May 17th.

For more regular updates and info, follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bwbushido/, and on Twitter https://twitter.com/BushidoGame !

May 17th is coming. Next week.

Get ready ninjas.

Hi Guys!

It’s been almost a year since our last update when we told you we were working on getting Online Multiplayer working. Thank you so much for being the amazing and dedicated fans that you are.
Time flies when you’re working hard, and we have been working very hard to let you know that Black and White Bushido will be getting a brand new update in May 2017! That’s right, May, only a couple of weeks from now! Better news, it will be free for all existing Bushido game owners! You deserve it.

This update includes:

• Two new levels, taking our total from five to seven!
• A revamp of our single player mode. Trust us, it’s just BETTER!
• Keyboard remapping!
• A new intro video!
• Minor art updates!
• Key bug fixes, across AI and general performance improvements!

Oh and also Online Multiplayer.
Whaaaat. Yes, Online Multiplayer! Battle your friends from the comfort of your couch, while they’re in the comfort of their own couch! Ending friendships has never been so easy.

So, get ready ninjas, update is incoming, May 2017!

Hey guys!

We are very sorry we've been a bit quiet recently. We are still hard at work on getting the online multiplayer working and ready for all of you to finally get your hands on!

We wanted to take a second to once again thank you all so much for your continued patience. We honestly really appreciate this.

Please believe us when we say we haven’t given up, we are still here and have been working hard on this. We will get this update to you as soon as it is ready for you all.

We promise it'll be worth the wait - we are really excited to share this with you as soon as it's ready!

Team Bushido

Hi all!

Sorry we've been quiet for so long, we've been working hard to get the online working and truth be told it's proved much trickier than we anticipated.

We want to roll out the update at the same time as Xbox One and PS4 so that's also had its challenges.

We think we're there now and all going well should be looking at online multiplayer and new content within two months.

Thank you so much for your patience - we appreciate everyone's support and look forward to giving you everything we've promised as soon as we possibly can!

Team Bushido

Hi All!

Sorry we have been quite quiet lately on the forums!

We are hard at work on the Online Multiplayer and the new content for Black & White Bushido, we would like to apologise for the delay but we are working very hard to get the content finished!

We would also like to thank you all for the support and feedback we have received from the community, we really can't wait for you all to see the new content and we hope you like it when its released!

Regards,
Team Bushido,