Beta Launch Recap

The 31st of July was a day I’ll never forget. After more than three years of development, hundreds of late nights, and a long list of features that were slowly crossed off one by one, the Fusiomon Beta finally went live at 8 PM.

I was nervous. Not just the “I hope it works” kind of nervous. The kind where your heart races, your palms sweat, and your mind can’t decide whether to be proud or terrified. It was finally out there.

The response was incredible! Traffic was flowing in, new players registered, and battles started popping up right away. I was overwhelmed with joy. For about 30 minutes.

503. The Number You Never Want to See

Then it happened. Players started reporting issues. Some couldn’t stay logged in, others were forced to refresh their browser, and many were greeted with the infamous 503 Service Unavailable message.

What began as isolated reports quickly spiraled into a full-blown disaster. The game had become unplayable.

I felt sick. Not metaphorically... actually sick. I had poured everything into this moment. Months of preparing marketing campaigns, running ads, building up social channels, testing mechanics, preparing feature roadmaps. And now the launch was being overshadowed by something I couldn’t immediately fix.

Honest Communication and Internal Panic

Instead of hiding, I did what I felt was right: I told people what was going on.

Within the same hour, I posted transparent updates on Discord, Instagram, and Facebook. I wrote a detailed post on the Unity forums, explaining not just the technical issue, but also the human one, how it felt to fail in front of your audience after so much work. I submitted logs and a stack trace to Unity in the hope of getting external support.

What made it worse was the fear that we might lose the very players we had worked so hard to reach. In the indie world, every new player is precious and let’s be honest, most people are understandably cautious when trying out a new, unknown game. They’re like shy deer: they’ll take a curious step forward, but the slightest misstep can scare them off.

You can’t blame anyone for not sticking around when things break. But that’s exactly why it was so hard - knowing we might have just lost the chance to win their trust.

A Special Thank You

In the middle of all this chaos, there’s one person I absolutely need to thank by name: Simon.

From the very beginning of our collaboration, Simon has gone far beyond what anyone could expect. What started out as a supportive freelance role quickly grew into something much more. He's become a core part of the Fusiomon brain and, even more importantly, a great friend.

His dedication, ideas, and willingness to dive deep into the weirdest corners of the project have kept things moving forward when I couldn't do it alone. In fact, the entire email backend behind Fusiomon, as well as the new coupon system, are his work. And those are just two examples from a very long list.

Simon, if you're reading this: thank you for giving this project more than just your skills. You gave it heart.

The Cause: A Missing await

To Unity’s credit, their team responded quickly. And not just with a generic answer. A specific staff member (samg-unity) took the time to actually dig into my code and logs. He found the issue: a missing await in an asynchronous method inside one of my core Cloud Code modules.

This level of engagement is far from a given. Unity is a massive company with countless support requests every day, and yet here I was, receiving real, targeted help that actually moved things forward. I want to say a big thank you to the Unity team and especially that one engineer who took the time to really look.

The bug meant that the server was continuing execution while data was still being fetched, corrupting the internal state and eventually leading to instability. It was like building a house on quicksand.

I patched the method immediately, added proper awaits, and, as an extra layer of protection, implemented write locks to avoid any race conditions between requests. And then... I waited.

The Turnaround: It’s (Mostly) Fixed

The difference was night and day. After deploying the fix, the game finally ran stable - no more 503s. WebGL still has its own quirks and limitations, but the core experience was no longer broken. And for that, I’m deeply thankful.

Listening to the Community

Once the panic subsided, I took the time to go through the feedback. And there was a lot! Our Discord became a hub of ideas, bug reports, and design discussions. People actually cared, and that means the world to me.

Some of the easier fixes included:

• Making coupon codes case-insensitive
• Tweaking the music volume and adding basic controls
• Clarifying unclear UI elements

But there were also much bigger points:

• Lack of a tutorial: Many players didn’t understand the core mechanics and felt lost on their first try.
• Match fixing loophole: Some players could create second accounts, match themselves, and throw the game to farm Fusion Shards.

Reworking the Arena and Reward Systems

That last point triggered a major decision: I’m rebuilding the Arena system from the ground up.

• Fusiomon will switch to a proper ELO-based leaderboard system
• Fusion Shards will no longer be rewarded directly through battles
• Instead, they will be earned through a different (and fairer) system... more on that soon 👀

This change isn’t just about plugging an exploit, it’s about making the game more competitive, transparent, and rewarding in the long run.

Looking Ahead: Together With You

Despite the rocky start, I came out of this with something much more valuable than a clean launch: a community that believes in this project.

You played, tested, complained, encouraged, and shared ideas. You didn’t just try the game, you helped shape it. That’s something I’ll never take for granted.

The journey is far from over. There are more features, more polish, and more monsters to come. But I promise to keep listening, keep improving, and keep building Fusiomon together with you.

Thanks for being part of the very first step.
Let’s see where we go from here.