Indie Interview: Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 6, 2012

Cthulhu Saves the World was the first of the XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) RPGs to really catch my attention. As something of a follow-up to Zeboyd Games‘ simpler, unrelated but equally non-serious Breath of Death VII, CStW was an amazing deal at basically two bucks. Both games sold well on XBLIG, and their success enabled them to be accepted on Steam when ported to the PC.

I chatted with half the team – Robert – and learned that we’d both gone to the same university (albeit at different times). I don’t know if he knew this, but the school is located only a few miles from where the original dice-and-paper role-playing game of Lovecraftian horror – Call of Cthulhu – was originally created. Maybe there’s something about Provo / Orem Utah that causes furtive, unnamable thoughts of eldritch, unimaginable horrors between the stars, beneath the depths of the ocean, or behind the corners of strange non-Euclidian geometry? Nonsense, and such thoughts would surely sap me of my sanity should I continue to dwell on them!

Where was I? Oh, yeah! There’s another part of this story. Several years ago, the Penny Arcade guys worked with Hothead Games to create a humorous indie RPG series entitled, “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.” I only played the first one to completion, and found it amusing. You can read my thoughts on it here. However, the games apparently did not sell as well as anticipated, and the series was abandoned after the second release. This left the overall story arc unfinished  (Penny Arcade’s Jerry Holkins even penned the story in prose form for fans to read online, as follow-up episodes were never expected).

Then came the announcement that Zeboyd Games was continuing the series in 16-bit style. The result, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, was just released, with a follow-up episode now in development.

Could such a convergence of two events actually signify greater events of eldritch horror and the gloaming of humanity’s brief, piteous stay in the universe? To get to the bottom of this, I caught up with Robert earlier this week and bombarded him with a few questions masquerading as an interview.  His responses didn’t resemble the gibberings of a madman, but I leave it to you to decide if these are but innocent responses of one untouched by cyclopean plots of elder beings:

 

Jay: So let’s start out with an introduction: Who are you, and how did you get your start making indie games?

Robert: My name is Robert Boyd. I started messing around with game creation over 10 years ago but I didn’t seriously get into the indie game scene until 2009 when I started releasing games on the Xbox Live Indie Games service.

Jay: What propelled you to tackle indie RPGs, far from being the easiest of genres or, typically, the most profitable in the indie games space? And on XBLIG?

Robert: Turn-based console-style RPGs have always been my favorite genre of games to play so of course, it was my first choice when it came to making a full-fledged game. And XBLIG was the first opportunity for individual developers to easily release games on an actual video game system which meant a lot to me – although in recent years, I’ve gravitated more towards the PC, for most of my life I did the vast majority of my game playing on video game consoles.

Jay: And then, what made you decide to mix such a straight-laced genre with humor and parody? ( a concept I personally find ghastly, of course!)

Robert: Because few developers are doing humor and parody! Plus, I find it much easier to write humor than drama.

Jay: You went from XBLIG (any other platforms prior to that) to the PC – principally via Steam. Besides the obvious difference in number of units sold (Steam is kind of a juggernaut that way), can you compare the difference in your experiences making and selling the games for the two different platforms / audiences?

Robert: Steam is much better in pretty much every way. Valve offers help & marketing to indie game developers but otherwise leaves them alone to do their own thing. It’s much easier and quicker to push updates on Steam. And as far as the audience goes, it was nice going from a platform where everything that’s over $1 was considered expensive to a platform where anything $5 and under is considered dirt cheap.

Jay: If you ruled the world, obviously your top priority would be to improve gaming. What would you change on the consoles to improve things for indie developers and for the gamers who might enjoy indie games if only they knew they existed?

Robert: Right now, I think there’s a big gap between XBLIG and XBLA. XBLA caters more to larger companies (who can deal with the sometimes odious licensing requirements & certification process) whereas XBLIG is more for hobbyist and pandering (like all the wannabee-softcore-porn games and clones of popular games). It would be nice if there was a middle ground where small, dedicated developers could get the exposure that they need without being constrained by big company bureaucracy.

Jay: Onto the newest game! It sounded like the “Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness” series was dead and buried. But now Zeboyd has released the first of two (?) sequels to complete the story arc, of a different style (naturally) from the first games. How did that deal come about?

Robert: The Precipice of Darkness series was cancelled by the previous developer after the second game did poorly however Penny Arcade still wanted to finish the series. Unfortunately, they didn’t know how. Then, Robert Khoo at Penny Arcade discovered our first RPG – Breath of Death VII. He asked Jerry Holkins (aka Tycho) what he thought of continuing the series as an 8-bit or 16-bit style RPG. Jerry loved the idea so they contacted us and since we were already big Penny Arcade fans, we happily agreed.

Jay: For people unfamiliar with it the series (or – rarely but possible – Penny Arcade), how would you describe RSPoD 3?

Robert: Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is a 16-bit style comedy RPG that takes place in a 1920-esque Lovecraftian setting and features strategic turn-based combat with a fun multi-class job system.

Jay: If I’d never played the series before, would RSPoD 3 be a reasonable starting point?

Robert: Definitely. We knew a lot of people would be coming into the series with no previous experience so we did our best to make it so that no prior knowledge was required.

Jay: How much collaboration did you have with Jerry & Mike during this project?

Robert: We didn’t interact much with Mike – after Rain-Slick 1 & 2, he was done working directly on games. He let us know that he liked the way the game was turning out, but that’s about it. However, we worked extensively with Jerry on the dialogue, story, and settings.

Jay: Was it much of a shift working on licensed IP (and a sequel!) as opposed to your own original stuff?

Robert: Actually, there wasn’t much of a shift at all. Our previous game, Cthulhu Saves the World, was also based on someone else’s work (Lovecraft) so really the big difference was that with Penny Arcade, the creators are still alive so they’re around to answer our questions.

Jay: What, in your mind, makes a good RPG?

Robert: The 3 most important things I look for in an RPG (in order of importance) are:

#1 – Interesting gameplay (with a focus on combat & leveling systems).
#2 – Tight pacing.
#3 – Fun story and characters.

Jay: Has making games for a living changed how you view or play them now?

Robert: Yes. Sometimes while I’m playing a game, I’ll see a visual effect or gameplay idea and think of how I would implement that effect or idea in my own code. I’ve also become much less forgiving of filler in games since I’ve started making my own.

Jay: Any words of wisdom for aspiring indie game developers?

Robert: Start making games. You can write all the design documents you want, but until you actually start making and finishing games, you’re not a game developer. And the sooner you start making and finishing games, the sooner you’ll be to making and finishing successful games.

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: Comments are off for this article

The Return of Final Fantasy VII… Again.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 5, 2012

Nothing “final” about it, but it seems the fantasy survives…

Soon to be downloadable with a few extra features for the PC – like achievements and cheats. Click here for more information.

Okay, I’m gonna make a confession. I can’t watch that little trailer without getting nostalgic and excited. I re-started FF7 about a year ago, and while I didn’t make it very far (just barely escaped Midgar, I think), it was still very cool. It had its faults, but the somewhat abstract character art actually helped it age pretty well after getting used to them again.

I find it amusing that in the trailer that they refer to it as “the quintessential Final Fantasy experience.” Does that mean that none of the FF games released since then have measured up? (Since I haven’t enjoyed any of them as much as FF7, I’d tend to agree…) Why is that?

When the game first came out, we’d already released a couple of games on the Playstation, and I remember looking at some of the special effects and trying to figure out how they pulled it off on that hardware. What was streamed video, and what was rendered in real-time? Some of it seemed ridiculously low-tech and simple, and others were really impressive.

But man, I sure did love this game. It wasn’t the first JRPG I’d ever played, but I think it’s still my favorite. While it’s plot was… pretty weird at times, it seemed to hit the right balance of angst and humor and melodrama and goofiness for me. The gameplay itself seemed just about right – rarely so challenging as to become frustrating, but unless you were just grinding it required some thought.

And, in case you’ve never seen the cinematic sequel to the game, where Cloud has one more adventure and a battle with an almost-reborn Sephiroth two years after he tried to “retire” after saving the world… here’s the movie in its entirety:

Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children

Yeah, like the game it has dubbing weirdness and the plot is equally bizarre, but it has some wildly imaginative fight scenes.

 

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Happy Indie Day

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 4, 2012

For the half or so of you who are in the United States – Happy Independence Day!

For the rest of you, happy Wednesday!

While here in the U.S. it’s a day of barbecues and fireworks (though hopefully, here in drought country during a fire season for the record books, this is all kept very safe today), it’s a good chance to reflect on our history, to appreciate our freedoms and the sacrifices made to grant us that, and the principles on which these freedoms were founded.

And maybe to think a little bit about independence. A simple definition is “freedom,” but it’s more than that – it’s about being capable of surviving and thriving without the constant care of another. It’s about achieving a level of self-sufficiency. It doesn’t necessarily imply a complete severing of relations. Like children becoming independent of their parents, or… game developers becoming independent of the big studio model that dominated the industry for years.

And independence goes both ways. Bringing things back to gaming, I quote a tweet from Robert Boyd yesterday: “As an indie developer, I’m not trying to save the industry. I’m trying to make a living, make fun games, and improve as a developer.”

That’s really the point.

I find it hard not to get too hyperbolic myself when I evangelize indie gaming. More than half of my favorite games these days are indie titles, and I’m really thrilled that the indie movement has reached a point in its maturity where it’s able to bring back some of the kick-butt joy and innovation in gaming that thrilled me and made me a gamer many years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever said that indie gaming will save the industry, but if I ever did, please don’t take that as meaning that the indies must shoulder the responsibility.

As an indie and as a gamer, I am not super concerned about “the industry.” Nor should I. It’s about the games. I recognize that there’s some kind of industry that naturally forms around all that, and that there’s actually a benefit to me (as both consumer and developer) as a result. And I recognize that in some small way I’m a part of it. Fine. Do I have some kind of allergy or phobia about partnering at any point with the “big business” side of the industry? Well, I’d say a healthy level of caution, considering their past, but I don’t think being indie means we must never have anything to do with our big-city cousins beyond giving them the finger. We just do our own thing.

To me, independence is best exemplified by peaceful coexistence and – when appropriate – cooperation.

I think any indie whose motivating factor is some “damn-fool idealistic crusade” about the industry rather than the games themselves is probably hurting their own cause. We’re independent, remember? We serve our customers, not the industry.

And that’s how it ought to be.

 

 

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Testing Flashbacks

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 3, 2012

DGM recently sent me some semi-amusing excerpts from emails we exchanged during the very, very lengthy testing phase of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. I don’t know if they would be that amusing to anybody not living through this ordeal, but as I was eating and breathing Frayed Knights, and so were a handful of testers, we found stupid stuff pretty hilarious at times.

I’d originally anticipated around two months for full-on alpha testing, and three to four months for beta testing. As proved true in nearly every aspect of development for Frayed Knights, I was off by a factor of about two.  So what I expected to be six months or less took nearly a year.

“The augmented ceiling drop trap on the first basement floor didn’t cause any injury. Instead, it put half the party to sleep. I GUESS you could argue that being hit on the head by falling masonry would knock them out, but you’d think it would also take off some HP in the process. :)” – DGM

Now, my own view of what testing is supposed to be is that “Alpha” is supposed to be “feature complete” – pretty much all the code ‘n stuff is in place, so the game is fully playable in sections, but not all the content is done. There may be stand-in art, and some areas may not be complete. The game might not be able to be played start-to-finish. “Beta,” on the other hand, should be generally content-complete: there may still be some purely cosmetic content issues (draft versions of music, incomplete particle effects on some spells, etc.), but otherwise it’s a complete (and theoretically completable) game. But… with bugs. Sometimes those extra-special bugs that only appear on one person’s computer once in a blue moon. Those are real fun.

“Ok, I just paid for 4 spell stones from the merchant and when I pushed “ok” to pay for them, they magically transformed into 4 hunting knives???? So I double checked his inventory and all of his stones are gone now. HE ROBBED ME, that dirty bum :P” – Brian

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do some serious development during testing. In fact, we added two completely new dungeons during early beta as we discovered the game was jumping a little too quickly to high-level content near the end-game. Lots of new treasure, equipment, and even new spells became available during the beta as we discovered “holes” and balance issues in the game. Some feat specializations weren’t getting adequate attention in-game to keep them useful. The game offers so many variations and options to the players that it’s surprising to me that it didn’t go more out of control, and cause more balance issues than it did. But in some cases, we needed to not only ‘nerf’ a particular combo so it wasn’t quite so powerful, but also provide some combat encounters that either directly countered that strategy (encouraging the player to be more than a “one trick pony”), but in some cases that used that same strategy against the player.

“I’m going to go back and make Chloe a throwing specialist after all. In fact, I’m going to see if I can combine that with the dual-wielding bug and make something like this: http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/01/27/episode-1087-exalted-feat/“ – DGM

Going overboard on the spells was actually intentional – part of the joke – but in addition to making the UI more complicated than I’d like, they were also a nightmare to balance. Frankly, there simply wasn’t enough time or people to help test them all completely. I used a bunch of spreadsheets and calculations to come up with theoretical balance, but I’m still not 100% positive there are not some overly powerful spells (or spell combos) left in the game. And feats – I may have overdone it on the feats as well. I was very focused on trying to make characters very customizable during the game … perhaps overcompensating for the fact that the characters were pre-generated for the player (essential to the design, but still). Same problem.

“Spell – Shred the Dead’s descriptions says it does massive damage to all undead, but it only targets one. That is probably a good thing since that spell really does knock the unliving hell out of the dead…  I just entered the tomb and ran my little rat butt out of there as fast as I could. Those tomb skeletons are no joke. I defeated the first four, but think I should complete the tower first 🙂 Remember when I said that I could mow down anything in my way…..well forget that. I ain’t touching that tomb till I’m more “beefy”” – Brian

Another issue I hope I’ve learned from was due to how much of the game’s content had to be hand-coded. While slightly time-consuming on its own, the big problem came from human error that inevitably resulted from it. Doors, treasure chests, encounter IDs, quest items, all that – these should have been prime candidates for automating aspects of development. But when the game was small, hand-jamming these items into scripts and tables didn’t seem like a big deal. When the game got larger, the problem grew larger, but it was still a case of where (apparently) much of the game seemed to have been “done” already and the remaining tasks didn’t seem quite large enough to justify the effort to go into automation. Then, as hard-to-find bugs started coming to light, I learned a bit more about the true cost I’d pay for doing so much by hand. The results were… often confusing.

“Found a booby-trapped chest near where I hear the goblins talking, but there were no components so I couldn’t do anything.  I quit out of the disarm thing and tried again only to have it immediately blow up and be faced by 3 imps.” – Curtis

“FINALLY figured out a bug that’s been vexing me for a while. When you open the door that triggers the fight with 2 elementals and an imp, you get teleported back down 1 floor. I knew even I couldn’t be THAT bad at navigating. Even if I did end up in the wrong state once without trying to leave town. “ – DGM

So taking all this as a learning process, what sort of things did I learn from the giant testing phase for Frayed Knights 1, that I might apply to future titles?

#1- Simplify where possible. Yes, I resent this one, as I’m the kind of guy who likes gazillions of options. But the fact is that the fewer variables there are, the less chances there are of things going catastrophically wrong or just badly out-of-whack.

#2 – Automated Testing. This can be hard to do in games, but there were plenty of places which, in hindsight, I relied too heavily on spreadsheets, theory, and overworked testers to tell me the story where I could have had the game ‘exercise itself’ – in mock combats or whatever – and given me detailed results that would have exposed problems early and with greater clarity. At least at the end I built some tools to help me “error check” tables of data for obvious problems, and that was a good step. But a lot more could be done here.

#3 – Automated Tools. The ‘human error’ component of problems in a game the size of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is very significant, especially when the changes & fixes themselves can introduce new problems.  The answer is building tools that offload the purely mechanical aspects of game-building, eliminating human error from routine tasks and letting the designer (that’s me) focus on the important stuff: Like what SHOULD be triggered by the door opening, rather than the nuts and bolts of hooking up the triggered event. This would increase not only development speed, but also save oodles of time in the testing phases.

#4 – Better testing process & tester tools. I mixed too many different kinds of testing together into one batch during alpha and beta. I tended to drop testers into the game “cold” and then listen to their feedback. This is a very valuable kind of testing, as much of my concern was for the first-time player experience and making sure instructions, quests, and controls were presented clearly, and that players could figure their way through the game without help. Whenever they got stumped, I’d make a note to add in additional clues to help future players along. However, that’s only one kind of testing.  Maybe that’s a good way to use first-time testers, but after their initial “taste” I needed to give testers better instructions (and tools) to test specific aspects of the game – whether it was feat balance, particular dungeons, or whatever. While they had some tools for customizing their party for testing, I could have done better there, too. In fact, having automated feedback from the game sending information on the tester’s progress, issues, or whatever would be a useful tool for them and for me.

#5 – More playable earlier. I actually felt I did pretty good with this, as Frayed Knights was pretty playable from the get-go, thanks to my work on the pilot early on. But the alpha state was still pretty rough when external testers first started getting their hands on it.  It still hadn’t quite come together as a game yet.  I’m not sure what I could have done on this front to make it better, but I think more regular time dev sessions devoted to just playing through some piece of the game – with tools to compensate for the missing pieces (quest object dispensers, that kind of thing) might be a good addition.

#6 – Better-defined Framework: This goes hand-in-hand with #1, simplification.  A lot of the rules and elements in Frayed Knights were designed pretty ad-hoc. I may have coded up their architecture in such a way that I committed design-overkill, with careful forethought and planning, but from a game design perspective, I was probably a little too free-form and flexible. There weren’t enough governing principles — enough of a “skeleton” of rules that everything else should have been built from. As a result, a lot of the really cool parts of the game lost their distinctiveness. I retroactively made some changes later – such as with the four kinds of spells – to try and improve this, but the truth is the spell categories do blend a little too much. There are no guiding principles with trap components as to which components should be (generally) more challenging, more dangerous, or require more successes to disable. And so forth. A more rigid design framework – broad underlying rules and principles governing the mechanics – would probably help simplify testing (and provide additional opportunities for automated testing) a great deal. For example, you can actually perform balance-testing on the underlying rule – and it’s ‘limits’ (maximums and minimums) – and then test to make sure that all elements covered by that rule conform properly. That’s a lot easier than testing each element individually.

So the big question – am I actually using these ideas in Frayed Knights 2? Of course!  Maybe not as well as I should, but a lot of what I’ve been doing thus far is laying down the basic frameworks and tools to do exactly these thing, hopefully making both development and testing a lot easier and faster in the long run.

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

On Wandering Monsters and Unplanned Encounters – Revisited

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 2, 2012

A few years ago, I wrote in the defense of “wandering monsters” and semi-random encounters in RPGs.

My opinion hasn’t changed too much, though I do have a bit more hindsight experience today (both as a player and game developer).

While we often refer to them as “random encounters” (or, in the old days of D&D, “Wandering Monsters”), ultimately what we’re talking about is an unplanned (by the player) combat encounter. The traditional combat encounter in RPGs is started by the players kicking open the door of the monster’s lair and engaging the enemy. The players govern the timing, and will often have a chance to prepare for the encounter in advance – casting any defensive spells, reloading their guns, drinking any healing potions before the next encounter. In other words, the players are on the offense, and thus have the initiative (I’m talking the classical use of the word “initiative,” not the common turn-based game term that simply dictates who moves in what order).

Engaging the enemy on your own terms, in your own time, is always easier.  That’s the advantage of offense.

Unplanned combat encounters force the player(s) to play defense. And not usually with a nice fortified defensive advantage, either. The player may be caught unprepared.  It may disrupt the best-laid plans.

Having played a lot of 3.x edition Dungeons & Dragons, I became fascinated by how the game mechanics made such such a difference between the players attacking a dragon and the players being attacked by a dragon. Given the opportunity for adequate preparation – particularly attacking a dragon in an underground area that inhibited its mobility, and preparing magical defenses against the dragon’s breath weapon attack – a combat with a dragon of the appropriate challenge rating was a difficult venture but not exceptionally dangerous. But the same dragon attacking the party out in the open when they haven’t had time to prepare? Whole ‘nother story, and often one that resulted in one or more characters dead or unconscious by the end.

Individually, surprise patrols or ambushes or chance encounters aren’t the kinds of things players relish (though it may be something they seek out, when grinding for that last bit of XP, gold, or some other loot they need). I remember some such encounters causing me some serious frustration in the Gold Box days, where a chance encounter could mean another 20 – 30 minutes (or more) of tedious, repetitive combat. Ditto for Wizardry 8, where I actually timed the combats at sometimes nearly an hour in length even with the third-party combat speed accelerators. I don’t think combats should last that long anyway, but when they are thrown at you when you are trying to do something else, they can be infuriating.  With a few exceptions (usually story-driven, like the above dragon attacks), unplanned encounters should not be major events.

Instead, unplanned encounters should usually serve more as bumps in the road, wrinkles in plans, and as a threat to keep the tension up. The player should not be in 100% control of the pacing of the game outside of a “safe” areas. They are there to keep the players on their toes, and to keep things from becoming too predictable (and boring). Unplanned encounters add a sense of — well, maybe not realism, but at least the feeling of dynamism to a game.  This is not a passive, static world, but one that may actively try to kill you if it can.

But in many ways, they keep the game interesting not for their constant presence, but by their potential.  The threat of stumbling into a patrol at an inopportune time is just as effective as the encounter itself. They may work best as a threat to keep the game moving, rather than an actual activity that slows the game down.

In short, unplanned encounters  should be the spice, not the meat, of the game.

As a side-note, “safe” areas should be safe – and any unplanned encounter within such areas should be a Big Plot-Development Deal!  Those scars from The Bard’s Tale may never fully heal…

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Sixteen Indie Success Tips

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 29, 2012

Mike Rose quotes Robert Boyd’s five steps to indie success at Gamasutra:

5 Ways to Be a Successful Indie Developer

I don’t consider these to be all that controversial. The first one – don’t go it alone – is about the only one I’d raise a minor exception to, and that is primarily an implementation thing. I’ve seen a lot of first-time indies band together in a team to make a project and collapse in failure partly (or entirely) due to teamwork failure. Too many cooks, too early, can induce disaster. When you are first learning your chops, there’s really not much need to involve others.  And I’d say that there are stages of development for any project can be well-served with a single developer – generally the early stages of design and development. Although even then, having other sets of eyes or people off whom you can bounce ideas can be invaluable.  I’m not saying it’s the best approach, just that it’s viable.

But even with some minor exceptions and nit-picking, I’d consider all five points almost axiomatic.

Will doing these make you successful? Only if you also live by the unwritten tip number six: Don’t give up.  You haven’t failed if you haven’t quit trying, right? Seriously, while there are some folks who get lucky on their first try, most “successful” indies I know struggled for a quite a while with poor to lukewarm sales before finally “making it.” And often even “making it” is no guarantee of long-term success. It’s an ongoing challenge.

So now, let’s move along with the Indie Fad Du Jour, Kickstarter:  At Indie Games Reviews, there’s an article that I feel is slightly less authoritative but nevertheless useful about launching an indie Kickstarter project:

The 10 Commandments for Indie Game Developers on Kickstarter

This is told from the perspective of a backer. I’m sure many of us here have backed a Kickstarter project or four by now, so we know of what the author is speaking. But some of the advice here runs counter to real-world results and suggestions from the funding sites themselves. And seriously – while it’s possible for a nearly-complete project or an already staffed studio to say, “deposit your $20 today, and we’ll deliver a game in six months,” anybody who thinks they can build and deliver something as complex as an RPG in that time frame is probably a clueless idiot that nobody should fund a penny to.  I mean, maybe someone like Aldorlea Games, using a well-known, mature toolset like RPG Maker could pull that off. Or Jeff Vogel. But a new studio building a new game? Not likely.

But even given my reservations about certain of these “commandments,” I think a lot of this advice can be useful even for non-crowdfunded projects. Are you trying to attract potential team-members to your project? Are you trying to generate buzz for your game? The same sort of things that could attract potential backers may also attract the people with whom you want to network.

I’m still waiting for the piece of advice that will turn me into an overnight success. I mean, literally overnight. The advice that would tell me how to sell a million copies of Frayed Knights, or how to build a best-selling mega-game in the next 24 hours. Somehow, I don’t think I should be holding my breath waiting for something reputable along those lines to appear on Teh Interwebz.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Are RPGs Too Long?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 28, 2012

I feel a little heretical asking this question, in an age when $60 mainstream games have been cut down to 12 hours (or less) of gameplay (“But we make up for it in multiplayer!”). In discussing turn-based versus action-based RPGs with a friend and fellow Frayed Knights developer Xenovore (much more of a fan of fast-paced action-RPGs), this topic came up as we listed RPGs that we grew bored with at some point and quit playing. In most of these cases, there was no rage-quit or moment of too great frustration – it was simply a case of it eventually quit drawing our interest, possibly because something new and shiny was installed on our hard drives.

Usually, it plays out like this: I start playing an RPG. I have a great time playing. I get invested in the storyline. And then, the early set-up stuff goes away and I’m playing through the mid-game. It’s slow. I’m still invested, but I’m doing a lot of make-work and grinding. I get lost figuring out what I’m doing next. I’m still playing, but it’s no longer compelling. I’m not feeling the urge to play every evening when I get home from work. Something happens and interrupts my ‘habit’ of playing. I play once or twice more, days later, trying to remember what I was doing next, and trying to pick up the thread of the story which hasn’t had much presence since the beginning of the game. And then I realize that it’s been months since I last played, and there are other games  waiting to be played…

The real problem isn’t so much that the games are too long as a whole. But eventually any games (or stories of any other medium) will begin to drag in the middle. The beginning may be great, the ending may be fantastic, but at some point the middle will have simply gone on too long. This happens with RPGs more often than not, in my opinion.

But that’s just the story side of things. Some novels and movies have the same problem. The power of games is that they are much more than a storytelling medium.  Solid, compelling gameplay will keep people (like me) playing with only the barest hint of an end-goal in sight, let alone an actual quality plot. Hey, some of my most recent indie favorites – like Din’s Curse, Legend of Grimrock, and Knights of the Chalice – are exactly like that. Story-wise, there’s really not a whole lot there in any of them. But there’s enough interesting things to do and challenges to face that I keep playing. Whether it’s the Diablo-style feeder bar of constant leveling and items that increase my power, or the need to constantly revise my tactics to react to interesting puzzles or tactical challenges, I can go for hours with the most threadbare of narratives.

And so in theory, you can combine these two factors to make a game that can have extremely long, playable “middles,” like those big, meaty RPGs I love to talk about, right?

Maybe. Sometimes.

I’m not sure those factors are multiplicative. Or even additive. A game’s enjoyability may only last until either the story or the gameplay start feeling stale, whichever comes first. Fun narrative advancement may help fill in the lags in advancement or any place where the gameplay might start to get a little repetitive. Solid, entertaining mechanics may happily fill hours of time when I couldn’t give a fig what’s happening in the storyline (and if you’ve ever skipped past a cut-scene because you want to get back to the action, you know what I mean). But if both start getting a little tired at the same point, I’m ready for the game to be done.

If everybody reached that point at the same time, game design would be an easy job.

One of the virtues of Bethesda’s RPGs is that the player is empowered to end the main storyline pretty much whenever he wants (realistically, I guess within about ten hours of play).  Curiously enough, I tend to put more hours into those games than most other RPGs – often ending in or close to triple digits.  There’s just enough interesting subplots and advancement possibilities going on to keep me occupied for a while.

So I see five answers here. They are possibly brought down from the lofty heights of Mount Obvious, and I’m sure there are more to be found, but here are my suggestions:

#1 – Shorten the game. I do love myself some big ol’ meaty epics, so I don’t want all RPGs to do this, but just as all other media can be made or broken by the quality of the editing, so can games.  We need RPGs that can be finished in a week or two (or maybe a single caffeine-fueled weekend).

#2 – Improve the game mechanics to keep things compelling through the end. Maybe the reward structure is too regular, or too irregular.  Maybe the challenges are too repetitive, or require such similar decisions on the part of the player that they feel repetitive.

#3 – Punch up the narrative to fix the middle. Note that this may often mean changing the beginning or ending (which in game development can be pretty hard). Maybe it’s flowing at too even of a pace for too long. Things need to be changed up.  A reversal needs to happen somewhere in there. Maybe a subplot just isn’t working very well and needs to be removed or changed. Whatever. The story needs fixing.

#4 – Do what Bethesda does and allow the player to go for the end-game at the time of his choosing.

#5 – Break into pieces, as multiple games,  episodes, or expansions. Treat each of them as a stand-alone story that simply have a larger arc running between them.

Again, not rocket science. But I feel a lot of RPGs – indie and mainstream, could benefit not from being made shorter, but tighter.

 

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 26 Comments to Read

Indie RPG News Round-Up, June 2012

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 27, 2012

I’ve been holding onto some of these so long they don’t seem much like “News” right now, but it’s been a pretty crazy few weeks. Anyway, here is a quick summary of some of the things that have been happening on the indie RPG news front of late:

Long Live the Queen!– I really want to compare this game to Cute Knight, but it’s a bit more on the “hardcore” side. Which doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s still sort of a life-sim / RPG, and still in the realm of cute, but its far easier to come to a grisly end. Borrowing from the website: “Being a Princess is not an easy job. Being a Queen is even harder. Especially when you’re only fourteen years old, and the reason you’ve inherited the throne is that your royal mother has just met an untimely end. Now power is up for grabs. You may be the official heir, but much of the country’s nobility would love to steal the throne for themselves. Aggressive neighbors will take advantage of any weakness to enlarge their borders at your expense. And that’s not even mentioning the magical dangers which are lying in wait…

“Can you survive long enough to reach your coronation?”

Dungeons of Dredmor – This goofy graphical roguelike is getting yet another expansion, entitled Conquest of the Wizardlands. It features piocket dimensions to store your stuff, an equipment “encrusting” systems, new weapons, skills, a stealth system, new monsters, and locations. If you haven’t slain enough diggles yet, you may want to check this expansion out (for only $2.99, even…)

Underrail – I’m getting more and more excited for this indie sci-fi RPG (Formerly entitled “Timelapse Vertigo“). Here is some footage from a recent alpha build. I think it’s looking pretty dang good.

Indie Fort Bundle #2 – This bundle from Gamer’s Gate is still available for five days, and includes some indie adventure & RPGs like Aztaka, Dark Scavengers, Demise: Ascension, and Mordor: The Depths of Dejanol. You can grab all of these for cheap at the preceding link.

Kitaru – just funded on Kickstarter, this is a very interesting RPG project that will feature turn-based “active-time” battles (I think Final Fantasy 7 when I hear that), available in episodic form on multiple platforms (including most mobile devices and computers).  I’m getting something of an anime / Dune vibe from this teaser, and I’m a little concern that the head of the studio has filmmaking experience but not much in the way of game-making experience. But supposedly the first episode will release in October, so we don’t have too long to wait and find out:

Avernum: Escape From the Pit – This all-new remake of the original classic indie RPG from Spiderweb Software (itself, in its time, something of a remake of Exile…) has been upgraded to version 1.01 for the Windows version, which is mainly a bug-fix and rebalancing patch. The upgrade  “highly recommended” for owners of the game.

Moonchild – In this upcoming RPG by Aldorlea Games (Millennium, Dreamscape, Laxius Force, 3 Stars of Destiny), you play Queen Calypso as you go after your daughter Moonchild, abducted from her bedroom one stormy night by a masked intruder. Is this the result of historic hatreds between two nations or has something new and evil come into the land?  Follow Calypso as she races against time to rescue her daughter before the worst happens.

Thorg – A “hidden object role-playing game” for the iPad. Billing itself as “the first game ever made that combines addicting hidden-object gameplay with lightweight, randomized roleplaying elements,” it’s a quick, casual game that incorporates RPG aspects. I doubt its designed for the hardcore RPG enthusiast (unless you are looking for a “quick fix” while waiting for the bus), but it may serve to introduce more people to the basics of RPGs.

The Real Texas – An action-RPG borrowing liberally from both Zelda: A Link to the Past and Ultima VI, this title from Calvin French of Kitty Lambda Games is bizarre, quirky, and cool-looking. As Sam, a rancher from Texas, you are tired of sitting behind a desk more than … well, ranching. So you take a holiday in England, in a castle that has been converted into a resort hotel. As the game’s intro states, if you can’t live like a cowboy, why not live like a King? But then you fall into a blue portal and find yourself in another world: The Strange Texas.

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land – the PC version is now available on Gamer’s Gate! I was kinda holding out for a different platform, so I’ve got no excuse now.

Drox Operative – Now in beta testing, this sci-fi action-RPG seems to be sort of a Diablo meets Freelancer. Or, more appropriately, Din’s Curse meets Freelancer.  And you guys know what a fan I am of Din’s Curse. In a dynamic, evolving galaxy embroiled in conflict, you are a starship capatin and member of a secretive, ancient guild called the Drox Operatives. While your role is a mercenary, you have the skill and power to change the balance and fate of the universe.  You can pre-order it here and get access to the beta.

Dark Delve – released in February, this first-person party-based dungeon crawler from Checkmark Games is available at Indievania for… whatever price you want to pay. The campaign is supposed to be only a little over six hours of gameplay, but is supposed to offer replayability in the form of challenge modes and difficulty levels. And, of course, different party composition. It is also available on XBLIG, for those who’d rather play it on the console.

Realm of the Mad Gold – This fantasy MMO shooter (really not much of an RPG, but so what?) was recently SOLD! To social games producer Kabam. Remember what I was saying about indie IP rights? It does happen…

Dead State – Hey, I know I’ve talked about this a bit already, but its Kickstarter campaign is nearing the final stretch. And besides my interview with Brian Mitsoda yesterday, they also got an interview in Forbes, which gets somewhat more attention than my little corner of the blogosphere.

Darklight Dungeon Eternity – Zoellersoft is offering the source code for Darklight Dungeon Eternity (minus the third-party libraries) for $100, available here. It is written in VB.NET 2008 express edition.

Filed Under: News - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

The Game Which Can Not Be Killed: Interview with Dead State Developer Brian Mitsoda

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 26, 2012

As I have frequently stated, I’m pretty dang excited about the indie RPG-in-development Dead State, even though I’m not much of a zombie fan. But I have been a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction and (dice-and-paper) RPGs for a long time, and Dead State’s focus on the survival aspect intrigued me from the get-go.

Over the last week, I swapped a couple of emails with Brian Mitsoda, head of indie studio DoubleBear Productions, and the lead guy on Dead State. It was a fun exchange, and led to this interview.

To mix things up a bit, we decided to make the assumption that anybody reading this here already knows the basics about the game (if not, you can catch up on it here), and instead go into more of a “developer-to-developer” Q & A. We talked more about the experience of making the game (and what led to it), and then jumped into some nitty-gritty details about the design and setting for Dead State. Brian wasn’t at all shy about going into some depths with his answers, so I expect you will find this interview to be meaty, informative, and fun.

Dead State is currently being funded via Kickstarter, with a few days left as of this writing, so you have a chance to help make it a reality. They just hit their funding goal, so any additional pledges will help make the game bigger, better, and a cooler example of what’s possible with indie game development.

 

Jay (Rampant Coyote): How did you get your start? What made you want to become a game designer? And how did you get to where you are now?

Brian Mitsoda: Back when I was younger, game designer wasn’t a thing, or at least it wasn’t really known as a position you could aspire to. I’m not sure the majority of gamers still knows how games are made, but the dedicated probably have a good idea of what a designer does and some possible ideas on how to become one. You can even mod/create games pretty easily now to get your feet wet. If I had known such a job as designer had existed, I probably would have spent more time prepping to become one.

Aside from gaming since near-birth, I’ve always been interested in writing and it’s a talent that I started developing in grade school. That led to my eventually becoming an English major, which helped me develop story and dialogue skills, but is not a path I recommend to anyone who is going to sink a boatload of borrowed cash into education. I got some use out of my degree, but I would go back in time and tell myself to get a more well-rounded technical and creative education. That would probably cause a paradox though.

Anyhow, I crossed the country out to Los Angeles after college to pursue a career in screenwriting, which also resulted in adding catering and bartending to my skillset. I didn’t really care much for the Hollywood system and it was already obvious that the 90s boom was giving way to the modern cycle of remakes, sequels, and retreads, so I began rethinking the decision at the same time I just happened to start playing a game called Fallout. Writing and non-linearity and branching narratives? Why, that’s some exciting territory to contemplate as a writer. And there it was – the solution.

I found out Interplay was in Orange County (35 minutes from L.A. if a car-eating microbe destroys all of the world’s vehicles except for yours) and I applied for a position in QA and got it. I got promoted up to designer at Black Isle a few months after Icewind Dale testing wrapped up. This was back in the days where development was kind of like a series of dorm rooms where a bunch of enthusiastic NES-generation twenty-somethings talked, played, and worked on games. For at least some of the time at Interplay, it was “by gamers, for gamers”, though the marketing/corporate influence was starting to show up at uncomfortable levels. Oh, and I worked on a game called “Black Isle’s TORN” (yes, it was spelled in all-caps thanks to marketing) which was cancelled – welcome to game development!

The next place I worked was Troika. Oh, man, Troika was awesome. Great staff, small teams, a lot of the old Interplay feel (we were across the street) and pretty indie/garage by modern development standards. I worked as a writer/designer for Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which a few people have played and enjoyed, which is very cool. Had a lot of fun working on Bloodlines, but boy did we crunch on that. Troika couldn’t secure funding after we shipped the game, and sadly that was the end of that.

I went to Obsidian next and worked with some great people on a game that we all thought was going to be something special before it got cancelled. Then I worked as a creative lead on Alpha Protocol, designed the dialogue system, and wrote a first draft of the story/dialogue, though that ended up not being used in the final game.

Which brings me to DoubleBear – the studio my wife and I founded and that is currently at work on the now funded Dead State: The Game Which Can Not Be Killed!

Jay: What made you decide to take your career “indie?” Why now?

Brian: I don’t know if you sensed a theme in the story of my career, Jay, but you might say I’d like to be in control of the destiny of my project if I’m going to spend years of my life pouring every bit of my sweat and creativity into it. Also, as a bonus, I own the property and not only profit from it, but have no worries of it being pulled out of my hands and given to another studio to make into an FPS with social gaming aspects. Seriously, it would be nice to build up a studio similar to the feel of Troika without having to worry about selling our next project to publishers or building up the team to levels necessary for “AAA” development. We want to make unique RPGs or other games and not worry about all the levels of management and stupid crap at the corporate level – I suspect it’s the same for most indie developers that come from the big studios. Let’s hope that works out for all of us, because we’re getting better and more interesting games all the time.

Jay: How’s it like being an indie now? Care to contrast some of the major differences between some of your previous career efforts and your indie experiences with DoubleBear?

Brian: It’s liberating for sure, but it’s a lot of work and responsibility too. There’s no shortage of stuff to do and when no one else can take it on, it falls to me. I’m the business guy and producer, which is somewhat new, although I’ve done my fair share of scheduling and estimates at bigger companies. I’m the project lead, which is always a ton of work as most everything has to pass through my hands for stamp of approval. I’m the primary designer, although a lot of the basic design is done at this point. I’m the lead writer, and writing always takes time. And PR takes up a bunch of time. My lead programmer (Nick) and lead artist (Oscar)do help with most decisions and managing their departments, so that’s a huge help – there are some indies that do it all, and a couple of my hats off to those guys and girls.

To contrast with studio positions, you’re probably going to be managing more people, but that means more people to help out on tasks. Usually, you’ve got one segment of the game like the writing or GUI, which doesn’t mean you’ll be less busy because you might have a tighter schedule and more production meetings or events to prepare for. But doing most everything on the project, yeah, that’s new, but I’m enjoying it. We’ve got a great team and I want these guys (and girls) to have a much better experience than I have had working on games in the past.

Jay: While the Kickstarter is new, you’ve actually been working on this game for quite a while. Any surprises or learning experiences you’ve gained from development so far?

Brian: Yes. We’ve gotten much better at explaining how we haven’t actually been working on the game full-time over the last few years and that this transition from part-time to full-time for the team will result in a much faster production. RPGs take a lot of time and a lot of developers – they are amazingly complex. It’s best to have your team and your funding at the start of the project, which means our next project will go a lot faster. The development’s been outlined and partially constructed for a while now, we’ve just been waiting for warm bodies to throw in the seat for eight hours a day to get this game finished.

Jay: So – why zombies? While I know the zombie-game genre wasn’t quite as saturated when you started down this path, what was it about the “zombie apocalypse” genre that you found appealing as a designer and writer?

Brian: I wanted something real world and a natural disaster aspect, but something that hit the whole world without destroying it outright like a meteor or a nuke. We’ve mentioned it a couple of times now, but we don’t think the zombie genre’s ever really been done correctly, and never in a branching RPG before. The zombies exist for an interesting game mechanic – they’re around, they respond to noise, but they’re only dangerous in groups or when you’re wounded. Humans are the real stars of Dead State, and that’s where most of the gameplay is centered on.

I’ve always held Dawn of the Dead up as one of those horror movies that almost anyone can get into because it centers on normal people trying to deal with the collapse of society and something greater than themselves. I think it’s that hook of zombie stories that people identify with – that idea of what would I do? Unfortunately, most games have answered the question with triple shotguns and chainsaw waifs.

Jay: Has the recent zombie “fad” run its course?

Brian: Zombie stories and games are always going to have an audience. I’m okay with more interesting and unique games involving the zombie genre because a good game is a good game. Just knock off the “kill zombies, lol” bullshit, please. It really is ruining it for the few projects like Project Zomboid and Day Z that are trying to do something else.

Jay: As to the game itself: How virulent is the zombie disease in Dead State? Is zombie-fication pretty much automatic for anybody who has been bitten (although perhaps staved off with medication), or is it more of a risk-factor thing with a period of “not knowing” until the symptoms manifest?

Brian: In Dead State, anyone who gets bit turns into a zombie within three days. For some reason, antibiotics will keep the disease at bay, but only if an infected human keeps taking them. Since bites are pretty easy to spot, there’s never any mystery of who is infected, but you better believe keeping around infected people is a contentious position at the shelter. When antibiotics start to run out, you will have to handle the situation, and let’s say the options are not always going to make everyone happy.

Jay: Besides hostile humans and the ever-present zombies (and threats of the disease), are there other threats in the Dead State world?

Brian: Let’s see – starvation, coup d’etat, serious illness (for allies), suicide, unsafe use of explosives, chemical inhalation, and expired pumpkin mix. I wish we had the budget for a zoo level – it’d be like Jurassic Park but with elephants and tigers.

Jay: Dead State takes place “during the beginning” of the apocalypse, according to your kickstarter information. What kind of time-frame are we talking about? Do we get a glimpse of normal life prior to the apocalypse? And how long of a time frame would a typical game encompass? Days? Months?

Brian: Starts at about two weeks in. You play through each day over the course of months, so you can see how keeping food and morale high is going to be a challenge. You can collect data items like hard drives, phones, and USBs to get emails, text logs, and internet caches to piece together what happened in the time before the game. Those are already written for the most part – there’s about a whole book’s worth of material to find.

Jay: The trend these days in RPGs seems to be more of a convergence on the traditional action-game model, to the point where Matt Findley of inXile actually suggested that RPGs “always wanted to be action games at their heart,” but were too limited by technology. Yet you’ve chosen to go with turn-based combat. In a ZOMBIE game, which for most players would suggest adrenaline-fueled running and gunning against the flesh-eating hordes. What made you decide to ‘buck the trend’ this way?

Brian: I don’t know if it’s “bucking the trend” since turn-based and action combat have always been completely different systems and gameplay styles. It’s like saying why play chess when checkers is faster and a lot easier to explain? But more than that, it’s come down to a few key points. One, we were looking at capturing the tension of X-Com – you can’t just click the mouse button faster to avoid that Chryssalid when he sneaks up behind you, just like the zombies in our game. Two, ranged combat in squad-based games tends to play out poorly and erratically, with melee being completely worthless. Three, we’re big fans of older squad-based strategy games and modern tactical games for both PC and console and we feel like the fans of those games are underserved. There are probably some more, but the thought of running around with a squad wasting ammo faster than I can click to tell them to stop has interrupted my train of thought.

Jay: Voiced or unvoiced dialog?

Brian: Unvoiced. Aside from the time and effort involved, it would cost an additional $50,000 minimum to do the voices in a way that I wouldn’t later regret. We can only do so many voices ourselves.

Jay: More on the dialog: It sounds like you are going to have a lot of characters, and you’ve mentioned branching dialog. So how do you juggle “canned” hand-written dialog with heavy player choice, and with complex AI and relationships? It seems the latter would lead to either a combinatorial explosion of variants of the former, or dialogs that are dry and generic.

Brian: No game is going to be completely reactive AI that generates new responses on the fly, but we’re going to provide a lot of reactivity, lots of branching in character arcs, lots of dependencies on the situation and what other allies are there. We don’t think every player is going to find every ally, nor are they going to have every ally alive for all possible scenarios. We have a lot of dependencies that roll a situation into the next ally on the list – for example, if a character is targeting a certain personality type at the shelter for a conflict, if their primary “target” isn’t there, they will go with the next best one. It’s the same with allies imparting information – if you’ve heard about a place from one of them, the other won’t tell you. We have some random elements thrown in on quite a few dependencies too. It’s a lot of scripting, but interaction is one of our key features.

Jay: Okay – with all you’ve learned making mainstream and (now) indie RPGs, including canceled projects: If you had some advice to impart on other developers (especially indies) tackling the genre that you wish you’d known then what you knew now, what would it be?

Brian: If you’re going to do an RPG, just realize you are picking one of the most difficult and labor-intensive games to make, and one that almost no fan will define the same way. If it was a toss-up between making an RPG and another type of game, go with the non-RPG first. Also, always tip your bartender and RPG developer well, because both would probably rather be on the other side of the bar.

Jay: Now that you know that Dead State will be fully funded, do you have any kind of loose projection for when we can expect the zombie apocalypse to start?

Brian: Late 2013. Unless it has already started before that, which I hope isn’t the case, because I would hate to have to compete with a free to play zombie apocalypse.

 

I’d like to thank Brian for taking the time from his crazy-busy schedule right now for this interview. I wish him, Annie, and the rest of the DoubleBear team lots of luck as they transition into full-speed development on what will hopefully prove to be another high-water mark in CRPG design.

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

No Time for Retro-Gaming?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 25, 2012

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about how I recently re-played Ultima III to completion.  I explained to him that it started out mainly as a research-thing, but after about an hour (all I was really planning on putting into it, to get the feel for it again), I was really in the rhythm and enjoying myself.

Was it crude by today’s standards? Big-time. Was it as wonderful as I remembered? Well, no, not really. Still fun, I discovered, but definitely not the mind-blowing experience I remembered. I guess nostalgia and the fact that it was so state-of-the-art at the time figured heavily into it. A lot of it probably had to do with my state of mind as a kid, too. Those random combats in the dungeon were all part of a story I’d invested into it as a kid, which I didn’t have so much of as an adult.

I had no problem with looking up hints and maps online this time around to shorten the game. And shorten it I did – I remember it taking me weeks to play through it the first time, many decades ago. I think I beat it in less than eight hours this time around. It was a good several hours – little of the drudgery or “getting lost,” and lots of challenging fights and good ol’ hunting down “marks,” clues, and exotics throughout the world.

I told my friend about my fun experience re-playing the game in spite of its antiquity. He was an old Ultima fan from way back as well.  But then he told me he’d never do anything like that, because he had no time to play old games.

I guess I kinda don’t either, but that hadn’t stopped me. But his comment made me think.

I retro-game a lot. I do it a lot for “research,” but, as in Ultima III, I frequently find that once I get past the crude graphics and opaque, antique UI, I find an enjoyable game behind it. Oh, not always – most old games, like most new games, aren’t that great, and the passage of time has done them no favors.  But older graphics can still be quite pretty, and interfaces for certain kinds of games – especially older console and arcade games – can be even simpler and (IMO) better than today’s counterparts.  I find that playing these older games provides me with a lot of benefits as a gamer, a designer, and as a whatever-it-is-I-do-writing-about-games:

#1 – It helps me remove the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia when talking about the old classics. No game is perfect, and the ones we remember as classics often succeeded in spite of (or perhaps even because of) their flaws. It’s good to confront the reality of the game rather than just emotional memories.

#2 – It gives me a better perspective on new games. I love new games, too, but comparing them to their spiritual ancestors helps provide me with a foundation. What some journalists with a perspective dating back no more than five years in the hobby might see as new and innovative, I may see as simply an evolution (or even recycling) of common, older ideas. And when we gripe about newer games are simply ‘dumbed down’ rehashings of old concepts, I may have enough of a perspective to admit that there really are some things that are being done today that are an improvement (besides prettier graphics and better UIs) over their predecessors, and feel comfortable enough to characterize those differences.

#3 – As a designer, these older games are often a wellspring of inspiration. Whether its ideas that were fresh at the time which have since been forgotten or mutated into a different species, or its simply an emotional reaction to revisiting old friends or a time when gaming was a little more hobby-oriented, or simply seeing how a game seems filled with unfulfilled promise and potential and envisioning how modern technology could now make that possible, playing these older games often work wonders for me to recharge my creativity and motivation.

#4 – What was fun twenty years ago is frequently still a lot of fun today. Yeah, we may be a lot more jaded and used to being spoon-fed our entertainment more than we were then (yes, even me — I have a tough time reading the manuals anymore, and that was always a big deal and part of the entertainment value for me).  It takes a conscious effort to overlook the chunky, pixellated graphics and the counter-intuitive UIs, or to accept the other limitations of the era. But after paying that ‘price’ few are willing to pay today, I find myself getting sucked back into these worlds just as much as I was when they were new.  And that’s what it’s all about, really… having fun.

I guess I kinda understand my friends’ perspective. There are so many great games coming out now – especially if you follow indie games – that there’s no time to play them all, let alone go back and revisit past classics.  And it takes a certain amount of discipline to immerse yourself in these older titles – particularly when it’s not always worth the trip. But for me, I have no problem enjoying these games side-by-side with their more contemporary brethren.

 

Filed Under: General - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Indie Innovation Spotlight – Orbz

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 22, 2012

This week’s spotlight is on another indie game that is a personal favorite of mine, an older title that I encountered early in my own discoveries of the whole “indie scene” (that term still cracks me up).

I discovered this game while knee-deep in the development of  Void War. I’d made the mistake of not taking a serious look at what the newly-dubbed “indie games” (the term “shareware” was still popular then) community had to offer.

My first forays into indie games didn’t impress me. I encountered a lot of amateurish, half-finished junk out there (still a problem with indie games). But then I found some truly excellent titles that made me excited about the indies. These games were professional, polished, and a lot of fun to play. Orbz was one of them, and quickly became a favorite. It also showed me that innovation doesn’t necessarily come from adding new ideas, but sometimes from stripping a well-known concept down into it’s most basic parts and going wild with unencumbered simplicity. I think it deserves a lot of the credit for turning me into an “indie evangelist.”

Orbz – by 21-6 productions

What Is It?
“Be the ball!” was the advertising slogan for Orbz when it was released circa 2002. It took the basic premise of most ball games – throwing or launching a ball and hitting a target – and made that the core of the game. Rather than playing  someone doing the hitting, throwing, or kicking a ball around, Orbz abstracts that aspect out to a simple 3D game where the ball itself is the player character.

You launch yourself into the air, hitting targets, ricocheting off of barriers and targets, and hitting power-ups to change your behavior. You can only control your ball only when it is at rest on the ground (or, sometimes, under water). Much like golf, you must play yourself “where you lay.” Good play requires not only accurate shots against high-value targets, but also making sure you that you bounce off and land in a reasonable spot to make another shot, so you can  maximize the bonus for consecutive hits and avoid wasting a shot (and time) to reposition yourself.

You also compete against other balls. These may be AI-controlled, or can be against human players on a server. Your task is to score the most points possible within a given time, though other balls may be consuming targets and forcing changes in your plans and pattern. Each level is themed, providing some variety to the world. And there’s a nice array of canned taunts to send your human opponents.

This isn’t a game you’ll play in hours-long marathons, but it’s a great “casual” game for just playing a quick 5-minute level or three for a break in the day.

What Makes It Stand Out?
Orbz focuses on the purity of launching a projectile. And that is a lot of fun. Gravity and environmental conditions are a factor. It’s kinda like a game of miniature golf mixed with HORSE (a basketball practice game, for those who don’t know) with a time limit and power-ups. While at rest, you simply focus on aiming and the force of your shot. While it doesn’t sound like much, it’s actually a lot of fun.

What really works for me is the stripping down of gameplay into it’s simplest form, and then really maximizing the fun factor of these simplest elements. In this case, it’s aiming and shooting with appropriate force in a race against the clock. All the other game elements go back to serve this basic mechanic.

Aiming and launching yourself with appropriate force to hit near and medium-range targets is actually a pretty easy skill to master, even at speed. But planning your targets so that you can have a continuous, high-scoring run, angling yourself just right so you’ll bounce and roll to a useful location after the hit, sometimes working out a double-scoring hit or extreme long-range shots, taking best advantage of the power-ups, and competing with the other human or virtual players is where things get tricky. But all these things are simply advanced uses of the same, straightforward skill.

The game is a good lesson in indie game design, IMO. With a simple scope, it was reasonable for a small team to develop and polish in a short period of time. As I understand, it did pretty well commercially as well. I’d probably do a lot better as an indie if I remembered its example.

Other Notes

I probably owe this game a lot. In addition to being one of the games that got me excited about the potential of the indie games scene, it may also be a significant reason why – good or bad – my most recent game, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, was created with the Torque Game Engine. Not that my game has any similarity to Orbz from a gameplay perspective, but it made me take a serious look at the engine.

Unfortunately, Orbz seems to be one of the victims of my oft-predicted DRM doom of games. I’m sad that it had to happen to an indie game. My installation code no longer seems to work for some reason, and contacting the publisher (GarageGames) about the problem yielded no response. So if you’d like to try it, you’ll be limited to the 60-minute demo – unless somehow new purchase codes work while the old ones do not.  But it’ll be a fun sixty minutes!

Filed Under: Indie Innovation Spotlight - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Survival RPGs and Dead State

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 21, 2012

A few years ago I started talking to friends about what I termed “survival RPGs.” There weren’t many, to my knowledge. I kinda put the Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis games in that category.  Though I haven’t played it, it sounds like Robinson’s Requiem would firmly belong there. Several roguelikes would probably fit, too. But since I didn’t ever come up with anything approaching a formal definition of what a “survival RPG” meant, it’s hard to really say what would belong there or not.

My general idea was limited resources and the need to consume resources to stay alive. In Ultima Underworld, things like food and light were necessary and consumable (though low-level spells could turn them into unlimited resources pretty easily).  In my view of a ‘survival RPG’, the player is like most sharks – he must keep swimming or die. Also, there were no endlessly-supplied vendors to provide a constant influx of new resources on demand (or provide a constant money-sink). I guess having a semi-closed environment would be the key here. You had to live off the land to some degree. While some resources may be replenished over time, they should feel limited at any one time.

Yeah, that’s a pretty blurry line when you can almost argue the point with any RPG. But the more critical factor (for me) was simply the feel. The need to keep moving and fighting to survive.  Where loot is important not because of its sale-value, but its direct utility.

Years ago, the Twilight: 2000 CRPG might have been been a contender for this category, but I don’t remember that there was any need to consume resources.  That distinctly changes the flavor of things.  Sure, ammunition or other ‘consumables’ might be used up in the course of action, but it isn’t naturally expended by inaction or any action- that’s the key. I guess playing Fallout: New Vegas in hardcore mode might be similar to a survival RPG, but it lacks that closed environment. Vendors with replenishing supplies kind of invalidates that.

So in my mind, it’s not a style of RPG that has a ton of representation or many stand-out examples. But I feel it has a lot more potential.

The upcoming indie RPG Dead State looks like it will be a pretty stand-out example of my own made-up subgenre.  Survival isn’t only inherent in its gameplay, but it’s also the core theme of the game: surviving an apocalypse. I hope that it will take that ‘feel’ that is so rarely represented and truly take advantage of that potential.  I also hope that it will demonstrate a solid combination of some old-school gameplay (which is as fun today as it was years ago), modern interface, and new ideas and directions for the genre. So far, everything I’ve read and heard from the developers seems to support those hopes. Hopefully I really do “get” their vision.

It sounds like it wants to be a thinking-man’s RPG. Very replayable. Interpersonal relationships that change by events and choices. Turn-based combat. AI where the personalities are as statted out (under the hood) as their combat abilities. This is some pretty dang cool stuff that – at least right now, as a general rule – can only be done by indies. Whether you say mainstream studios can’t or won’t, it doesn’t matter: the mainstream games  industry right now is in such a state that they cannot or will not take those risks.

But indies can. Indies are.  Indies like DoubleBear.

And these are experienced developers, not newbies with a wish-list of items. This is something that can and will get done. It’s really just a matter of how soon and to what level of scope / quality it will achieve in the end.

They now have two weeks left on their Kickstarter, and it looks like they are going to hit their original goal without a problem. I’d personally love to see them blow past it, hard, both for the game’s (and studio’s) sake, as well as to help send a message to the industry (indies and mainstream) that there is an audience for this kind of game. Survival RPGs. Or simply RPGs that step outside the traditional boundaries of the genre (by something other than ‘being more of an action game’).

To me, as much as any other indie RPG in development right now, this one seems to represent what the indies are capable of. Forget the metroidvania and platform-puzzle games that catch all the hype from the indie “scene” and get put in Indie Game: The Movie. The DoubleBear folks – and others like them – are the ones I think of when I think “indie.” It’s not just the genre or the zombies (which I couldn’t really care less about), it’s about hard-working indies laboring (often in relative obscurity) to make games specifically for smaller but passionate audiences.

I want to support that.

Dead State Kickstarter

 

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights Dev Update: Looking Back

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 20, 2012

I guess it’s time to start talking a little bit about Frayed Knights 2. Having weekly (or nearly weekly) updates on the original on the blog was actually pretty handy for the development process, and we’re getting close now to the point where I may be doing the same thing with the first sequel. We’re not there yet, still not quite in full production mode, but we’ve had some breakthroughs recently that make me feel we’re a lot closer to it than we were only a few weeks ago.

What? We’re not in full production mode yet? What have I been doing the last several months?

I’m glad you asked. This is what the next two or three updates are about. But for this one, I thought I would use the wayback machine and revisit Frayed Knights‘ development. Let’s see where we’ve been, so we might get a clearer idea of where we’re going. This isn’t exactly a post-mortem, but more of a way of providing background information that will explain what’s happening with Frayed Knights 2 easier.

It all started with a contest. A “Game In a Year” contest. I’d just made some very frustrating discoveries about some limitations of the Torque Game Engine (TGE) in a game that was in late alpha, that would have necessitated some pretty serious engine development work to bring it to completion. Since it was really supposed to not be much more than a ‘learning project’ for me anyway to get me to learn the engine,  I consequently decided to shelve it “temporarily” (I still harbor plans to re-make it using different technology, BTW). What I really, really wanted to do – what I was “building up to” – was to make an RPG. The other project was really not  And after investing a bit of money and a lot of time into the engine, I was gonna put it to use and make a game out of it, goshdurnit!

I was about a month late throwing my hat in the ring, but I went for it. Some of the design for Frayed Knights was dictated by the engine. Particularly after running into some of it’s limitations, I decided to build the game around its strengths. In particular, the first-person view. As much as Garage Games proclaimed the engine’s flexibility, deep down in really wanted to be an FPS.  So I leveraged that. But since so many mainstream RPGs also want to be an FPS (or third-person brawler, I guess) deep down as well, I made a deliberate decision to go back to an older form of first-person-perspective RPG that had been abandoned by mainstream (and most indie) developers, one in which I felt there was still a lot of potential left to explore: The first-person party-based RPG, a la the Wizardry, Might & Magic, and Bard’s Tale series.

But I didn’t want to just rehash the past. I wanted to invoke the old style of game, but add my own voice, and a modern approach, to the mix.  The idea of having party members performing “table talk” commentary during development came very quickly to me. I wanted the party to have a personality of its own, so that the player truly felt like he was guiding a group of characters on their adventures rather than just maneuvering a ‘blob’ of stats through dungeons. I wanted the player to care about the characters in the party as individuals, not only by their combat potential. The humor part also came naturally to me. Aside from “The Bard’s Tale” parody that had come out a few years earlier, there really wasn’t too much by the way of comedic RPGs.

But I didn’t want to make this game just a parody. I wanted it to be humorous, but I wanted the humor to derive more from the characters and situations, not just an endless parade of absurdity and silliness. Again, I wanted the player to care about the characters and the story, something hard to do when it constantly descends into “stupid humor.” I also wanted it to be a serious RPG under the surface. It had to stand on its own as an RPG even if the story and humor fell flat on their face. It had to be a good game, first.

I had a lot of experimental ideas I wanted to try, too. For example, the whole game mechanic of picking locks or disarming traps has always sucked IMO. I love the concept of the rogue class, but implementation-wise, it’s often pretty boring, resolved by a single dice-check (if that). What are the consequences of failing a lockpicking check? It’s so pathetic that many games have done away with it entirely, making it a deterministic check. I also wanted to play around with the idea of encouraging players to “play through” tough situations, rather than just reloading from a previously saved game.

The result – for the contest – was “Frayed Knights: The Temple of Pokmor Xang” – a “pilot episode” for what I expected to be the full game completed maybe a year later (HAH!). The idea of a pilot episode was a lot like making the pilot episode of a television show – something to test out on audiences to see if it will fly, and to see what needs tweaking before going into full-on production mode on a series. That was exactly what The Temple of Pokmor Xang was. I was experimenting and getting real, live audiences to try out a free game and provide me with feedback. While I’ve been a game developer for many years, and an RPG fan for even more, making a “real” RPG (Hackenslash doesn’t quite count) was still a challenge for me. I gained a lot of sympathy for the designers I’d often criticized in the past over their design decisions. Once you have to make those same decisions yourself, and truly consider the trade-offs, the alternatives aren’t quite as superior anymore.

It got my feet wet. I discovered a bunch of failures in my design from that one. I don’t have the link “live” anymore, though I’m sure you can hunt it down if you really want. It’s been surpassed completely by the free demo version of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon – which fully encompasses everything from the original release, but is far more cleaned-up. But it’s the same adventure.

The contest was a success in every way but one. I learned a lot. I got a somewhat functional RPG engine built in TGE. I even won the contest. Unfortunately, the promised prize money for the competition never arrived, which was a bummer. The company supporting the competition dissolved just as the contest was drawing to a conclusion. The remaining organizers announced the winner – with their private apologies – as about their final act as an entity.

I prefer to chalk that up to the organizers being clueless newbies who discovered that sponsoring the contest didn’t drive their business revenues the way they’d hoped. But as I was operating under the assumption that I would not win the contest anyway, the lack of prize money wasn’t a direct impact on the game.

Indirectly, however, the combination of disappointment and my day-job (in the games biz) ramping up to full-on extended crunch for months and months really did hit my morale and development time. I’d anticipated a year to bring the full game to conclusion. Between development lethargy, a surprising number of changes that had to be made to the original game engine and the full game, and simply MUCH LARGER DEVELOPMENT TIMES than anticipated for adding new content to the game (spoiler alert: That’s italicized and all-caps for a reason – see future FK2 updates), progress was really slow.

A year later, not much had changed with the game from our pilot episode. We had a lots of bits and pieces of new content, but things were just not coming together. And considering the scope of the game, it was clear that we were in trouble.

A bit on the scope:  We’d had creep. We’d had creep, and I was learning that my projections were all wrong. I’d built a storyline and setting that I thought would be appropriate for a decent-sized indie release. It was about one-third the size of an original plan, which I’d recognized as being far too ambitious. But I realized that my scaled-down plan was also very ambitious, especially for a ‘first’ game (even with the pilot).  While the amount of content would probably be appropriate for an action-RPG that you were expected to blitz through, for a detailed, more methodical game with an emphasis on exploration and discovery, I’d still gone way overboard.  What I thought was only going to represent maybe twelve hours of total play-time was actually going to be more 60.  Or more, with the way we kept expanding and filling in things.

So I made the decision to break the story in three pieces, and make Frayed Knights a trilogy.

This was a really good thing, as the game would still be in “early alpha” today if that hadn’t happened.

My idea was to just re-use the same engine for all three games (with tweaks and enhancements), with new content. In fact, much of the development of Frayed Knights 1 included testing higher-level characters and spells than you can actually attain in the released game. There’s not much content to support such high-level play, but I’ve had 30th-level Ariannas, Chloes, Dirks, and Benjamins running loose through the Plane of Anarchy laying waste to everything they see with little effort or danger.

The change also necessitated a re-working of the story, as each piece of the trilogy now had to stand on it’s own. In retrospect, this was a good thing, because the middle part of the story (which has become Frayed Knights 2) really didn’t have much meat to it – it just drug things out while the characters leveled up to get ready for the exciting conclusion.

Development still took a lot longer than expected. Content creation was still very slow. Testing was likewise very slow and painful, as we basically pulled together all these elements together into something resembling a “game.” It needed a lot more work to stand up as a cohesive whole than I’d expected. Again, all learning process stuff.  DGM kindly provided me with copies of some of the more amusing feedback we’d exchanged during this process, which I’ll have to edit and put up as updates soon. You can get an idea of some of the craziness we had to deal with during this process.

The game engine remained a problem. It had been “sunset” by its manufacturer during development, and the problems of obsolescence still keep coming back to bite me (particularly the Mac port – which is proving very difficult to put together on modern systems).  I simply can’t produce both a game and tons of maintenance on an aging engine at the same time as a mostly solo programmer on the project. A lot of the “bugs” we encountered were engine problems arising from unforeseen compatibility issues with modern PCs.  Fun.

Somehow, we managed to get the whole thing released. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon has been the winner of multiple awards and lots of acclaim from a contingent of old-school western RPG fans. It’s been a labor of love which managed to turn quite a few heads and talk. Plus, I think it was an idea whose time had come. It is riding something of a revival wave in the indie “scene” of old-school western RPG ideas, nestled among recent and upcoming titles embracing bits and pieces of the same theme: Legend of Grimrock, Age of Decadence, the Eschalon series, Wasteland 2, Swords & Sorcery Underworld: Gold, the Darklight Dungeon series, and more.

I had a minimum threshold for producing a sequel, which I didn’t want to make a big deal about. If Frayed Knights 1 hadn’t sold a certain number of copies, I would consider it a failure and would move on to something else. Other games, probably another RPG (I have like six early designs I really want to make…). But since the story stood on its own pretty well, and at that point hardly anyone would have played it, it wouldn’t be a big loss to anybody if it ended up as only a single experimental project.

Fortunately for the fans of the game, Frayed Knights blew past that threshold in its first week. At that point, it made more business sense to build on Frayed Knights, improving on the concept and the technology, than to start over with something new just yet.

But the deficiencies of the engine, our content pipeline, our process, and even the game design (and yes, interface) itself were also exposed. The sequel must be more than just brand-new content.  We had a story, we had a game system, we had a lot of things we knew which worked, we had fans, and we had a loose design ready to go. But we had to make changes and improve things for the next time around, building on what made Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon great with all-new tech and processes, and lot better understanding of what the hell we’re doing now than we did the first time around.

But that, folks, is a story for later.  Actually, several stories…

Oh, yeah. And in the meantime, if you haven’t tried out the original Frayed Knights yet, you can check out the demo absolutely free right here:

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon Demo Version

Alternately, you can grab it from Desura. Whatever works best for blasting pus golems into oblivion…

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Indie Game The Movie – Thoughts

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 19, 2012

I pre-ordered the Special Edition of Indie Game: The Movie some time ago. Unfortunately, I still ended up being one of the last people to see it. I wasn’t able to see it when it showed at the Sundance Film Festival here in Utah, and I guess there was some kind of exclusivity thing with the film festival that prevented them from showing it here again until just before it was released digitally. But that particular showing here in Utah I missed because of my trip to France. Then it released just before I was to return from France, and there was no way I could download the movie over my crappy hotel Internet connection.

So now, this weekend, I finally got to see the movie. The special edition goodies apparently come later. These are supposed to include polished versions of the interviews they had with several other notable indies.

If the goal of the movie was to make indies look cool (or the four indies in particular that they focus on), it’s a colossal fail. Well, except for Jonathan Blow, who doesn’t really have a story arc like the others, so he gets to play the role of guest lecturer while the other developers are candidly trying to avoid imploding while facing their various crises on-screen. And if the goal was to show “typical” indies in a way that the generic-sounding movie name seems to suggest, it’s also a failure.

But taken for what it is – documenting some very popular/notable indies in certain circles (sometimes called ‘indie darlings’) as they meet success – and the challenges on the road thereto, it’s actually a decent show. But I’m not entirely sure of who its audience is supposed to be. Non-gamers will probably be bored with it (though there are parts that are pretty fun for them, based on the reactions of my family). Actual indie developers will enjoy some parts that really speak to the challenges of getting an indie game released (and give them hope of achieving similar success), but will find the show far too short on details. The movie has taken something of a lukewarm middle-of-the-road approach between a mass audience and a very specific fanbase, and it shows.

It does feel like – out of all the interviews they did with the indies who were receiving community “buzz” at the beginning of the film’s development – they chose the three with the biggest success stories. Maybe they are actually chosen for being the most neurotic and outspoken developers of the pack – and maybe there’s a causal relationship between that and success as an indie. I don’t know.

But taking it at face value – for what it is, rather than what it isn’t – it’s a pretty decent film, as I said.  It tells stories of success because that’s what makes it an appealing, interesting movie. Let’s face it – actually showing normal, well-adjusted developers slaving away at making their games for months and months with no big payoff at the end would be pretty boring stuff. But having them talk about their emotional state under the pressures caused by slaving away (and other difficulties) makes something non-gamers and non-indies can relate to. And any indie who has dealt with those pressures can relate.

The indies spotlighted in the movie are… well, I suppose you could call them atypical, in the same way that pretty much any indie in a movie like this would be atypical. They seem fairly high-strung (except for Blow, who instead waxes philosophical, but then his big success is already behind him when they put him on camera), but they are quite watchable.  I’m not sure I would ever want to work with any of these guys on a game, but the indies I would like to work with would not make good subject matter for a movie, I guess.

And I do accept that the ‘spin’ on these guys provided by the movie is taken from their more dramatic, possibly out-of-character moments and bolder, off-the-cuff commentary. So “in real life” are they similar to how they are portrayed here?  I don’t know. But they aren’t unlikeable. The film casts a pretty sympathetic eye on their quirkiness and their obsession. And how could I not feel the same way? I’m right there with Phil Fish: Making games? “It’s Awesome!”

The movie reveals some very dramatic, entertaining moments that any indie developer (and most software developers in general) can relate to, such as:

* Dealing with the threat of  a lawsuit when a former partner refuses to sign the paperwork necessary to allow the game to be shown at a high-profile show

* Making a bunch of last-minute fixes to the game in preparation for said Big Show, only to have it’s stability get wrecked horribly on the big day in front of a live audience

* The big release day happens, and an apparent technical glitch (possibly – no explanation is ever offered) results in nothing happening for eight hours, deeply cutting into the window of opportunity to get those all-important first-day sales that need to achieve “critical mass” for the game.

Do the guys in the film overreact? Maybe. Maybe they are playing for the cameras. Then again, in similar conditions, I know how stressed I’ve been, and I’m right there with them.  When the pressure is that high, a moderate setback – like your website going down unexpectedly for a couple of hours on release day – really can seem like the end of the world.

So does the movie show indie game development reality? Sometimes, but not in a truly general way. It doesn’t represent typical development stories, nor does it go into much detail on the development process, the games themselves, or anything more than some of the most stand-out examples of the indie “scene.” It’s really just a story about some quirky people facing some challenging moments in the surprisingly (to non-developers) long, difficult process of getting a high-profile indie game to market. Or at least to a major show, in the case of Fez. As I said, it’s kind of a middle-of-the-road approach that was designed from the get-go to provide the biggest ‘rags-to-riches’ narrative they hoped they could achieve. Lucky for the film-makers, a couple of their subjects did just that.

So while I may wish for the movie I’d hoped it would be, I did like the movie it really is. It’s not the story of us all. But that story doesn’t really exist. Each indie story is unique, and all have their interesting moments of excitement and coolness (usually punctuating long periods of long hours and … I don’t want to call it drudgery, but it’s not exactly thrilling work). The movie offers little windows into a few of these stories, and touches heavily on the artistic (and sometimes obsessive) passion of the developers for their work – and the price they pay for it.

And it’s a fun rags-to-riches story.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Movies - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Worlds of Ultima 1 & 2: *FREE*

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 18, 2012

They aren’t indie, but they were made on what would be considered an indie budget today. And they are free at GOG.COM …

Worlds of Ultima 1 and 2 – FREE

These are two spin-off games from the Ultima series that were made using the Ultima VI engine. As I recall, Warren Spector said his original budget for the first game was something like $50,000 (which wasn’t very much even back then), and he got in trouble for blowing his budget pretty badly. I think the games were modestly successful, mainly because they had such miniscule budgets and were made with existing technology.

I never played ’em, but always wanted to, so I’m kinda excited about this release. Not that I don’t already have a metric buttload of old and less-old RPGs waiting to be played (at least more fully) on my hard drive. I’ve been waiting for these for a while to show up at GOG.COM, so it’s pretty happy news.  Now we just need Ultima IX – fixed up to work on modern machines (which I understand is no mean trick…)

Incidentally, there was a third “Worlds of Ultima” game in development that was canceled – mainly because the team got pulled onto other, potentially more lucrative projects (like Ultima Online).

Filed Under: Free Games, Retro - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

On My Way Back Home

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 15, 2012

It’s been an exhausting 3 weeks in France – and sadly, I don’t get much of a vacation because I took that on the front-end 🙂 Anyway, the job in Le Havre is done, and it’s time to go back to Utah. By the time you read this, I should (hopefully) be somewhere over the Atlantic, chillin’ at 35,000 feet or something.

Anyway – I don’t *think* there’s been an interruption in blog quality in the interim, so I don’t think there’s anything to resume. I personally feel my posts have been a little more on the frantic “Holy Crap it’s near midnight after a 13-hour workday with another one tomorrow – gotta figure out what to post!” quality, but regular readers should be pretty used to that from me.

It’s been an adventure. I’m a little like Bilbo Baggins when it comes to adventure. I need to be pushed out the door sometimes. And sometimes the best part about an adventure is coming back home again. But aside from being far more busy than I’d hoped and expected, it’s been a good trip.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



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