How all indie developers can get their games on Steam

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Today was talking with some other developer friends about a “hot topic”. Steam, and the difficulty to get in it.

If you’re an indie developer, at least once in your life you got a forum/post comment saying “you should get your game on Steam!”. It sounded almost as an insult, like saying “you fool, why don’t you just use that?”. Yeah, like if Steam was an OPEN platform.

Getting on Steam is really HARD, and for most indies they represent the main source of income, a bit like casual portals are for casual game developers.

There’s really no rule (for Indies) to get on Steam. Many games look very similar, yet “some” are accepted, and others not. Their selection criteria aren’t really clear to be honest.

Now, I came with a solution that I hope the Steam people will at least consider: why Steam doesn’t allow any indie to sell their games through them, as a sort of shareware vendor? We could add “Buy on Steam” button beside our usual vendors like BMT Micro, Plimus, Regnow, and so on.

And those games wouldn’t appear on Steam. They would need absolutely to do NOTHING, except create an interface for developer so they can setup their products. They could even get away with a submission fee or a yearly subscription like Appstore does.

Advantages would be for both sides: indie devs would finally be able to tell to the users who ask if they can buy from Steam “Yes, here is the link.”

Steam could get “free money”, and honestly they would get the most advantages from this idea. They could also be surprised by how some apparently unknown games sells, and maybe “promote” the best selling “underdogs” on their main games catalogue.

I see really no downside to this idea. Now I hope someone at Steam looks at this post, and at least takes in consideration this suggestion 😉

What is a “casual RPG”

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As you probably know, I’m working on a RPG game called “Planet Stronghold”.

I am trying to do something slightly different with this RPG. I would even dare call it “casual RPG”, since it misses some of the classic “hardcore” gameplay elements. In particular:

  • there is no in-game currency. You can’t sell or buy weapons. This is probably the biggest difference from… well, ANY rpg I’ve ever played. What does it means? That you’ll have several weapons and armors at your disposal, but you won’t have to buy them. To get the best ones, the only way would be to solve some quests you’ll encounter through the story.
  • there is almost no “permanent death“. You can’t really “lose” in the game. This is also very different even if something similar could be already found in recent casual RPG like Torchlight, for example. In my game, if you lose a battle you’ll simply have the option to fall back and try it with a different team/equipment configuration. Of course there will be a few exceptions: in some particular plot situation you’ll face a hard battle but you’ll be warned to save before it. But I hate the mechanic of “save/try/reload” that is used in many RPG just to give the players the illustion that the game is longer (but in reality you’ll spend most of the time loading and saving)
  • there won’t be a huge map. I mean, a tilemap or detailed map as it is in many RPG, mostly JRPG. I was dubious if to implement this or not, but given the nature of the game, I decided to skip this. Since the gameplay follows the main story, you will be able to use a small map with instant traveling between each different location to complete side-quest, but not like you do in normal RPG/JRPG. If you hated walking endless hours in those insanely huge (and repetitive) tilemaps, you’ll like my game. Otherwise…I hope you’ll like the game anyway 🙂
  • very few grinding. You won’t have to kill 500 rats  to get to level 2. The leveling up will be slow, and you won’t get much XP from battles, but you’ll get a big boost if you solve quests. Anyway, being the game linear, I’ll be able to craft each specific battle so hopefully that should lead to more interesting enemy encounters.
  • There also won’t be endless random encounters, unless you choose to adventure in the wastelands (so, there will be but will be entirely optional). I understand that random encounters are a good way to raise your characters levels without doing side-quests, so I’ll leave that option available for those people who prefer to fight than solve quests.

As you can see it’s quite different from a “standard”, traditional RPG. I hope the direction I took will be appreciated anyway, so far the feedback from the Alpha testers was quite positive (many says it’s the best game I’ve made so far, even if isn’t finished yet! :D).

Note that this won’t mean that the game will be easy. It will be if you choose the “easy” option. But if you pick the “hard” option, in the game you’ll have to face some really tough fights! That’s all for now, I’ll get back to writing more plot and coding more enemy battles.

p.s. For those who like traditional RPG, fear not. My other RPG game in development, the Dungeon Crawler “Tower Of Destiny”, will be much more similar to the classic “hardcore RPGs” 😉

Au revoir, Vera Blanc

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In other words, the second episode of Vera Blanc, “Ghost In The Castle”, is officially out. To find more about it, just visit the game official page at http://www.verablanc.com
This time, Vera must investigate a mysterious ghost that is haunting a old castle in the italian town of Bargi. It’s the ghost real or is a myth? is Roberto Anastasi, the man who hired you for this case, hiding something? why Eva and the Master are still following you?

You’ll find answers to all those questions in the second and for now last episode. As I said before, it’s very unlikely that a 3rd chapter of the game will be released in this format, since the production costs are much higher than those of a traditional visual novel, but maybe next year something might change. I would like to make a “real adventure game” based on Vera Blanc character since I think would be perfect for that kind of game.

Imagine something similar to those good old Lucasfilm adventures with many puzzles to solve, less texts to read, and maybe a fully voiced version.

However, first need to finish several other projects I’ve started (many RPGs and otome games) and then next year we’ll see. Meanwhile, if you like the games I’m producing, and if you like the character of Vera Blanc, please buy the game and spread the word so the chances of having a 3rd great episode will increase 🙂

So for now, au revoir Vera Blanc. Hopefully she’ll come back next year in a completely new gameplay system, and why not, maybe with a more manga-oriented style!

New Planet Stronghold Alpha ready!

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The download links are the same:
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.exe
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.zip
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.tar.bz2

Note that since I updated to the latest stable Ren’Py release (6.11) I was forced to give up autoupdating from older versions. So you have to redownload this whole thing again, even if you downloaded previous versions. Sorry about that.

From now on I plan to use the autoupdater for all the next updates. Unless I get many users having troubles with it, in that case I probably will give up with that system. But so far only a minority had troubles with the autopatcher and the previous version was more buggy than it is now!

The things improved are MANY. The most visible is battle feedback, with each damage type represented on the battle, and several minor improvements like the ability to attack by just clicking at the enemy target (much faster than using the Attack button every time). Another major change is the difficulty level. You can choose between 3 different levels:

  • easy – what casual player should choose. Pick this if you’re more interested in reading the story than actually having fun with the battles. This is NOT recommended to anyone even a bit familiar with RPG or more complex games
  • normal – what I suggest to use. The really difficult battles won’t be many, especially in the Alpha so far, since fights get tougher as the game story goes on. Also, while you’re in the base you’ll start each battle with HP/PP fully restored. This might change in future though (for sure if you get outside)
  • hard – if you’re familiar with RPG, you must pick this option. Seriously. Otherwise you won’t have any fun in the easier modes. In this setting, even if you should be able to pass most battles, you might face some difficulties in keeping all the heroes alone, or have to change strategy in certain fights

the difficulty influences enemy attacks, hit points, the number of skill points you get when leveling up, and several minor things.

Regarding the plot, you get to know almost all the main characters, and get new quests. Though you can’t finish any quest for now in the Alpha, you can make progress in some. I have also changed the quest system: before it sued a True/False method, meaning that you could either succeed or fail a quest. Now, you can fail it, but to solve a quest you need to complete several steps in sequence, which is a method more interesting and that increases game longevity.

You’ll also be able to see how the level up works before finishing the alpha 🙂

That’s it, if you find any bug or have any suggestion, you can reach me on twitter, email, forums. However the preferred method is in my forums, since this way everyone can see the discussion and make suggestions/remarks about what is being said.

Minisurvey about VN/Dating sims results

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Disclaimer: speaking with some friends who knows more about statistics than me, they said that the data collected might be not really reliable. I know, I made it mostly for fun with no intention of providing the “ultimate guide to make visual novels” for game developer 🙂

However, from my personal experience (I’ve made many VN/Dating Sims in past 3 years) I have to admit was quite surprised by the results, because they match completely my experience regarding which games sells more. The data collected comes mostly from Lemmasoft, Amaranthia, my own twitter, my forums, and indiegamer forums.

The total people who answered is 126, but recently has been progressing of only 1 new person a day, so I guess is time to draw conclusiong and post results.

I’ve made a PNG image of the final result, so anyone can link to it or share it easily, look on the right side of this post for the clickable thumbnail. As you can see, the standard Otome and Bish?jo are the most popular genres (well, no surprise here). As for art-style, detailed manga (I suppose like Heileen, Bionic Heart) wins hands on over all other art genres. People don’t like american comic style and cartoon style (I wish I did this survey before making Vera Blanc, I would have used manga art for that game too!).

As for setting, again no surprise: fantasy settings are always the most popular in any kind of games, not just VN/Dating Sims, so really I expected that. The other settings are more or less equivalent, only the modern drama/slice of life is slightly more popular (and yes, sci-fi isn’t much popular!).

Sexyness in games is a bit surprising, and probably the result less reliable IMHO. From my experience is always safer to go with family friendly (if you’re interested in maximizing revenues) for the simple fact that most big portal/sites wouldn’t accept your game otherwise. If you are making the game just as hobby or with direct sales in mind only, then you can ignore it 🙂 So far most of my games fall into the 2nd category from top, sexy stuff, but I have many family friendly games coming out next. One day I would like to make a very sexy, almost erotic game though. Maybe when I have enough funds to make Bionic Heart 2 as I have in mind of doing it.

The extras question is really a surprise. And I believe is very accurate: Most people don’t want to mix genres. If they want to play a minigame, they can find plenty of them in casual games. I really think VN/dating sims should focus more on typical dating sims elements and statistics. Or just let the players to read the story. You can also argue that if you put too many minigames in a VN, then it isn’t a real VN anymore but a “game with a story” 😉 It’s somewhat hybrid territory here.

“What is most important” result is also interesting. The most important thing is WRITING! Not art, as I was always thinking. Also, the starting idea, and I agree completely. If the starting idea is good, and the writing too, you have all the elements needed for a good VN. That’s the reason why I’m not personally writing my future games anymore 😀
Also is interesting that most people don’t care about voice overs. I had already given up on that because of too many unreliable voice-artists, and the result somehow comforts me. People don’t seem to care too much about the number of endings as well. Maybe better to make a more linear story, but longer to play ?

Based on the next question, “Do you really replay dating sim/visual novels to see all the possible endings?” it really seems so. Not many people are obsessed about unlocking all endings, apparently. I sort of agree since I do the same. I did the same also for AAA titles like Dragon Age / mass effect 2. I simply went to youtube and looked for videos for the other possible endings 🙂

About the remaining results, people seems to like game series (after a slow start I am now getting good results with Heileen 1+2 bundles), most people use a PC to play, and they don’t seem too much enthusiast about the idea of having to be connected to play a game.

That’s all! Again, this is not the holy-bible-of-VNs, but I found the results quite interesting and in many cases matching my own experience.

It means that you should all make fantasy based VN with stats and RPG elements? Well no, I believe that any game that is GOOD can sell: is your choice if you want to try to appeal mainstream (but have more competition) or niches (smaller market but much less competition). Personally I’d like to see more horror VNs, for example! 🙂