I define “Neverending games” the ones that have almost unlimited replayability. A very good example are the Sid Meier’s ones 🙂
Games like Civilization can be played for months without problems (I know someone that still has the original Civilization and occasionally plays a match…!)
I won’t dare to say that Magic Stones will be replayable as Civilization (eh it would be too much) but I’m looking forward that direction.
The process should be simple: you go around the map and you gather artifacts and make experience, then you partecipate the tournament of the druids every year (have yet to decide how simulate a year). If you play well you get more experience (but no new items). While if you play badly (if you lose with less powerful opponents) you actually LOSE experience (and since the game gets saved automatically, you can’t cheat… well, in theory!).

That way I hope people won’t stop playing the game after some weeks…!

I’ve finally done the magic tournament screen. It appears when you select from the main menu the Challenge Druid mode.
This option leads you to the Black Tower, the place where the druids challenge one other to duels every year. There will be 16 different druids in the tournament and you will challenge them to a duel. You will proceed to the death, until the winners are announced.
For each battle you have won, you will gain experience points, but will not obtain artifacts as in the previous option.
To simulate the passage of a year in the game, you cannot participate in the tournament for 2 consecutive turns. But first, you must visit the land of Aravorn again (Gather Artifact mode), exploring at least one of its places. With the passage of time, the places you have already explored can be re-inhabited by enemies, which allows you to explore them again in search of new artifacts.

Small Screenshot of the tournament screen (don’t worry there will be even male opponents, the 2 women is just a coincidence… heheh)

Today I took a quick glance at my affiliate stats (me selling other games). I realized that you need a very high number of downloads to be able to generate a sale. Plimus allows you to see a cool buynow hits / sales report.
Well, the average value was 1 sale every 150-200 buynow hits! (not talking about downloads, but people who actually visited the product buynow page).
Not very encouraging… I bet the top affiliates have really tons of traffic to be able to live from sales…or maybe they live with ads… 😉

Yes today is my birthday 🙂
happy birthday to me…happy birthday to me…

Ok some more info about my games. I’m having a friend modifying the Magic Stones map so it looks better. I also started the Team and Player editor for The Goalkeeper game and USM2, the sequel of my first shareware game Universal Soccer Manager.
So people can start to edit the names of teams and player and be sure that USM2 will be able to read them as soon as it is released 🙂

I finished the character creation and now I’m doing the game itself. Many friends asked if the game was just a Magic clone, but it isn’t 😉
For start, there will be a mode in which you must explore dungeron, crypts, and other dangerous places like those to recover lost artifacts that will make your druid more powerful.
Then there’s another sub-game, in which you partecipate to a yearly tournament with the other druids controlled by computer.

Here is a preview of the map selection screen, need to work on it a bit: