computer games forum

Are you going for two Kickstarters this year? Personally, think you should finish one project before starting a new campaign. People who follow your work may know you work on multiple projects, but those who don't might be concerned if you haven't yet finished your previous project.

Well Hazel is basically ready, aiming to release it next month or March If I can do a KS for another simple game let's say in April, and I finish it (or is in beta) in September/October then I could do another one before end of year. We'll see. In any case that's a reason why I will probably not make any KS for bigger games (CoM will be an exception). Hazel is a relatively simple game but from the initial concept already 6 months passed. It's crazy to see deadlines that some devs put, clearly they've not a clue how long making a game takes (indeed a lot of them are late by YEARS lol).

Uncanceled KS projects I have yet to receive, so far delayed by:

1 month
6 months
6 months
1 year
7 months
6 months
8 months
1 year
2 years
2 years
1½ years
3 years, 3 months
2 years, 8 months
2 years, 3 months
3½ years
4 years
3 years, 9 months
3 years
4 years, 8 months

Damn, I backed a lot of crap... Only 3 or so of these have stopped giving updates, so I guess there's still hope for most?

Wow. I knew it was bad, but...!
I think a couple, maybe 3 months of delay is still acceptable, but longer than that...no.
And yes, I really think I'll use KS only for smaller games there's literally a gazillion things that can go wrong during a project, and the bigger it is, the higher the chances of delays!

The only game I backed that got released on time was Crayon Chronicles. The game was already in a advanced state though (had 3 years of development before KS); what was left was mostly polishing.

Most KS devs are relatively inexperienced, which is why they miss their deadlines by a wide margin. Another problem is some devs have the "flaky artist" mentality. They have lots of ideas, but lack the focus to get anything done.

Yep, I think while crowdfunding in theory should help newbies to raise money, there's nothing worse than inexperienced people (in any field), because they rarely get things done. I probably started like 10 games between my 18-27 years and didn't finish a single one. Then I decided to become full time indie. And still, made mistakes. See PS2 out 9 years later or Curse of Mantras which is late too by years.
But for all the new KS, I'll do them only if I'm 100% sure * I can finish them on time.

* well, of course if I get hit by a bus...

So with Hazel done, I am back fighting with CoM gameplay and preparing another KS. I am doing a slice-of-life yuri game this time, and more comedy, since I think what people need/want right now. It's also about a really uncommon kink and I think it hasn't been done before. We'll see, maybe will be good or maybe a disaster, but that's what crowdfunding is for, right?

I am also working "in my spare time" on ToA: An Elven Marriage, writing scenes as I get the inspiration, already up to 50k words (draft of course) which is not bad since the game will probably be still big, but shouldn't pass the 200k words (hopefully lol).

Made good progress this month on CoM, lot of tweaks (you discover how much powerful a card is only when you actually try it in certain circumstances) and luckily my summoning spell for Anima worked, she showed up to help me with one thing of the game, so now the AI is much better than before (can still be improved though).
It's taking so long because differently from PSCD:
- there are 120+ cards but AI should use the same spells as the player (so they don't need to be too dumb!)
- player can do any element in any order, so need to "balance" as much as possible
- in some cases I had to raise both heroes "base HP" since otherwise the battles would end too quickly. In some fight I have the AI start with some creatures already on the battlefield, but feels like cheating so I'm trying to avoid that
- there are a lot more battles: PSCD had 30, this one has 12 x 6 = 72 fights plus I think 3 more for alternate ending based on choices
and the stories are going to be rather hard to write too. So... it's tough, but differently from the beginning where I was a bit discouraged, now I can see myself finishing the demo maybe this year, still taking breaks to do some smaller games because releasing only 1 game a year is a bad idea right now

So with Hazel release done, I'm making the point of situation. Things that SHOULD happen in this order:
- new yuri game KS. Slice of life, comedy, very particular kink
- Summer In Trigue release (maybe this summer?)
- Curse Of Mantras gameplay beta and new KS to make the story. Storyboards are all done and I have already designed/tested 24 battles out of 72 right now !

At this point I'll release CoM first, and ToA: An Elven Marriage later. However, I've already done a good amount of work on that game story, the draft is currently at 60k words (final wordcount will be likely 120-130k at least)

An update, and it's not an April Fool's
You've seen the new KS by now, it's going slow but I think eventually I should reach the goal. I spent this month working on CoM in practice, I wasted a bit of time because halfway I discovered the spells were unbalanced (lol), in the sense that they had little impact on a battle, so I checked them all again (100 spells... lol!).
Anyways, I'm very confident I could have a pre-order version with a good portion of gameplay in June at the latest. Then I'll need to do the KS for the stories probably this Summer (if I manage to finish At Your Feet sooner).
In April and May, I'll also go on with An Elven Marriage because next year will be TEN years since Loren release, so seems a good opportunity to do another game with Saren/Elenor (and later than that it would be crazy!).

I have another game which features all romance combos that I could KS this year, of course depending how things go. Main issue is doing a KS before a previous one is finished, even if people that know me knows that if I do a KS, I do it only when I'm sure I can finish the game (like for CoM, I first want to have all gameplay, then the stories I'm sure I can do them).