Read an article about you on Gamedev.net

[Karnettech]

I was pretty moved by how you had to sell wine openers to eat, and respect you for continuing your development of an indie game.

However, I also have a few comments.

1 The game is too dark.
The atmosphere is too dark, the sudden flashes of spells too bright. Visuals need work.

2 The game is too hectic.
It feels like a horror survival game instead of a Wizard game. The enemy types are too mundane.

3 The game is not epic enough.
It is not alluring enough a spectacle for players to want to play inside it. Reduces immersion.

4 Why VR?
Unless you have a very good reason to use VR, limiting a game to only VR severely limits your playerbase. Either consider a VR-compatible experience with non-VR option, or make more use of the unique features of VR.

A good wizarding game should feel like the Lord of the Rings. Where you wipe out whole army divisions with epic spells. Under a bright cinematic sun, in an epic environment. Think dungeon-dive, but in Lord-of-the-Rings scale ruins.

There should also be an equivalently epic story, where you partake in some Lord-of-the-Rings story of legend and lore. Remember, you are not even some mere vampire or witch, you are a wizard.

Players do not want to take an axe and go chop trees. Players will appreciate some minions, but more so for providing comic relief and liveliness, instead of going out to chop trees in your stead.

Finally, you have to plan everything on systems of scale. Can this development model be scalable, or will you have to create everything meticulously by hand? Can anything be automated and procedurally generated? Can players mod and create community levels easily? Does your system and framework allow easy scaling of new features and mechanics? Does your game have a strategic combat system that is complex yet alluring, and has depth? Remember players would rather spend 2 hours modifying their spell loadout and experimenting with magic creation, than 5 minutes chopping trees.

If your game is alluring and epic enough that players will help to create community levels, or share spell portfolios, than you are golden. But struggling to create everything by hand, year after year, is not the way to go. People don't just reject you from Indie megabooths because they are mean. Asking for pity is not the way to sell a game to the market. I emphasize with you but you must figure it out, how you can make your game alluring, how you could make your game stand out and be competitive.


Best of luck in the future.

[Slayemin]

Thanks for reading the article and checking out my game :) I'm glad to hear you felt inspired.

I am working on the full story script at the moment. I have the whole outline planned out and I'm now just going through, scene by scene, and writing it out. I will probably need to cut some parts of the story out to keep scope down and keep in manageable for my limited resources. The story I have planned is very, very epic, but a big part of the challenge is figuring out how to present the story without taking away agency from the player.

The game play right now is a vertical slice of the full game and has been a way for me to learn more about what works and what doesn't work, and use that as feedback for further development (comments like this help a lot). One minor unfortunate part is that the current story and setting in the game is a setup for a plot event which may be further in the story line? I may need to rewrite and redesign it for fit and consistency. The current plan is that when you start the game, you're going to be a teen farm boy helping your parents on the farm at the edge of a forest. It'll be a sunny and bright environment and familiarize players with a rudimentary crafting system.

In terms of crafting systems, I've been debating how intricate I want to make it. I've been partially inspired by Factorio and the disney movie "Fantasia". To take the tree chopping example, I would like for players to be able to manually chop down a tree. It needs to be tedious work so that players prefer alternatives. One option I've been considering is the possibility of hiring minions (goblins?) to do manual labor, or, enchanting 100 axes and having them go out into the forest and chop away, similar to how Mickey Mouse enchanted a handful of brooms to work as his servants. You're a magician, where you work smarter, not harder. But, if this is going to primarily be a story driven game, would a deep crafting system be a distraction from plot progression? Would it be fun and interesting to design and place houses built from your collected resources? What if players get really attached to their work and then it gets ruined by an event? Does it even make sense for a wizard to be trying to design and build a village? Shouldn't he be focused more on wizard-like things, such as discovering spells and defeating evil? My current approach is to write the story first and then add game systems to complement the story afterwards.

Aside from the immersion of VR, the magic system is going to be taking full advantage of the hardware. I won't get into details because I don't want to promise game systems which may not make the cut, but the general idea is that all of the ways you can interact with the world around you takes full advantage of the motion controller input devices and are only possible with VR input devices. If an interaction is reduced to just pressing a button, then I'm designing it wrong.

The biggest limitation blocking development for the last year or so has been time and money. I'll get past that in a few months and this game will start to see some really cool releases. I've also been entertaining the idea of releasing 5 minute experimental levels. One would be a pitch black level on a dark and stormy night, where you only have fireballs. All around you, the undead are emerging from the ground, but you can't see them, you just hear them. Only when there is a flash of lightning, do you see where they are -- sort of like the riddick movies on the alien planets. The only light source you have is the fire light from your fireballs (which may fizzle out from the rain at random). Now, if you throw the fireballs, you alert the zombies to your presence, but at the same time, nearby zombies can smell you and follow you... You'll eventually have to throw a fireball. I tried this on a test map in VR and it was really scary. It may be *too* scary for some people, so I'd have to include a warning or something.

[Karnettech]

Hi again and thanks for replying back! I am stunned that a game developer would personally respond to player feedback with such sincerity.

From reading your description of your planned roadmap, I have some thoughts which may be interesting if you consider it this way:

You could try making good use of the unique setting of VR and the theme of your game, to create an "artistic statement" of a game.

You could try framing your game's narrative as a stylized, unique take on what it means to be a wizard, from an intimate and first-person perspective. The player will be living the memories of your main character, whose story is one of classical lore.

It will start in his(her) world, world-building the world he(she) lives in, the peace he(she) had ever known. Life in a pleasant, fantasy village, charming customs and a world full of wonder. Helping to do chores, such as cutting, crafting, all part of the narrative which frames this "feel" for the world which the main character lived in. "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" tried to deliver this feel at the beginning.

Eventually that life falls apart. But instead of mundane medieval politics and just dumb bad luck, you get magic, fantasy, evil, and armies from hell! To hell with bad arrow physics!

The next part, or the "rise" of the main character to a proficiency in magic, can greatly vary depending on what kind of storyline you prefer. Did he get rescued and trained at an imperial academy? Or by a wayward wizard or hermit witch? Did he befriend a frail spirit who taught him some magic? Or steal a skeletal mage's spellbook?

Did the main character join adventuring mercenaries as a freelancer wizard to earn an income and enact revenge? Or instead attempt to meddle in politics, uncover the secret magics forbidden by the imperial wizards, and meet a princess? Did the main character choose to become a teacher at the academy and train students in hope of another life of peace, but is one day is forced to venture back into danger in order to save someone? Did he join a nomadic flock of travelers fleeing from the encroaching darkness?

Where would his ventures occur? What kind of cursed lands and ancient gothic landscapes would be encountered? What kind of architectures and dungeons of which scale and purpose could only exist in fantasy, would be explored? And finally, what horrible and surreal experiences will be had, enemies confronted, and won, all with this new "magic" that is trained and learned?

In the end, would the main character complete their ultimate goal alone, or with companions? What type of wizard or fighter would his style be recognized as, or what legacies would be left from his deeds in a proxy war against evil?

Each scenario needs to be an artistic, impressionistic, and highly immersive part of an even more epic story. A game which itself is a statement, and embodies "fantasy". An experience and immersion like no other. Somehow you will have to find a way to make it work out that way, if you wish the game to sell like madness. It will need both vision and craftsmanship.