Indie publishing for games can be an interesting trade. A lot of indie developers – myself included – tend to wear many hats. We are writers, editors, art directors, layout artists, I.T. and everything else in between.
We are also typically rather broke which means we have to be creative with what we use and what we do. Some indies have the funds or find ways to afford expensive software like InDesign, while others choose the free options like Scribus. Still, others forgo layout publishing and focus on simple trade dress that can be easily completed in a word processor. In the middle of all these options sits Serif, a British software company that has been developing a load of creative and enterprise apps since longer than I care to remember. A few years ago they decided to slowly start shelving their “Plus” series of products in favor of the Affinity series.
The latest in this crop is Affinity Publisher the successor to Page Plus series of the desktop development software and an affordable alternative to InDesign that sits in a comfortable category between InDesign’s beefiness and Microsoft Publisher’s user-friendly but limited frame. As such it is a great pick up and grow application that can get very crunchy as the developer grows with it.
The one thing that it lacks is community support from the Indie developer scene. In walks Venatus Vinco with his Affinity Publisher Basics, a simple template and how-to on the system for those who use it but feel rather abandoned by publisher suppliers like Fat Goblin Games and Wizards of the Coast who exclusively develop templates and the like for InDesign leaving those who cannot afford InDesign (or don’t want to put up with Scribus’s “it’s not a bug it’s a feature”) in the cold to figure out from the bottom step how to use a different piece of software.
Vinco’s Affinity Publisher Basics comes with a load of fonts, a few template images, the template itself and a Publisher Basics pdf.
The pdf comes with a lot of handy guides like paragraph styling guides, POD guides, image placement, etc. It is a wonderful overview and starting guide to Affinity’s systems.
For the $5.00 it costs I truly recommend this if for nothing else then a Getting started guide to Affinity’s systems.
