Two Years?

[eXcalibAron]

I don't know a hell of a lot about game development. What I do know is that I backed this game on Kickstarter two years ago. Two years and all they have to show for it is the first act of the game? And now it's in early access after getting fully backed? It just seems like they should have more to show at this point, ran out of Kickstarter money, and the Early Access thing is continue funding development. That doesn't make me very optimistic.

[Prototype]

(Supposedly) there is more completed, just not implemented at this time.

[駒川野]

If you observe the trailer carefully, you will find that many animation clips do not appear in the experience version of the game. I think there is a more complete version at present, but I don't know why they didn't release it:(

[SixtyFive]

Originally posted by Thelis:

with the 2m euro's they did get. they spent a bit of it, on doujin comics (5 of them if i remember correctly) loading screen art. and promo art in a few places, they also hired on more people to thier team, dont remember if they said how many. they also all work remotely, so if the cloud server they use gets messed up, that could be a big setback.

Also, they had to LEARN how to use the u4 engine, and then they had to make all resources in the game from scratch. so that itself is at least 1 year of solid work, then figuring out how to learn to code in an engine, without making it a virus, is i'd say 6 months to a year, so if you overlap those, i'd say they have only had maybe 6 months of ACTUAL game development time.

Is there a Source? Or is this all just assumption and not a fact.

[Gorgoneus]

What are they done for these 2 years? Arts, comics, teasers, lot of other stuff excluding game development itself. Lot of bones toss to the dogs without giving them actual food.

[Cerberus | Normandy SR-2]

Originally posted by Gorgoneus:

What are they done for these 2 years? Arts, comics, teasers, lot of other stuff excluding game development itself. Lot of bones toss to the dogs without giving them actual food.

Can you do better?

[eXcalibAron]

Originally posted by Thelis:

with the 2m euro's they did get. they spent a bit of it, on doujin comics (5 of them if i remember correctly) loading screen art. and promo art in a few places, they also hired on more people to thier team, dont remember if they said how many. they also all work remotely, so if the cloud server they use gets messed up, that could be a big setback.

Also, they had to LEARN how to use the u4 engine, and then they had to make all resources in the game from scratch. so that itself is at least 1 year of solid work, then figuring out how to learn to code in an engine, without making it a virus, is i'd say 6 months to a year, so if you overlap those, i'd say they have only had maybe 6 months of ACTUAL game development time.

I'm self taught and I develop in python/java. While I know they're not the u4 engine, I did develop WHILE is was learning. The old "learn by doing" thing. Also if they hired people you'd think they'd hire people that already know u4. Why hire someone that you need to train for a year? Sounds like a waste of time and money to me.

I want to be optimistic about this game. I'm just worried that it's going to turn into abandoned vaporware.

[farlanghn]

Originally posted by eXcalibAron:

I don't know a hell of a lot about game development.

You should've stopped here.

[Ditan]

Originally posted by Soara:

Is there a Source? Or is this all just assumption and not a fact.

It's an assumption, just as we assume that the creators of this game are human and not AI. The same assumption can be said for you, hope you are not an AI. There are assumptions that can be made that are reasonable. Assumptions like FOW is an ANIMATION studio and not a GAME studio and would therefore take longer to churn something out. Even for a game studio, a 2 year turn around is very quick.

I know everyone's expectations were high (foolishly in my opinion), but people need to take a deep breath. It's early access, things can change. If they will change or not is to be seen, but I am hopeful. Not hopeful for this game, mind you, I am hopeful that FOW learns as much as they can from the development of this game and continues with game development. I don't believe the final game will look much different than what we have now. What I'm hoping for is maybe DLC that overhauls PANDORA to be more interactive. I'm hoping for Subverse 2 that is clearly better to 1 in every way.

[Simbolic]

I could believe it, the adult game Kalyskah on itch.io is still in Development. It's only about 10% to 15% done and they have been working on it for years as well. I imagine anything 3D takes a whole lot longer to work with. Then things created in 2D or pixels.

[Skolia]

Game development is NOT a fast process.

[Dark Consort]

I think Studio Fow did a pretty good job for a totally new game studio that has absolutly 0 experience in game development + during the pandemic with all the trouble it caused.

They'll add more concent and chapters, it's simply and early access.

If people don't like early access, they can just wait for the final product.

But 2 years is extremly short to develop a whole video game with animations and gameplay...

No they did great.

I had no bug / crash, the sound design is perfect, gameplay is simple but effective and fun, story and lore seems pretty cool and interesting, girls are perfect and I want to know them more !

[ThunderHawk]

lol a company that makes 3d animation movies and people expect them to put out a video game that blows their minds what do you expect from a small studio that has never coded before the next mass effect? please can people grow up or think before they write ♥♥♥♥ like this

[Darke]

Originally posted by Huapo:

I think Studio Fow did a pretty good job for a totally new game studio that has absolutly 0 experience in game development + during the pandemic with all the trouble it caused.

They'll add more concent and chapters, it's simply and early access.

If people don't like early access, they can just wait for the final product.

But 2 years is extremly short to develop a whole video game with animations and gameplay...

No they did great.

I had no bug / crash, the sound design is perfect, gameplay is simple but effective and fun, story and lore seems pretty cool and interesting, girls are perfect and I want to know them more !

Yup. Multiple gameplay modes seem to work well and be relatively bug free. It seems like they spent a lot of the last couple of years making themselves a good foundation to keep building on.

I think people underestimate how much time things take. $2 million doesn't mean anything if you don't have any developers hired and you have to hire them; which takes time. On-boarding new developers/artists/whatever takes time as well, from the original people on the team as well as the new people so you lower overall performance whilst getting new people on.

Then there's the problem that just because you hire more people, it doesn't mean you can speed up the critical path much. It's the usual thing that it takes 9 months for a baby to be born, you can't speed that up by adding more pregnant women. Though that seems like a weird analogy to make on this programming project. :/

As far as early access games go, it seems much more content complete and stable than a lot of non-porn games, so I'm a bit surprised actually.

[Zwolf]

The "game" as it stands is 80% voice-acting over stills and reallllly basic combat. I wouldn't be suprised if the grid combat and shmup existed over a year ago.
Let's not beat around the bush, after all this time, releasing this meh demo? What have they actually done since then? Ripped us off, 'sall I can tell.

They'd have been way better off releasing nothing for another 3-6 months and giving us something actually worth the wait, I mean, what's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ difference at this point.

[Quagimus Decimus]

Originally posted by eXcalibAron:

I don't know a hell of a lot about game development. What I do know is that I backed this game on Kickstarter two years ago. Two years and all they have to show for it is the first act of the game? And now it's in early access after getting fully backed? It just seems like they should have more to show at this point, ran out of Kickstarter money, and the Early Access thing is continue funding development. That doesn't make me very optimistic.

I guess you've completely forgotten that in the last year all game development has taken a hit in production.. all because of shortages of toilet paper.. and other pandemics.

For what's to come $30 feels like just the right price to snag this.