Jack Dandy
Arcane
Hey, Ultima V-clone. Sweet. I'm grabbing this.
Hi everyone, I am doing this post to self-promote my game, Epikos, which I just released two days ago. I'll try to follow rule #3 here, and give some meaningful discussion. Hopefully you will find my experiences interesting, regardless of if you decide to check out my game.
My Backstory
My day job is as a (non) indie dev. I used to work at a so-called crunch studio, for about five years. This is the typical game industry stuff you've heard about. 12 hour days minimum, including Saturday and Sunday (we "only" worked 8 hours on Sunday). I did that job for about five years.
I should say that this is an unethical and probably illegal way to treat people, and that we tragically had one dev commit suicide, and another die from the stress (stroke). Both young men, both very talented.
After that terrible introduction to the games industry, I got a job at a "good" company, one that makes very popular games and doesn't overwork their employees at all.
Free Time? Whaaaat?
When you aren't working 12+ hour days, you get this amazing thing called "free time!" But, I didn't know what to do with it!
So I started coding Epikos.
My Indie Game:
At this point you may wish to take a take a look at some screenshots, or maybe the trailer. After you check it out, I'll explain the choices I made with art style and gameplay. Screenshots/trailer here:
https://kingbee.itch.io/epikos
16 Color Graphics?
The art in my game is abstract enough so that your mind goes into the "fill in the blanks" mode, which I believe activates your imagination. Whenever I show someone my game, they see something different. They interpret the art and the characters as something else, something which is either funny, or personally meaningful to them. I really like that aspect of the art.
Gameplay, Input, and a Critique of Modern Turn Based RPGs:
I really love games with snappy input, and I find this to be a rarity in most turn based games today. In the more modern games, I find that most of my time is spent waiting for for some animation to finish playing, or for some flashy camera shot to finish up. This leads to a situation where you are waiting for the game to let you make your next move, and I find it disconnects me from the game.
In older games such as Nethack and Ultima, I don't find that problem. Even though it was a turn based game, the input was snappy and responsive. I like this style of input, so I wrote Epikos so that it proceeds as fast as you can give input from the keyboard! I hope it will provide a pleasing experience. Removing this disconnect provides a deeper connection to the game.
Plot/Story
The game is single player, and takes place in a world with unique history. Each character has a special backstory revealed through playing. Each character also has his own set of abilities that you use in the turn based battles.
If you get more interested in the world's history, you can (optionally) find secret tablets and take them to bards. These bards will translate the ancient tablets and read you a myth or legend.
You can also talk to the many NPCs you will encounter. Much of the conversation is presented in a style somewhat inspired from the dialog in the old Ultima games, though there are some Final Fantasy style cutscenes. I've tried to incorporate elements of my two favorite games, Ultima IV and Final Fantasy I.
Finally, each character can learn magic via ancient scrolls. You find or purchase the scrolls, and then collect blood crystals from your slain enemies. Using these crystals, you can cast a variety of spells.
Levels?
I'm not a huge fan of levels and grinding in RPGs. In Epikos, I tuned each battle to the characters that you will have in your party at the time of the fight. Therefore, the fights are perfectly balanced, and you don't need to get XP for it to be fun.
Of course, many players want some kind of character progress. You can get money to buy various items, such as scrolls which will unlock different spells. It's optional, but you can fight just a few extra battles to afford most things. Overall it isn't a character-progression type of game, and there aren't any skill trees. Your characters start with a functional set of skills, and you can usually get a few more through finding unique items.
There are also a few key items you can find that will help greatly in the fight.
How do I sell a game?
I created all the art, music, and of course wrote all the code, as well as did a few promotional things like make a website and a trailer.
While I am familiar with code, I am completely clueless to the process of promoting an actual finished game, so I will gladly accept any criticism or advice. I thought putting the game on itch.io was a good starting point, and then I started posting a bit on reddit.
I have gotten the Mod's approval to suggest my game on a few subreddits, but I'm still largely clueless.
Ok, I've tried to elaborate on the game decisions I made and to explain my game a bit. Thanks, and please try Epikos!
Game Page:
https://kingbee.itch.io/epikos
Trailer Only:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrrLmY1aOLQ
Edit:
If you are short of cash, I might be willing to part with a few free copies PM me.
Someone mentioned the snappy combat. That was one of the main goals. I have played a lot of (really good) turn-based games lately. I find they all have really longwinded animations, and I just never want to watch them. Even truly excellent games such as Advance Wars, on the larger maps, you spend a lot of time waiting for the AI to make their move. I don't really like this, so I made Epikos have very fast AI moves.
Looks ugly as shit, rather watch a microsoft excel screen. But i guess a lot of nostalgiafags are going to overlook this.I always found a certain beauty in the 16-color style, and since even retro games these days use more than 16 colors, I decided to explore that option. Honest truth is that I like how that looks better, though since most gamers haven't seen anything like this, there are a lot of surprised reactions.
Kingbee said:The art in my game is abstract enough so that your mind goes into the "fill in the blanks" mode, which I believe activates your imagination. Whenever I show someone my game, they see something different. They interpret the art and the characters as something else, something which is either funny, or personally meaningful to them. I really like that aspect of the art.
This is nonsense, games with great graphics can still have great complexity. Its just that developers generally percieve that they wont sell, so they make them simple.Then multimedia and 3D became the rage that got everyone half-crazy, and all that abstract notion and those immense gameworlds disappeared almost overnight
This is nonsense, games with great graphics can still have great complexity.
Its just that developers generally percieve that they wont sell, so they make them simple.
Simplicity is generally accepted as a good thing in this toilet industry. But in the 80s/90s when the main audience were smart nerds with a lot of free time on their hands it was different.
Neat!Glad you like it overall so far.
As for the music, I made the music using actual NES sequencing which included two square waves, a triangle wave, and a noise channel. If you don't like it, you can just replace the music with anything you please, so rock out to your favorite stuff (replace the music in the music folder), or turn the music volume off if that is better.
It's probably more helpful if you can be more specific about what you didn't like about it (though if you don't have a music background it might be difficult to enumerate the specifics).But the tunes I heard so far are just bad! Try and get them better next time, aye?