I saw the guy who created Middens post a Kickstarter through his Tumblr. While I personally feel like the gameplay is pretty rough from a design perspective, I can tell he has put hard work and a long time with his art into his projects and I really feel like he is trying to share something with people.
There are scammers and people trying to make a quick buck off Kickstarter at the expense of people believing in others ideas, and I know this is an honest project. You’re really supporting art and creativity with this one. People do enjoy the game as well, because he is using it as an expressive medium. It’s something different. Personally, it’s like an interactive art gallery with amazing content for me.
This is all I can do for the guy for now. Which sucks. Goodluck my friend and I wish you the best.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2136199701/moments-of-silence
http://middens.tumblr.com/
Yeah!!!! It’s kind of hilarious how I haven’t talked about this yet. But, I mean there are like 100000000infinite hp loop things to talk about. But yes, let’s talk about Ghost in a Bottle Games! Which consists of myself, and my equally ~aged by a thousand years~ friend RPG. We’re both working on separate titles, but we help each other make progress on our respective games and would eventually like to release our games under one studio.
I really love this method for several reasons. We can build our own games but at the same time bounce ideas when the time arises which is often. I like to have my creative space but having an open source of ideas is crucial. It’s a very cool method to do things, but I obviously believe in his work and his game. And we share the same ideology that creating a game worth making to give players an experience is more important than going and making a Facebook app in a week where you click on Dorito’s and call it a day.
I do everything myself, but I had got a composer to do the music which I am simply not capable and he did an amazing job. (totally forgot where I was going w/this) With my ol friend, RPG it’s really important that if you’re going to group with someone, they need to share your general mindset when it comes to game design. The fact of the matter is, you can’t pick someone off the street and say “hey bro let’s crat gam” because a lot of stuff clashes, visuals, ideals, concepts. Creative synergy is key, and I do not think many people can say they have a brobot that can do that. So in a way this post is about the creator of Octopus City Blues. Check it out, subscribe, tell your friends. I assure you it will be a “Kaftastic” experience.
“It’s a game about everything and nothing” ~Society
Classes and Cards
Games evening my friends of the vast internets…
First of all, Shoutbaxxxx is up so you can leave various comments/trolls/one liners without having to actually join Tumblr which is p rad. Also, a few sections are up, about me and about the game is up so check dat out. Working on the html for characters section and other stuff it is…really exhausting to work in Tumblr.
Alright, so I am going to wrap up talking about the battle system. It is kind of a long post so kick back put on your 8-bit jammies and relax on your couch. I split up the other post because I just wanted to jive about backdrops but this is really about core mechanics.
From my experience from playing many RPG’s the thing I think we can all agree on is a battle system where you “level up” and gain a second ability like Lit1 to Lit2 is kind of an outdated concept unless you design it in a way that it feels less of an exhausting grind. What is lame is your first set of abilities become dead weight by the time you’re at the end game and you grind like crazy to get a cool “last” skill/spell which I think is boring. Why can’t you get a semi cool spell/skill from the get go and evolve from that?
I really like the concept of classes. Each character has a prime class and two sub classes. My idea is that during battles you “class dance” between the three to maximize certain skills and gives you a variety of strategies to use. Let’s use Mcdoogle as an example:
His prime class is a Mage that has sort of balance abilities. On the left is his Tarotmancer sub class which focuses on diseases and crippling enemies slowly. His right sub class is a nuking type of class which has a bunch of very powerful offensive spells. So, how does one utilize this during actual combat? During a boss battle one might start off as Mcdoogles Mage class to lower the bosses defense then switch to his Tarotmancer class to add a poison or a crippling effect. And either switch to the nuking class or Mage class and blow him up. That’s the basic concept.
You’re giving people a chance to form their own tactics instead of button mashing “Ultima”. I will say this right now, I think people will figure out really cheap combinations to use to cruise through the game. That is fine, if you find a tactic to use and it works for you, abuse it. Having that kind of power people will eventually decide to branch into experimenting with out tactics.
Class Tree
In concept I wanted characters to have several classes each to choose from. Not being restricted to just 3. It’s a drag because I have to find an alternative method because it would not be possible to pixel and animate all of those classes which is a bummer. So I sat around and kicked ideas on my couch to figure out how to do it in some form. I came up with you have the base and two sub classes, but along with each class you will have class trees. These will give you an option to choose a route with a certain ability that you enjoy using and enhances it or unlocks different ones. I have not really sat down and defined this but I feel this will give people a more enjoyable experience in terms of learning new abilities.
Cards
I think there should be really good rewards when you win battles. I was not a big fan of just getting gold and “wolf pelts” when you earned a victory. Extending your class tree is important.
My idea is to have 3 slots in your equipment screen. The 3 slots are used for you to insert various cards that you ger from battle, exploring, achivement, etc. These cards add extra boosts to certain abilities. We will use Mcdoogle as an example again:
As a Tarotmancer he specializes in poisons. You can add two cards that increase the poisoning power and the third slot can be used to poison all enemies. If you think about it, it’s basically just a Materia system except you do not level them up. I like the concept of there being like hundreds of cards that do something relevant depending on the card and skill combinations people figure out through tactics. Basically it makes players experiment and use what they feel comfortable with.
Another reason why I decided to go with a card route is because it will give me a chance to add different kinds of art pieces in different mediums. So, that is kind of exciting on my end.
Enemies
Lastly I want to talk about enemy encounters. I want enemies to be pretty defined and do the same things you’re trying to do. So as they’re attacking you and using their base class gaining class points to switch classes as well. So they will switch classes and gain different abilities and use different tactics just like you.
What I don’t agree on is sloppy enemy design. You will see an enemy with a basic moveset and follow up with it. With them class dancing you don’t know what to expect so you’re constantly thinking of different tactics to use. They will also have 3 cards to boost certain abilities. Basically enemy design is like, one of my favorite things to do. Not so much the tactical aspect but, just the freedom of creation.
FFFFF dat was long. S…sorry. Get some sleep gamers…
Yeah, it’s going to happen. It’s funny, I was talking to a guy a few days ago and he was like “heh, I am having a really hard time mapping this forest with trees. It is very exhausting” and I was kind of shocked to hear it because it seems like no creativity is involved. So I just said, yeah I’m having a hard time myself creating a underground maze of undead dinosaur robots that you have to grind down.
Originally I had a sewer kind of overhead dungeon. I talked with another friend who said it was kind of boring so we bounced ideas to see what would make it better. So, what I came up with is you start off in a standard sewer overhead RPG style. And as you slowly navigate the sewer it slowly changes in enviroment and you end up in a sideview kind of bonepit. It’s a great transition and I want variety when it comes to sideview and overhead. Because I just like sideview stuff in general.
My point is, I think I said this before somewhere, but if you have creative tools, don’t be afraid to take a leap. Not everything has to be a castle, and a forest. It gets old, man.
Welcome Humans!
T..this tumblr is beautiful… Let’s all give a round of applause to GHAST! check out his tumblr please. He is currently discussing the vast inspiration that comes from music such as rosemarys babby.
Okay, so I want to tell you what this tumblr is going to be all about. It’s all about the Audio Mews. I want the tumblr to be about a lot of things, but mostly it’s going to be about the current game development under way. Basically, I want to do my best to post various bits of game development and watch the game come together slowly. Like, let’s follow someone and see if they can actually make a game that isn’t really bad. So, in a way it’s kind of a weird journey for me and I would really like to follow my own progress. Hopefully it will interest or inspire some people. I’ll be blogging more about this kind of thing later. But until then!
Also, the tumblr is still under construction in a sense where I need to add DERPtons of information. Plus the layout of tumblr is really wonky. It will take a while to get used to `-`
The problem with me is, I procrastinate, like a lot. I will get these really really great ideas and if I don’t implement them in a certain timeframe I just trash it. I’ve noticed my ~go~ time is a few days and if I can’t peel off whatever I’m thinking I put it in the stuff-to-do-later. What I’m posting below is an introduction to my game. I told myself never to use slow introductions. I did it in one game and the majority of the feedback I got with it was “zzz” which was absolutely correct. And in the next game I did an action intro, and people seemed to enjoy that a lot more, and I did too, because before I was trying to do the “RPG” thing instead of going with something bold I guess.
Me too…
But, I feel like I’ve learned a lot since then, or nothing, so I decided to go with a semi slow introduction to introduce the game very simply. I felt it was more of an entertaining direction. The character who introduces the story is based off a ~Valley girl~ because if you’ve ever met one they’re just the most looney tunes human you can exchange words with. Usually people go with some ancient being/mage/sage to introduce their story, so you know, do something bold, new, etc. The introduction is short, and not too long, this thing took me a really long time to finish. I got it done a few days ago. The reason is I don’t have much free time, and everything is custom, so I poke at the game graphics for maybe 10 minutes every two or three days, or finish one “piece” of pixel. Like I said earlier, if I don’t get things done in a certain timeframe, oh man, it’ll take a while. This is a prime example.
