Wow... I didn't know what to expect from this forum, but I must say I'm very lucky I came across it. I feel very honoured by your responses. Each and every one of them were extremely helpful!
If your game is something nobody's ever heard about, or nobody's likely to ever hear about (because you lack the cash to bribe anyone to cover it), or you're someone nobody's ever heard about, your crowdfunding campaign is probably gonna crash and burn. From what I can tell, crowdfunding has stopped working for "nobodies with their dream games" long ago.
Thank you for pointing this out, you confirmed my suspicion.
You should release this "engine" for others to use with proper documentation
This never occurred to me. It'd take a lot of code cleanup, logic changes and programming some utilities for dialogues and such, but I'll definitely keep this in mind. It will be great as a project milestone.
When you discuss your game, present it in a more positive manner.
That sounds like something you would say to a friend in casual conversation. If you immediately tell strangers that your game has a lot of problems and that they won't like it, then you start off on the wrong foot. I used to describe the game I'm working on in the same way, but now I try to speak more positively about it. I would rewrite your opening paragraph like this:
"This is a tactical, magic-heavy fantasy RPG. Heavily inspired by classics like Fallout and Baldur's Gate, The Prisonmaster incorporates new elements into a tried and true formula. The graphics are currently a work in progress, but the game is a blast. Future updates will feature impressive artwork and animations by (artist's name here)."
I'm not going to write the rest, but this makes me think more highly of your game, and makes it more likely that I will actually download it or watch the video. Things like "It sucks" and "the author thinks you'll have a blast" and "if this is your type of game" are not good things to tell potential fans. Make me feel like I did the right thing by downloading your game; why should I like it? If you tell me the game sucks and looks like shit, then I will feel stupid for wasting time on it. If I don't like "tactical, magic-heavy fantasy RPG" games, then I can decide for myself not to download it, you don't need to push me away.
On one hand I want to notify people that the game has issues so they don't waste time if they don't feel like playing an incomplete game. On the other hand, you might be right that saying it outright sucks and so on, might not be the way to go, and it might damage the project. Thank you for pointing this out, you gave me something to think about.
By the way, would you mind if I used the first paragraph edit you wrote, with some changes?
I haven't played it yet, but I think the video looks cool. If I was you, I would try to find an artist to make some really visually appealing splash screens or something, determine whether or not I had the artistic ability to make the in-game assets or whether to get a professional, I would make a lot more content so the game lasts longer than an hour/has a lot of replayability, and then try to figure out a good way to advertise it and get sales.
I'm very glad you liked the video. I originally intended to do all the art myself, but I need to do more research into my options/what could I actually pull off. I did get several ideas from replies here, though I'll have to experiment with my artistic limitations.
Did you intend the very second encounter to be so difficult? You go from fighting 3 enemies to suddenly being surrounded by 6 with almost no choke points.
You should have the "discharge" spell at that point, which would make the battle quite easy. There's a "lightning" for you to pick up, you should have walked past it already...?
Anyway, art direction should really based on something that you yourself are passionate about. It also depends if you are planning to do the visuals yourself or hire someone. For a project like this it may be best suited to go for relatively simple, abstracted graphics, then have more stylistic portraits for the characters and enemies.
Thank you for this suggestion. I'm writing it down as a possibility.
Don't know if you played a game called Winter Voices, but your game reminded me of it.
I haven't played the game, and didn't know it until today. Thank you for introducing it to me, it led me to some interesting sites and ideas.
Heii there,
The graphics are an issue because there is no unity in style.
And yes, there are people willing to buy/play/test games with low graphics.
Simply assume that you restrict you player base to that kind of people.
This is an invaluable piece of advice! I'll remember this.
I would certainly try to get some income from the work you achieved if I were in your position.
You can either sell your engine as mentioned before, but I doubt you'll make a fundamental return on your investment. Because for an engine to grow on popularity, it needs to have some success somewhere.
People will judge on the quality of the demo you can provide and/or on the quality of video-games on the market that use it. So, they'll pretty much judge your game.
Which, in the end, leads me to suggest you: if you really want to capitalize on what you just made. Go through it.
Every bit of encouragement is valuable, thanks!
Right now, I have no idea what your project is about. It looks like a rogue-like from what I can tell, but you're throwing names like FO1 and BG1, as it stands, I would not give you a single $ on a crowdfunding campaign, simply because I cannot identify what you are doing. And that also tells me you have a lack of understanding of the genre.
<< this is an asumption, but it showcase what people might think and react if you do not better communicate around your project.
I think this opinion is one of things I was looking for, without knowing what I was looking for it. I hate to admit it, but you are right. I started with simple mechanics, and then kept adding to them, heavily inspired by BG and FO. I just failed to realize I ended up with something that has very little in common with the aforementioned, except for turn based combat (FO) and that you can cast spells in some manner (BG). When you say it like this, I feel dumb for not noticing something so unbelievably obvious. Oh well... at least I have a good heart...
Lastly, I like the fact that you are honest about your project. ''It sucks, but it's cool''.
There are a bunch of ''indie'' developers who throw key-words and superlatives about their games, which, you do not. And that's cool.
I think you need to have a frostbite engine and heavy propaganda machine to go into the verbal BS.
So I think, it's cool as an indie who can only communicate through his own website and a couple threads to keep it 100% honest.
I want to keep it honest, but also would like avoid damaging my prospects, as Agesilaus has pointed out before. I'll have to think on this. Thank you for letting me know though .)
What jumped out to me is that -- maybe just because I'm old -- the card-game mechanics seem a relatively unusual and newfangled feature that doesn't jibe with all of the oldschool games you're mentioning. I know that Ash of Gods and The Great Whale Road included similar mechanics, so perhaps this is the Way of the Future
And here I thought I was doing something original :D I'm still not sure if a deck of cards is the way to go, but it gives each encounter a nice layer of randomness, that the player can strategize around.
, but I dunno, the overall thing I see bears almost no resemblance to BG1 or Fallout.
As I mention before in a response to Sloul
"I don't like the fact, but you are right. I started with simple mechanics, and then kept adding to them, heavily inspired by BG and FO. I just failed to realize I ended up with something that has very little in common with the aforementioned, except for turn based combat (FO) and that you can cast spells in some manner (BG)."
I'll seriously reconsider mentioning those two in the future.
I would add that you are right to be concerned about the amount of content necessary, but art isn't the only content: the quests, dialogues, encounters, etc. in RPGs take forever to make, getting the systems set up is only the first of many hurdles. RPGs are always tempting to undertake, but I think the conventional wisdom that they're hard first projects is basically right.
You're right, though I feel that the quests, dialogues, encounters and story overall seem to be easier to think up and write, than creating the art that represents them. Although I have to go through many iterations when writing, at least I know - more or less - what I'm capable of in this department. Now art, that's a different chapter. I did a few works I myself liked and was content with, but those were pure 2D. This 2.5D perspective is yet another aspect I shot myself in the foot with, since I never did anything from this perspective, and don't really know what quality I can actually produce. But yeah... you learn your whole life, or at least that's what they say.
And I agree that it is hard. I didn't consider many things before, that I have to deal with now. I've yet to decide what direction it'll take. But thank you for your comment. It was very educational .)
Ok, just went with my first playthrough. I enjoyed it a lot! The story is nice and the combat has been fun so far.
You can't imagine how glad I am to hear that! .)
I liked the spell system, but the deck and cards aesthetic is kind of off-putting. Scrolls and spell-tomes are dumb too, just in case you though about replacing it with that. Sorry I can't offer a better option though.
I actually get that a lot. It is a shame, the deck/cards kind of grew on me as they are now, even if it is only dev-art. But I understand, and thanks for reminding me.
The fight after I killed the bear (the one with the spawning firehounds) I got killed. Game got bugged or something. Thing is it got stuck when I should have respawned, and I hadn't saved until then, so I lost all my progress. I quit for now, but I'll play it again on my week-end and come again if I have any more comments to make.
You actually found a bug I encountered once, and then wasn't able to reproduce again. If you haven't started the game since then, could you send me the log file? It should be located in C:\Users\[YourUser]\AppData\LocalLow\Dizztal\The Prisonmaster\output_log.txt . The error that caused the freezing could be recorded there, and it would help me to fix it.
Stuff you should look into:
It's incredibly annoying not having any kind of keyboard support, give me my WASD for displacement and quick access keys for attacks and char sheet.
Also, make sure to run your texts through a spell-checker, there were some misspellings here and there.
I'm implementing this, it should be done before the weekend. I'll leave a comment here when it's done and uploaded .)
Thank you all again for your input. It's been very valuable!
