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Neofeud - A Cyberpunk Adventure Game

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Yeah, the guy who played the cop just has that great movie announcer voice, and I was worried about the overshadowing, but couldn't afford to have him take on the MC. He does play the biggest antagonist in the game, though. I would've definitely cast him as the main character if I could, and I'd love to have him in a starring role in the future if I can get the finances to work.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
I understand the low life part of cyberpunk. However, Primordia is actually highly detailed and cluttered whereas your characters look like they were painted in broad strokes - a very different look. I actually think your current style works well on biomodified humanoids in the game, but not at all for the cyborgs. However, I do like the designs themselves - pretty creative stuff.

Also I actually appreciate a story-driven adventure game rather than a puzzle focused one, so I might check it out at some point.

Fair criticism, thanks for giving the game a look!

Whoa, I missed the Primordia reference above. That's nice to hear!

Of course, Primordia was the game that sold me on switching to the adventure genre, and AGS in particular. That and Technobabylon. :)
thank you for referencing technobabylon. it was a wild trip.
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Hi guys. If any of you were thinking of picking up Neofeud, just a heads up that it will be on sale till this Saturday! https://silverspook.itch.io/neofeud



Here are a couple reviews of the game:

Brandon C. Hovey: "An immersive cyberpunk adventure game... Echoes of H.R. Giger and William Gibson... [Christian Miller] knows what makes a quality game."

Cabinet De Chaologie: "NeoFeud offers a dozen hours of gameplay that turns out to be a great time for any point & click and SF fan"

And here's a couple user reviews from those who bought Neoeud on Itch.io (Itch doesn't display links to the reviews anymore for some reason :O )


Fitz:

"Dystopian sci-fi is very popular among point&click adventure game enthusiast these days -- and Neofeud is on par with the genre's neo-classics such as Technobabylon and Primordia. Its strongest suit is the writing. The investigation revolves around an engaging story of inequality, injustice, hubris, depravity and twisted socio-politics. It's a biting satire on the world of today, translated into the archetypes of futurism, with robots, flying cars and AI viewed through the dark sunglasses of cyberpunk. It gets really philosophical, esoteric even, with its musings on human consciousness and alternate realities -- but it doesn't shy away from comic relief, either. There are nods to film classics of the 80's and 90's, plenty of outrageous name puns, and two quirky sidekicks helping Karl Carbon on his mission.

The graphics have their own unique style: instead of going for huge pixels (as most retro adventure games do) or pre-rendered 3D, Neofeud's locations and characters are part digipainted, part collage -- which, surprisingly, fits the game's world itself perfectly. The music -- various styles and flavors of electronica -- goes well with the cyberpunk settings and the plot itself, as it shifts between grim stagnation, action and moments of reverie. The voice acting is solid -- and indeed, the characters talk a lot. Interactions seem to be the most important game mechanics, logical puzzles being on the simple side, so as to keep the story going. There's plenty of action and plot twists, and an epic dramatic grand finale."


Jack o Jack:

"Best point'n'click I ever played in years! Looks like there's lot of work behind this
I had a blast just listening to the dialogues and spotting all the references

A must play"
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
Hi guys. If any of you were thinking of picking up Neofeud, just a heads up that it will be on sale till this Saturday! https://silverspook.itch.io/neofeud



Here are a couple reviews of the game:

Brandon C. Hovey: "An immersive cyberpunk adventure game... Echoes of H.R. Giger and William Gibson... [Christian Miller] knows what makes a quality game."

Cabinet De Chaologie: "NeoFeud offers a dozen hours of gameplay that turns out to be a great time for any point & click and SF fan"

And here's a couple user reviews from those who bought Neoeud on Itch.io (Itch doesn't display links to the reviews anymore for some reason :O )


Fitz:

"Dystopian sci-fi is very popular among point&click adventure game enthusiast these days -- and Neofeud is on par with the genre's neo-classics such as Technobabylon and Primordia. Its strongest suit is the writing. The investigation revolves around an engaging story of inequality, injustice, hubris, depravity and twisted socio-politics. It's a biting satire on the world of today, translated into the archetypes of futurism, with robots, flying cars and AI viewed through the dark sunglasses of cyberpunk. It gets really philosophical, esoteric even, with its musings on human consciousness and alternate realities -- but it doesn't shy away from comic relief, either. There are nods to film classics of the 80's and 90's, plenty of outrageous name puns, and two quirky sidekicks helping Karl Carbon on his mission.

The graphics have their own unique style: instead of going for huge pixels (as most retro adventure games do) or pre-rendered 3D, Neofeud's locations and characters are part digipainted, part collage -- which, surprisingly, fits the game's world itself perfectly. The music -- various styles and flavors of electronica -- goes well with the cyberpunk settings and the plot itself, as it shifts between grim stagnation, action and moments of reverie. The voice acting is solid -- and indeed, the characters talk a lot. Interactions seem to be the most important game mechanics, logical puzzles being on the simple side, so as to keep the story going. There's plenty of action and plot twists, and an epic dramatic grand finale."


Jack o Jack:

"Best point'n'click I ever played in years! Looks like there's lot of work behind this
I had a blast just listening to the dialogues and spotting all the references

A must play"
what's the point of references? are they supposed to make me laugh, like jokes? if yes, why not use jokes? is it harder to come up with jokes than it is to come up with references?
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Speaking for myself, with respect to Primordia -- which had lots of references -- I think they're a little different from jokes. Their primary roles are acknowledge the work's place in a larger, well-established genre (almost like footnotes in an academic paper) and to gratify players who are familiar with the genre by rewarding their knowledge and assuring them that they and the game's creators draw on the same shared experience.

I can see arguments for why references are bad, and I'm not trying to dispute that point, just explain the logic, or my logic, behind them. Dunno whether the same is true of Neofeud.
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
I was actually about to use the example of the "Gordium Conduit" in Primordia of an example where a reference is not necessarily intended to elicit laughter or as a cute way to take a shortcut to the player's affection through collective nostalgia, or something like that. The reference to the Gordian Knot was spot-on, and basically... almost everything, certainly most of the characters' names in Primordia are references to other work that add whole new layers of meaning, delight, and -- yes -- sometimes humor.

Neofeud does involve a lot of reference, as it is intended in part as a satire of science fiction, cyberpunk, and especially the way robots / sentient machines are portrayed in popular culture. The tone might be described as Richard Kadrey or Terry Pratchet-esque, if he more into sci-fi.
 
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MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
My favorite weird discovery was that I had subconsciously taken Oswald and Cornelius from The Story of Babar. The name "Cornelius" appears as one of Babar's royal advisors,* and the basic visual combo of the two characters is taken from the first two people Babar meets in town (though I provided Vic different references, I'm sure I took the idea from the pair of them).

I can't find the image online, but here's the spot in a video that has it.


[* Oswald obviously gets his name from the Penguin, and that was deliberate.]
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Of course! I loved Oswald and Cornelius!

Also, I agree with oasis789 in that context is important. Neofeud is definitely not 'very serious'.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
rQ1RErV.jpg

the left guy says the once chocked while eating spaghettis. the right one screams that he also ate spaghettis once.

can't help but feel like references may be used like in the pic just for the devs to feel like they belong or rather to scream at you how much they belong.

of course they could be made funny like a character from an adventure game other than monkey island would look at a skull and say: "Murray?". it would be a cheap way to harvest a giggle, but at least it would produce that giggle.

now imagine some story adventure game that doesn't try to be funny make a reference to the longest journey or syberia or something similar. it would just feel weird and out of place and in your face in-game "namedropping". can't provide a real example of it ever occurring, but when i read "Best point'n'click I ever played in years! Looks like there's lot of work behind this. I had a blast just listening to the dialogues and spotting all the references" i immediately thought, wait what? am i supposed to buy this game and play it for the namedropping? all the references are used here like some sort of core feature one would look forward to instead of a rare easter egg.
now, is this bad marketing? or is this what passes for entertainment these days and therefore good marketing?

*good job with primordia, by the way. i don't remember any of the jokes or references since it's been a while but i do remember having fun with it and playing it through. well done.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
I guess context matters in terms of what kind of references you can get away with, but I dunno, almost every literary classic is chock full of references, even epic poems like Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy or grand novels like Les Miserables or plays like Shakespearan tragedies, even. Obviously references get even more pronounced when you look at stuff like Pale Fire or Infinite Jest.

In terms of games, Primordia has very explicit references to PS:T, Fallout, Beneath a Steel Sky, and System Shock, more obscure ones to a bunch of other games (Zack McKracken, Final Fantasy IV, Annie Android, Zork), and tons of explicit literary and film references. I do think I went too far with a dumb reference a Jay-Z song, which I removed in a patch. It's not like every line of dialogue in Primordia has a reference, but probably you could find some kind of reference in every scene (i.e., a room and the dialogues in it) and every character. Much of that was just my own selfishness, not a desire to please the player, but a desire to pay homage to as many of the things I loved that inspired me in making Primordia.

I think adventure games are, for whatever reason, particularly suited to this -- perhaps because of the inherent absurdity in them.
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Reapa: I can see how that player's comment might come off as, 'just play this game to giggle at all the other games that appear in it.' I can assure you, Neofeud is not simply about featuring cameos of and pointers to other adventure games, or even being similar to them. I agree, it's a lot easier to make some random reference, knowing someone will smile cause you dropped that name. Harder to say or do something new or meaningful with the reference. I'd say the difference is (to use a dated 90's business term) 'value added'. "What are you adding that's new?"

As an example, there's a character in Neofeud called "Corporal Hendrix", who is a sentient robot who has the appearance of a skeletal humanoid warmachine - similar to that of a Terminator. Immediately the audience expectation here is that the machine is there to kill you. Except, he's wearing a bunch of hippy beads, peace signs, a Hendrix bandana, and he's standing in line at a government welfare office.

KARL CARBON: "How you holding up, marine?"

CORPORAL HENDRIX: "Keeping it together with peace and love, my man! I'm just here for my weekly PTSD therapy credits and social security check... Two tours and the Second Dresden Firebombing really took me to the heart of darkness."

KARL CARBON: "No shit, you were in Operation Screaming Talon? I thought all you model X-800's were melted into hot slag when the thermion bombs leveled the city?"

CORPORAL HENDRIX: "We lost a lot of good sentients that day. Lost my leg to a depleted uranium round and cooked my motherboard. but I'm reformed, friend! I've opened up my Third Eye! War, huh! What is it good for?"

KARL CARBON: "Keeping the bullet farmers in business, I guess."

CORPORAL HENDRIX: "Don't get me started on the military-industrial complex! Makes me just wanna terminate every last one of those... (Takes deep breaths) Happy place... Happy place... Hey, you stay righteous my good buddy, flower power!"

There are references to a great many things, there, the most obvious being 'The Terminator', but the purpose of the reference is not merely to have people smile because there's a thing from that 80's movie, 'the end'. I personally know a lot of war veterans -- Vietnam, Iraq, etc. -- and I've been a social worker who was in the position of 'Karl Carbon', the 'Sentient Services Worker', who's job it is to get these defective machines their needed social benefits, and ostensibly get them 'assimilated as productive members of society'. One of the points, is to make a Swift-esque social commentary on the fact that, in much of popular media, there is an expectation that war machines, and generally 'machines with human level consciousness/intelligence' will come to kill us all (Terminators, Cylons, the nasty robots in Wasteland) or enslave us (as meat-batteries in 'The Matrix'). Except, what happens to actual conscious entities that have the ability to feel who fight wars? Well, the folks I know and worked with all did horrible things overseas, some of them shot children, blew up hospitals, came back, and found a society that they couldn't cope with, riddled with PTSD, nightmares, chronic pain and disability. We have a government in my country constantly trying to figure out how to not help these people, along with the other 'forgotten' individuals at the margins -- minorities, the poor, immigrants -- that I was charged with helping as a social worker.

So what if the future isn't about machines killing us, but about having to take care of a bunch of more obsolete/broken 'bastard children' called sentient machines, that the Elite Humans created to fight over oil or put down resistances, or do other things that sentient primates *actually* do to other sentient primates? Neofeud, if it does its job as I hope it should, is, along with being an adventure game, a swift Gibsonian cautionary kick to the head, a satire of our present and our collectively imagined futures, that perhaps tells us where we are and may be headed, if we're not careful.

If you chuckle at the fact that there's a Terminator-analog in there, that's cool too. But it would kind of bum me out if that's all the average player takes away from Neofeud.


Admittedly, adventure games in particular are indeed prone to simple namedropping, but most of Neofeud point not to other sorts of games for the most part. Most of the references are not to other adventure games but to films such as Blade Runner, Terminator, The Matrix, shows like Battlestar Galactica and Ghost in the Shell, games like Deus Ex, System Shock and Fallout, and various other literary references (William Gibson probably being the foremost.) The one adventure game reference I can think of, coincidentally, is a reference to Primordia itself in the form of a sentient, monk-like robot named 'Primor'. Who is described as, 'One of those religious robot cultists', who is also standing in the Sentient Services government dole-out line. :)

I should add, Neofeud's tone is, again, different from Primordia, in that it's more directly addressing the existing texts and media that it refers to. The way Primordia kind of stealthily alludes to other things, which the player may pick up on to their delight (or not), makes perfect sense in the world.
 
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Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
Reapa: I can see how that player's comment might come off as, 'just play this game to giggle at all the other games that appear in it.' I can assure you, Neofeud is not simply about featuring cameos of and pointers to other adventure games, or even being similar to them. I agree, it's a lot easier to make some random reference, knowing someone will smile cause you dropped that name. Harder to say or do something new or meaningful with the reference. I'd say the difference is (to use a dated 90's business term) 'value added'. "What are you adding that's new?"

As an example, there's a character in Neofeud called "Corporal Hendrix", who is a sentient robot who has the appearance of a skeletal humanoid warmachine - similar to that of a Terminator. Immediately the audience expectation here is that the machine is there to kill you. Except, he's wearing a bunch of hippy beads, peace signs, a Hendrix bandana, and he's standing in line at a government welfare office.

KARL CARBON: "How you holding up, marine?"

CORPORAL HENDRIX: "Keeping it together with peace and love, my man! I'm just here for my weekly PTSD therapy credits and social security check... Two tours and the Second Dresden Firebombing really took me to the heart of darkness."

KARL CARBON: "No shit, you were in Operation Screaming Talon? I thought all you model X-800's were melted into hot slag when the thermion bombs leveled the city?"

CORPORAL HENDRIX: "We lost a lot of good sentients that day. Lost my leg to a depleted uranium round and cooked my motherboard. but I'm reformed, friend! I've opened up my Third Eye! War, huh! What is it good for?"

KARL CARBON: "Keeping the bullet farmers in business, I guess."

CORPORAL HENDRIX: "Don't get me started on the military-industrial complex! Makes me just wanna terminate every last one of those... (Takes deep breaths) Happy place... Happy place... Hey, you stay righteous my good buddy, flower power!"

There are references to a great many things, there, the most obvious being 'The Terminator', but the purpose of the reference is not merely to have people smile because there's a thing from that 80's movie, 'the end'. I personally know a lot of war veterans -- Vietnam, Iraq, etc. -- and I've been a social worker who was in the position of 'Karl Carbon', the 'Sentient Services Worker', who's job it is to get these defective machines their needed social benefits, and ostensibly get them 'assimilated as productive members of society'. One of the points, is to make a Swift-esque social commentary on the fact that, in much of popular media, there is an expectation that war machines, and generally 'machines with human level consciousness/intelligence' will come to kill us all (Terminators, Cylons, the nasty robots in Wasteland) or enslave us (as meat-batteries in 'The Matrix'). Except, what happens to actual conscious entities that have the ability to feel who fight wars? Well, the folks I know and worked with all did horrible things overseas, some of them shot children, blew up hospitals, came back, and found a society that they couldn't cope with, riddled with PTSD, nightmares, chronic pain and disability. We have a government in my country constantly trying to figure out how to not help these people, along with the other 'forgotten' individuals at the margins -- minorities, the poor, immigrants -- that I was charged with helping as a social worker.

So what if the future isn't about machines killing us, but about having to take care of a bunch of more obsolete/broken 'bastard children' called sentient machines, that the Elite Humans created to fight over oil or put down resistances, or do other things that sentient primates *actually* do to other sentient primates? Neofeud, if it does its job as I hope it should, is, along with being an adventure game, a swift Gibsonian cautionary kick to the head, a satire of our present and our collectively imagined futures, that perhaps tells us where we are and may be headed, if we're not careful.

If you chuckle at the fact that there's a Terminator-analog in there, that's cool too. But it would kind of bum me out if that's all the average player takes away from Neofeud.


Admittedly, adventure games in particular are indeed prone to simple namedropping, but most of Neofeud point not to other sorts of games for the most part. Most of the references are not to other adventure games but to films such as Blade Runner, Terminator, The Matrix, shows like Battlestar Galactica and Ghost in the Shell, games like Deus Ex, System Shock and Fallout, and various other literary references (William Gibson probably being the foremost.) The one adventure game reference I can think of, coincidentally, is a reference to Primordia itself in the form of a sentient, monk-like robot named 'Primor'. Who is described as, 'One of those religious robot cultists', who is also standing in the Sentient Services government dole-out line. :)

I should add, Neofeud's tone is, again, different from Primordia, in that it's more directly addressing the existing texts and media that it refers to. The way Primordia kind of stealthily alludes to other things, which the player may pick up on to their delight (or not), makes perfect sense in the world.

i know the game. i was not criticizing the game, but the presentation in that post.

you should end with your strongest argument or start with it as a kind of "clickbait". and keep it as short as possible to make sure people at least read that if they don't read anything else in your post. in this case i'd go with something like:

"Robots at the welfare office - the adventure game"

then links and videos and speciall 20% off offers. they are all secondary to the core of what the game has to offer. and just cut the last argument with the references. if anything, the references should not be expected but come as a surprise. am i making sense? maybe end with a reference that would hint at the game having references and the kind of content one should expect:

"It will be sweet as honey in your mouth, but it will turn sour in your stomach!"
Revelation 10:9
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Reapa: Fair enough. Obviously at this point I can't change this last post, but I'll keep that in mind in the future.

Bertram_Tung: Thanks for checking Neofeud out!
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Some nice coverage at IndieGames.com, including a mini-interview:
Developer Christian Miller is no stranger to facing this kind of injustice. He describes growing up in one of the poorer areas of Hawaii but attending school in one of its wealthier parts as "living in two worlds, having inequality shoved in your face every day."

Working as a STEM teacher with underprivileged kids further cemented his views on a society where the marginalized struggle while there's a tourism-friendly postcard-paradise not too far away. "Cyberpunk dystopia," he claims, "is already here. It's just [that] human society is very good at papering over the more dystopic parts."

"The world of Neofeud is sort of taking my own experiences and cranking the knobs up to 11. It's a world where the marginalized (robots and chimera part-humans) have to pass a 'consciousness test' to even be *considered* a person, and are easily discarded, disappeared, used for borderline slave-labor, or to prop up a prison-industrial complex. These characters and events are all based on my own experiences, and are much less 'fictional' than one might expect."
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Yeah, Thomas of IndieGames.com did a great job there. Our science fiction literature Venn Diagram significantly overlaps (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick) and he definitely groks the deeper world and message of the game. It's always great to hear that sort of, "Yes, I totally get this," feedback as a creator.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.indiegraze.com/2017/09/19/interview-neofeuds-christian-miller/

Interview: Neofeud’s Christian Miller
on September 19, 2017

Neofeud falls into the category of games that impress via content and process, as Silver Spook Games, comprised of a single developer (Christian Miller), has created a cyberpunk dystopian point-and-click adventure that uses a unique art style to explore larger themes through a gritty narrative. On the eve of the game’s release, I chatted with Christian on his project and its larger themes.

Erik Meyer: The art style blends with the game’s music and dialogue to create a gritty, organic feel. Describe the overall goals and criteria you maintain for game assets and the need to have everything mesh within the game experience. What makes everything ‘feel right’ to you?

Christian Miller: I’m glad that the art, music, and dialog came off that way for you.

I like to joke that being a creative fiction writer is basically a ‘public display of delusional schizophrenia’ — in that you’re basically lying for hundreds of pages and taking on multiple personalities (characters) all day long, then people read your craziness. But being a one-person indie game developer, flipping between being writer, programmer, artist, director, business-suit, etc… is like being a writer, but ten times worse!

Seriously though, some specific goals for Neofeud were: 1.) A unique and stylized visual approach to dark sci-fi / cyberpunk 2.) a compelling, original story, and 3.) characters you love, or hate, and you can’t wait to see/hear more about on your next play session. I wanted any particular scene in Neofeud to be instantly recognizable to someone as, “Oh, that is DEFINITELY from that game, Neofeud,” rather than, “That could be sci-fi game X, or action movie Y, or neon-drenched cyberpunk graphic novel Z…” I’m a huge fan of Ridley Scott, and Neofeud obviously has some of Blade Runner’s ‘DNA’ in it. But at the same time, I think it’s Scott’s cinematic virtuosity, his pioneering of this wholy new visual style — along with nailing the ‘compelling story’ and ‘amazing characters’ angles — that made Blade Runner stand the test of time as a truly great film, in my opinion.

One more note on making everything mesh together- I did initially want to save some time and have the music done by someone else, and my good friend Scott Smigiel offered to compose a bunch of tracks for the game. He did a great job, really, and I really liked his heavy industrial / noise music vibe, but ultimately, when I started putting the music into the games, something wasn’t quite much of the time. (This was mostly my fault as I didn’t give Scott very good direction on the music, and did a lot of modification to the world on the fly). As you say, ‘it just didn’t quite feel right’. So I ended up composing 43 of the 45 tracks for the game myself, one scene at a time, while really taking care to nail the mood, atmosphere, and emotion of the scenes.

neofeud_3.png


EM: I’m interested in how you see your role as a STEM teacher in Honolulu working with underserved youth impacting the dystopian cyberpunk adventure you’re creating; how much does it drive you? On your Patreon page, you speak for a need for kids to have opportunities for a better future, much as the world of Neofeud feels at the same time fascinating, dehumanizing, and bleak. Do you feel games need to answer to lofty goals and act as social critique, rather than simply serving as entertainment? Within indie game experiences, what kinds of opportunities push us forward?

CM: Let me just say, first off, that I don’t want to tell game makers, indie or otherwise, how and why to make their games.

But personally, my games are absolutely influenced by my own life experiences, and I believe that there are opportunities, certainly in narrative-heavy games, to impact culture and society, to varying degrees.

Hawaii is known for its postcard-paradise, but let me tell you, it is not all fun and sun for everyone who actually lives here. I grew up a native Hawaiian in what is essentially Hawaii’s equivalent of the ghetto. Most of the folks in my neighborhood were non-white, and many were immigrants. My neighborhood friends lived 10+ to a house, and ate pork and beans and rice on a regular basis. My jobs over the years have involved working with kids who come from really horrible circumstances, many with parents incarcerated or out of their minds on drugs, many homeless, living in vans, some even getting beaten in the street for sleeping on the sidewalk. I remember asking kids to bring back really simple things like permission papers, and some kids would tell me, “Mr. Chris, I don’t see my parents, they work all day.” So there were kids who had working parents with two or more jobs, and were still homeless. And me as a teacher in Honolulu with a wife and two kids? We were basically one step away from homelessness.

In my opinion, cyberpunk dystopia is already here. It’s just human society is very good at papering over the more dystopic parts.

The world of Neofeud, where you have the equivalent of the Palace of Versailles literally floating above an endless cross between an L.A. slum, a Mexican shantyscape and a mega-landfill, is sort of taking my own experiences and cranking the knobs up to 11. It’s a world where the marginalized (robots and chimera part-humans) have to pass a ‘consciousness test’ to even be *considered* a person, and are easily discarded, disappeared, used for borderline slave-labor or to prop up a prison-industrial complex. These characters and events are all based on my own experiences, and are much less ‘fictional’ than one might expect. Neofeud, I hope, doesn’t merely entertain, but also makes one think at least a little about the world we’re in, and where we may be heading. Neuromancer, the seminal cyberpunk work by William Gibson was fundamentally a cautionary reaction to the economic downturn, the ‘greed is good’ mentality, the rising inequality and general bleakness in the early 80’s. The best science fiction says something fundamental about the present, in my opinion.

At the same time, everyone has their own experiences, and their own things to say and express, in their own unique way. I think at least indie game makers can aspire to this. I’d prefer to live in a world where games aren’t all just the next ‘hot’ cash-cow of a genre, anyway!

EM: High technology in the game exists alongside tent cities, stagnating bureaucracy, and failing infrastructure, so as a developer, what is essential in using these stark contrasts effectively?

CM: I wanted to really emphasize the extreme societal stratification — the ‘upper echelons’ of society literally live in the ‘Stratoplex’, which is could be interpreted as literally living up in the stratosphere, as the cities float up in the clouds, as well as an extreme upper class. And yes, this contrast needed to be reflected in the visual appearance — you have opulent gold, tropical blue, and lush manicured green lawns up there, and below you have a heavy urban decay and people living in literal junk piles, with patchworks of brown, black and grey, and multicolored ‘vomit’. If you’re last-year’s model of android servant, you get tossed out of the sky castle and don’t automatically get the cyber-prosthetic refurb when your ‘iArm Version 7’ breaks. So you plasma torch a piece of a totaled motorcycle, screw and ductape some bits of a toaster on it, and there’s your replacement. Everything is broken, archaic, and patched-together. It’s not ‘nice’.

Having lived in an actual below-the-poverty-line slum, I can say this is one of the things missing from cyberpunk nowadays. To me, it feels everything is too clean and polished. I wanted Neofeud to capture that actual grit and dirtiness that I think is often missing.

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EM: Neofeud has a wide variety of sentient life, from androids and cyborgs to failed eugenics experiments that get dumped without rights into a violent world. Can you speak to this interest in personhood and how your project gives us a safe space in which to view these kinds of concepts? What do you see cutting to the core of second and third-class citizens?

CM: I’m a big fan of Blade Runner, Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, and that sort of sci-fi. These all deal fundamentally with the questions like, “What makes humans human?” “What is consciousness?” “What would it be like to have conscious, sentient machines?”

Where a lot of intelligent robots in popular culture focus on the ‘Skynet’ scenario where machines take over and kill or enslave the human race, or the ‘Singularity’ where exponential leaps in technology push toward superintelligent AI that solves all of our problems with its infinite wisdom, I wanted to turn all these tropes on their head. I looked at my own experiences, as well as at history, at how human beings *actually* have dealt with other human beings who were different from them. And the situation a lot of the time is, “Not very nicely”. Blacks became slaves in America. Native Americans were decimated and herded onto reservations. Immigrants are generally marginalized (I worked with these folks, as I mentioned).

So what if huge corporations were to reach the point of producing conscious machines? Thomas Edison famously had “999” non-lightbulbs, failed prototypes on the way to making the successful product. What if there were thousands, millions of ‘failed’ prototypes of conscious robots on the way to producing the one ‘success’? What if these sentient machines were actually on-par, or ‘more conscious’ than humans, and began asking for ‘sentient rights’, fair pay, the ability to own property, etc? How would we determine who gets to be a robot ‘pet, livestock, slave’ and who gets to be a robot person? What if humans decided to rig the test to maximize their own wealth, increase their own ‘dynasties’ at the expense of tossing a lot of these sentient machines into landfills?

In short, maybe humans would treat those not merely of a different skin color or culture, but of an entirely different substrate, any better than the ‘others’ who’ve suffered throughout history. Add to that our current trajectory of skyrocketing inequality and concentration of wealth (five men now own as much wealth as half of the human race).

That’s what Neofeud explores.

EM: You have a Patreon to help fund your project and get the word out about it, so let’s speak to crowdfunding for a moment. What kinds of social media connections have helped you through your process, and what kinds of feedback have you gotten from your supporters? What have you seen as the biggest hurdles, from a marketing point of view?

CM: I had considered doing a Kickstarter initially, but the general advice I was getting was, “Running a Kickstarter is a full-time job.” And since I was basically full-time-and-a-half working on Neofeud while also working a day job, juggling a Kickstarter on top of that sounded like a recipe for catastrophe! So I had seen at least one other game developer, who was actually based in Hawaii (EYUH Games – making Gaimoria) who was getting some pretty good monthly funding for their project through Patreon, and I decided to try that.

My long-time Patreon supporters Deborah Dunaway, Scott Smigiel, Belinda Taylor, and Ian Ruotsala have been a huge financial and moral support, so I’d like to thank them. Social media-wise, I’ve found one of my biggest hurdles was going out there and meeting people, overcoming one’s shyness and ego, and asking for help. A couple folks in particular, Mark J. Lovegrove of screen7.co.uk and Frank Meijer (@_kaassouffle) have helped me in massive ways on the business and marketing side of game development. I was basically a complete bumbling idiot business and press-wise during Neofeud’s initial release on Itch.io, which had minuscule visibility, whereas I’m feeling much more confident with the responses and coverage of Neofeud’s Steam release thus far. And largely this is thanks to veterans like these guys who’ve been in the industry and really know their stuff.

So yes, ‘getting over ones-self’ can be a huge hurdle. A lot of success in the game industry, and any creative industry is of course luck, but a lot is really just being a good person and talking to people. It’s tough for introverts like me but ya gotta do it!

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EM: Point and click adventure games have been around for decades, so while the Neofeud universe has its own constraints and plot arc, what functional, technical goals have you held for the flow and operations of the game? What are must do things for point and click projects, menus systems, and puzzles?

CM: Hm, personally, one of my big mantras was, “Don’t make puzzles for puzzles sake.” Point-and-clicks tend to catch a flack, and sometimes fairly, for having lots of obtuse or kind of ridiculous puzzles that take ages to solve. I didn’t want the narrative to be disrupted by the player getting stuck for a very long time, or by doing something really weird or out of character for the sake of having a puzzle (the famous example is the cat mustache puzzle from Gabriel Knight 4!).

The challenges in Neofeud often involve social puzzles, where you need to speak to characters, or have the right character in your party handle a certain situation, which fits the world and situations of the characters. For example, at one point you have a half-robot ex-cop, a robot gangbanger, and legitimate “Neofeudal Royalty” in your party. The ex-cop is good at doing detective work and interrogating, the robot gangbanger has a more “violent” way of dealing with things, and the royalty can essentially use their ‘political power’ to order suits, agents, even corporate executives to do what she wants or face the wrath of her world-dominating ‘Corporate State’. But the catch? She can’t really pick locks, or be seen in certain situations, for reasons that might compromise her agenda.

So ultimately, you’re solving a puzzle, but the puzzle itself is almost always directly involved with the narrative and theme of the game. A big one is of course the abuse of power, which your characters both suffer, and at times become the abusers themselves, in order to meet their own agendas. Nepotism and tyranny as a game mechanic!

Other than this, the interface is pretty standard point-and-click, with ‘look’, ‘talk’, ‘walk’, ‘interact’ cursor modes. I tried to make it intuitive enough for old-hats and newcomers to the genre, alike!

EM: As a one-person studio, give me a view of your process and work flow; what kinds of things are easier, due to your singular nature, and where do you see most of your time going? When adding new game elements, what is the process like from genesis to polished implementation?

CM: Generally speaking, I started Neofeud by throwing a lot of brainstorming project ideas, short stories, character ideas and worldbuilding stuff into a really big Word document. Over time, I had a bunch of different game concepts, and Neofeud actually began as a Unity platformer, with a cyborg cop shooting mutant roaches, like Fallout crossed with Megaman, believe it or not. That was later scrapped and I moved on to the point-n-click idea as it suited what I wanted to do with the narrative better. I essentially got a good chunk of the story outlines, and began painting assets, implementing in the game, adding logic, mostly at approximately the same time. I’ve found it was a bad idea to do too much work in one area like make a ton of sprites, and then discover the format or size or something isn’t working right in the game, then have to do it all over again. Better to have small iterative cycles.

To be completely honest, my process is somewhat chaotic, but I believe that some of the particular ‘lived in’ and organic feel of Neofeud has to do with my own game dev process. Where the obvious drawback of a one-person development team is the multiplied workload and need to acquire a wider array of skills, one of the luxuries is the ability to essentially make any changes, anywhere in the game, on the fly, as inspiration hits. So for example, I might have written out a story script for a particular scene, and now I’ve begun painting the background for it. Then, halfway through painting the background, I make a mistake, like a skyscraper in the background was placed too high to make sense. But then I ask, “What if these buildings are not on the ground, but actually levitating above it?” and from there I can simply run with the idea, working the story and programming around that concept. Now, if I was on a team, I’d have to go through the story department and the art department and the programmers and it’d take longer, as well as probably cause some confusion and friction.

At the same time, I can see the huge benefit that spreading the workload around can bring, as the games can be completed faster, and without having to spread yourself out quite as thin. I’ve looked into potentially working with other writers, including a group called Chaos Nova to try to do just that.

Last but not least was the music and voice acting. As mentioned, I did compose the music myself, and that took a while, probably two months to really nail everything exactly right. The voice acting is the one part I got help with. I did about half of the voice acting myself word-count wise (two of the main characters). All the main characters and most of the smaller roles were performed by actors who had experience in drama or had theater training. And perhaps more importantly, I wanted people who really truly understood the script, what Neofeud was really about, and could bring these unusual characters to life.

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EM: What does having the game on Steam mean to you as a goal/benchmark? What kinds of support do you anticipate to be providing, and do you anticipate adding more content beyond the September release? Additionally, do you see expectations and opportunities regarding indie games changing? How is the industry evolving?

CM: As mentioned previously, I was not so bright in the marketing/business department, and didn’t get Neofeud to Steam Greenlight till it was almost out (bad move!). Finally getting Neofeud to Steam is a big deal, I think because the game is made for PC, and Steam is basically *the* PC platform, certainly that’s what I’ve gathered, however late-in-the-game. I’m pretty broke at the moment, but I’m pretty hopeful for the Steam release, as I’m already seeing many times the numbers of folks who bought Neofeud on Itch.io adding Neofeud to their Steam wishlist, two weeks before release!

I’m planning to provide support myself at this point as I’m full-time game developing now, and future Silver Spook Games projects depend on how well Neofeud does commercially. I don’t have any particular plans for additional Neofeud content in terms of gameplay at this time, although I wouldn’t rule that out, especially if Neofeud is a big hit! The Neofeud soundtrack will be a DLC that you can buy, however. It seems to be pretty popular, and I’ve heard a couple folks say they might buy Neofeud for the soundtrack (although I suspect they may be joking or trying to cheer me up when I’m bummed out on social media!)
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
52
Thanks for the devtag request, Infinitron. A little update: the Neofeud soundtrack is now on Steam (which you can get in a bundle).

And here's one more review that just came in:

A Diamond Of Storytelling In The Scrap Pile

"When I play a game, I play to be compelled or immersed in some way. The game has to dig its claws in and drag me in. Walking away has to be difficult or that’s exactly what I’ll do. Neofeud grabbed me in just that way through its gripping mastery of storytelling, akin to how last I binged on episodes of Game of Thrones.

Neofeud is a point-and-click game set in a sci-fi dystopia borne of the minds of every prominent science fiction writer from the past century, from H.R. Giger to Ridley Scott. The result is a disturbing yet strangly familiar dystopian society in which social inequality is systemic, the top one percent have their own one percent, and the birth of A.I has resulted in a massive population of unemployed sentient robots. Sound interesting? We're only just dipping our toes.

Beginning by introducing the main character of the story, an ex-cop and currently social worker named Karl Carbon, the story of Neofeud quickly explodes into a story rife with psuedoscience and more twists than an M. Night Shamlyan movie. As a single conspiracy unfolds, others follow, creating a story layered so deep that by the halfway mark of Neofeud’s potential 15-hour game time I found myself questioning characters motives even more than the main character of the game itself.

Past endless conspiracies and a spiraling story, the characters of Neofeud are developed so much more than characters in nearly any other game I’ve recently played. Karl and the cast that he interacts with are human to a tee. Interactions with them are immersive and real, a necessity when a majority of the game is dialogue."

Read the full review from Sprites and Dice.
 

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