Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Changes

This post won't make much sense unless you're a tester. Here's what we've decided on for now and are currently implementing:

New Game Mode
There is a small ruin site near the waterfall you drop down into. Exploring this will completely change the game path & ending. Several characters will become possessed by ancient spirits and it's up to you to free them. This involves a few lengthy dungeons with many puzzles similar to what are in the original game. I'm guessing we'll have another 5 hours or so gameplay included in this mode.

Extra Dungeon
We threw in an additional character, who is the main possessed character in the new quest mode. She'll be lost in her dream as well.

Playable Characters
You can now select several of the other characters to play as following you around instead of our set trio. They have different tips for the puzzles and some special cutscenes of their own.

Better Music
Nothing too fancy, just licensing some songs to use instead of the Rpg Maker XP RTP now that we're going for $20.

Fancier Maps
I'm retouching a lot of the old maps including more custom elements. Many of the new tiles will be released over on the gameclover blog as well sooner or later if you're a RM user.

Emotion Icons
Float over a character's head when things happen. I'm sure you've seen them before :)

Friday, March 13, 2009

Decision point

I'm a big fan of learning from the mistakes of others, and this game's development is no different. We've been tracking how well games at the $9 price point have been doing. It was a much bigger disappointment than we originally thought! Out of the 28 developers we've contacted or looked at stats from, very very few (3, possibly 5) have reported a positive change.

As this is a puzzle RPG, it's already in a nichey market to begin with, and no battles will definitely disappoint many of the RPG fans. I think we're going to up it's quality a bit for a full-priced Moo release, any opinions on how? Here's a few of the thoughts we had:

More Playtime - Game feels right as it is, but I won't like charging full price without additional content. Would a second "quest", a completely different story to play through, be something folks might like? Somewhere near the beginning of the game you'd be able to start it off by talking to different characters/exploring elsewhere... or maybe as an unlockable after you've won the first time.

Polish - This is a must if the gametime isn't increased. I'll probably try to get someone to do facesets for the characters, and improve most of the areas with a lot of custom artwork & animated sprites.

Difficulty levels - I'm sure we could whip up more difficult versions of the puzzles we already made, and transfer people to a different map for them if they're on "hard mode".

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Ready to dream?

Hmm... Haven't updated here lately. I've been very busy with other things. You'll hear of them soon enough :)

We're currently beta testing our game and it should be available within the week. There's only a few major things left to do. Most of it is simply replacing artwork and finding a new title screen graphic.