I’ve written a couple of new articles today targeted at new or aspiring indie developers.
The first about the challenges of wearing multiple hats as well as some PR-related stuff. Essentially, many indie developers seem to struggle with balancing the business side of their work with the game-development side of their work. I know I do, and this post breaks down some of why this might be, as well as reasons and goals for overcoming these challenges.
Case in point: by any objective measure, I really messed up the PR for the release of Tidalis. We had far too little PR, and now that awesome reviews are coming in it’s still too late for the actual launch of the game. This has led to sales being about ten times lower than my minimum expectation for the game, even though the game has still been very successful compared to most indie games in its first two weeks. It certainly beats the pants off of what AI War did at first, and AI War went on to sell around 30,000 copies of itself and its expansion.
So what does that mean for Tidalis? Is it to be permanently harmed due to the lack of advanced press before initial release? Short answer: No. That certainly wasn’t the case for AI War, and the reviews are even more positive for Tidalis than they were for AI War. Longer answer: I wrote a second article about the secrets of Arcen’s success as an indie company, which outlines how we took AI War from a complete unknown to a cult classic. It’s worked for us, I suspect this is what worked for Dwarf Fortress, and I know this is what worked for the likes of Doodle Jump and similar on the iPhone. And best of all, it’s the sort of thing that big companies by and large would never do for their customers.
Happy reading!
Jonathan "ThaDellaFunk" Sharp Posted in Indie Games
-Highly innovative new systems, such as the augment system, which allows you to modify existing equipment, the skill system, and the awesome back-view, threat-based battle system scripted by Mithran, with sprites animated by SovanJedi.
-Breathtaking character art from Brittany Fuerst (saehral)
-Around 20 to 30 hours of gameplay
-A large amount of compelling sidequests
-A fully original, high quality soundtrack by the game creator
If you visited IndieOtaku late yesterday or earlier today you might have gotten an error and couldn’t access our site. Well it’s ok, one of our databases just needed repairing that’s all. I think our Web Host has been a bit slow off and on and something in the system just gliched, that’s a guess anyway. Everything is dandy now.
So about those updates…yea, they’re still updated.
Well…Updates again! ItBGames has a new site, and we got a lightbox. Click the image below:
We’ve needed one of those, and thanks to the Lightbox 2 plugin from wordpress we have one, now on to ItBGames.
ItBGames was really in need of an update. We changed things a bit. Like the original post states on ItBGames:
The store is gone as well, at least temporarily. And we have this handy little thing:
If you click that button on the sidebar on the right you will be redirected to a random indie game, so if you are in the mood for an indie game, just click there. We’ll be adding more games to the button as time goes on.
Oh, and one more thing…remember that old contact form where you had to go to ItBGames.com and use that to send emails to us at all? Even if you don’t, that’s gone now…
Yup, links are updated, our “About Us” and “Contact Us” are now updated. You can send direct emails to us from a form on our site, or email us directly. If you are looking to do that just click go to the Contact Us page. There’s a link in this post and on the side so I’m not going to re-link one here…hopefully you’re not that lazy…
“After years of development we finally have a demo up for download.
Dating Sim’s aren’t very popular in the West, but we’ve put some effort into it and I figure some people over here might be at least slightly interested in checking it out.
It’s a fairly big game for your usual Dating Sim featuring a 3 year time-spawn, 10 different endings, about 80,000 lines of written dialogue, around 700 spoken dialogue lines, full-screen cinematics, about 70 different backgrounds/locations and about 120 pieces of cut-scene art.
The demo covers the first few months of gameplay and introduces some of the characters. Hopefully it will be able to give an idea of what some of the gameplay is like even if it doesn’t really convey the full scope of the game.
(Also, before anyone asks, there’s no nudity, hentai or yiff, this is strictly “Teen” rated)” Source: Okashi Studios
Jonathan "ThaDellaFunk" Sharp Posted in Indie Games
The Dream Machine is a point & click adventure game made out of clay and cardboard.
You play as Victor and Alicia, a couple who’ve just moved into a new apartment. While trying to get settled in, they soon discover that all is not as it seems in the quiet, unassuming apartment building…
Tidalis is a block-based puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new “streams” mechanic. The basic rules of the game are this: blocks fall down into the board and have a color and an arrow direction. If a stack of blocks exceeds the height of the board, you lose. In order to clear blocks, you must right-click and drag paths through the arrows to set up chain reactions of like-colored blocks.
* Puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new mechanic.
* Two-player co-op and competitive play (both local and networked).
* A wide selection of both action-oriented or brainteaser-like levels.
* Casual-friendly adventure mode, hardcore-focused custom games and vs modes.
* 20+ game styles, and dozens of items and special blocks.
* Rich, painterly art style and beautiful music.
* Players can create and share whole new themes, levels, and adventures.
* Options for colorblind players, players averse to lots of light and motion, and older computers.
