Apr 17, 2022
Void's Calling ep. 2 - Novel_games
First of all, I’ll list the events (finished/planned) in the order of their size and importance.
1) The purification. One of the biggest events. It shows the relationship between the Pure Ones, deepens the lore of the game. It’ll be available during the first three days and between the other events. The event will consist of a few stages, and it’ll be finished by evening of the third day.
2) The investigation arc. We’re currently editing and proofreading some elements of this event. So far, we think about making it into a two-day event. The option to leave the town will be left for the third episode. I think many players didn’t even realize that the castle part is in essence unfinished. The events are misplaced. There are no random events between the interrogations of different residents of the castle. About that slightly down below, most of these events are prepared though.
We’re doing a big overhaul and working on mistakes of the investigation arc. Our second writer is currently working on looking for any logical holes in this event. Of course, refining something always takes a lot of time and it’s easier to just make something from the scratch instead of trying to fix what you already have. However, there’re plenty of mistakes in this arc and we can’t just turn a blind eye to all of them.
Allow me to go off-topic for this one. Back in the day when we had only one writer, we had some serious troubles with the scripts. Our main writer has a main job and when we were busy writing this arc, he had a lot on his hands and in such circumstances, we had to accept any text just so that we could move on. The opportunities we have now allow us to fix most of the problems we’ve accumulated over this long period of time.
3) Random events prior to the castle. This is a huge set of different events. That’s including events in Ilga’s house, merchants’ events and new events in the castle. A lot of events are still in the works, something’s only yet to be proofread and edited. However, one thing is certain, there’ll be a lot smaller events in the next update compared to the early access release. I’ve published a few renders of these events in the past.
4) Three alternative branches, for vampires, Fuhrim, and for Sarah. We’ll give you more options on how to access vampires’ arc and a few more options how to end this storyline. As for Fuhrim, even back in the early access build there was an option for an alternative route with him, but it was unavailable at the moment. Now it’s available.
We’ve also added an alternative branch for Sarah, and it’ll depend on whether you found her in the town in the first episode or not.
These events are there to add variability and role-play elements to the game. However, we can’t create a truly big number of different alternative branches. The events we create are too big to make more alternative branches for them.
5) Interaction options with Fiona and Mrisya have been expanded.
6) The event with Kilena is in the works.
7) The dreams are written.
With a strong desire you can come up with a lot of different interactions between characters but at the end of the day, it all comes down to human resources. Moreover, things get a bit more complicated when you want to tie all these events and add some backstory to each one of them. It’s quite hard to maintain the logic of the story. You always forget about something during the work and more often than not you had thought about those things before but you just forgot about them.
When I was working on ToML everything was way easier. It was a simple story that I wrote without any serious plan, without any huge twists. I even managed to roll out updates every month even though back then I could devote way less time to the game. Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge.
Even back then I noticed people saying that I’m rude, that I can’t take criticism and that I can’t talk to people. In fact, it’s not really true. I’m usually way more rude but my translators refuse to translate what I want to say and my level of English isn’t good enough for me to be able to convey these thoughts on my own. That’s just who I am; I don’t want to please; I don’t give a damn about money, and I just take pleasure in the job I’m doing.
The game’s rating is 60%. Well, that’s not so bad considering the game is unfinished. It’s early access. With all that, people who’ve bought the game now will automatically have access to the full version of the game when we finally release it, even though we’ll raise the price, of course. There’ll be a lot more content in the second episode compared to the first one.
And if you keep in mind that around 10-15% of those reviews were about the developer itself and not the game, the result of 70% positive reviews is quite good. When I was exhausted after the release, all these reviews made me feel bad and I even stopped working for almost a whole month, but now with a clear head and knowing how unfinished that build was, I consider the result to be quite good.
Now let me get things straight about the criticism. I’m the only one in our team who actually reads the reviews from time to time. And to be honest, I just don’t take negative reviews seriously. Sometimes I don’t even read them.
I honestly don’t believe that a player who’s never had any experience in developing a game can know more than people who’ve been purposefully trying to get good at it for the last five years. And we still aren’t good enough for we’re still learning. It’s a complex and hard work.
My attitude to feedback doesn’t imply that our games have no problems. Our games have tons of problems and we’re well aware of every single one of them. Some of them can be fixed, others are in the core of the game; it’s always a compromise between your desires and possibilities.
And with all that, feedback can be important in those moments when a developer can’t see a problem due to lack of «fresh eyes». Like, something can be obvious for us who work on the game, but for a player who hasn’t taken any part in the development process it might be a difficult problem.
By the way, about problems. Not so long ago I watched a video about QTE, and it gave me some ideas. I noticed a few mistakes we’ve made when implementing QTE. For example, we’ll make it so that MC can’t die when fighting vampires during QTE sequence. All future QTE sequences won’t be able to kill MC too. Other events couldn’t kill the main character anyway. We’ll also give you more time to react to QTE if you play on easy difficulty.
As for financial aspect of things, the question is still open. For as long as we have funds to get by, we’ll keep working. I can’t give you any exact dates, it’s possible we’ll make a test release for our Patreon with around half content planned, just to test the build. After all, the bigger the update, the more difficult it is to catch all the bugs. I’m not planning on making this release available on Steam. I think many of you know why. For those who don’t, I’ll explain…
I’ve had enough of the early access release and those 10% of negative reviews from those who don’t know what «early access» means. I don’t want to engage in similar experiments anymore. Yes, considering the current situation, the early access release was a saving decision because we earned the money that helped us keep working, but when I read that we only did that to get money… in short, it’s not the best feeling. I mean, of course we earned something, but why wouldn’t we release only the finished product (with higher price) and thus earning even more money if we so cared about them, that I don’t understand. But I’ll repeat myself, that decision, which was heavily imposed by my colleagues, kind of saved the day. No matter what’s happening, it’s all for the best. Maybe one day we’ll even get the cut from current sales.
Thanks everyone and bye.
1) The purification. One of the biggest events. It shows the relationship between the Pure Ones, deepens the lore of the game. It’ll be available during the first three days and between the other events. The event will consist of a few stages, and it’ll be finished by evening of the third day.
2) The investigation arc. We’re currently editing and proofreading some elements of this event. So far, we think about making it into a two-day event. The option to leave the town will be left for the third episode. I think many players didn’t even realize that the castle part is in essence unfinished. The events are misplaced. There are no random events between the interrogations of different residents of the castle. About that slightly down below, most of these events are prepared though.
We’re doing a big overhaul and working on mistakes of the investigation arc. Our second writer is currently working on looking for any logical holes in this event. Of course, refining something always takes a lot of time and it’s easier to just make something from the scratch instead of trying to fix what you already have. However, there’re plenty of mistakes in this arc and we can’t just turn a blind eye to all of them.
Allow me to go off-topic for this one. Back in the day when we had only one writer, we had some serious troubles with the scripts. Our main writer has a main job and when we were busy writing this arc, he had a lot on his hands and in such circumstances, we had to accept any text just so that we could move on. The opportunities we have now allow us to fix most of the problems we’ve accumulated over this long period of time.
3) Random events prior to the castle. This is a huge set of different events. That’s including events in Ilga’s house, merchants’ events and new events in the castle. A lot of events are still in the works, something’s only yet to be proofread and edited. However, one thing is certain, there’ll be a lot smaller events in the next update compared to the early access release. I’ve published a few renders of these events in the past.
4) Three alternative branches, for vampires, Fuhrim, and for Sarah. We’ll give you more options on how to access vampires’ arc and a few more options how to end this storyline. As for Fuhrim, even back in the early access build there was an option for an alternative route with him, but it was unavailable at the moment. Now it’s available.
We’ve also added an alternative branch for Sarah, and it’ll depend on whether you found her in the town in the first episode or not.
These events are there to add variability and role-play elements to the game. However, we can’t create a truly big number of different alternative branches. The events we create are too big to make more alternative branches for them.
5) Interaction options with Fiona and Mrisya have been expanded.
6) The event with Kilena is in the works.
7) The dreams are written.
With a strong desire you can come up with a lot of different interactions between characters but at the end of the day, it all comes down to human resources. Moreover, things get a bit more complicated when you want to tie all these events and add some backstory to each one of them. It’s quite hard to maintain the logic of the story. You always forget about something during the work and more often than not you had thought about those things before but you just forgot about them.
When I was working on ToML everything was way easier. It was a simple story that I wrote without any serious plan, without any huge twists. I even managed to roll out updates every month even though back then I could devote way less time to the game. Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge.
Even back then I noticed people saying that I’m rude, that I can’t take criticism and that I can’t talk to people. In fact, it’s not really true. I’m usually way more rude but my translators refuse to translate what I want to say and my level of English isn’t good enough for me to be able to convey these thoughts on my own. That’s just who I am; I don’t want to please; I don’t give a damn about money, and I just take pleasure in the job I’m doing.
The game’s rating is 60%. Well, that’s not so bad considering the game is unfinished. It’s early access. With all that, people who’ve bought the game now will automatically have access to the full version of the game when we finally release it, even though we’ll raise the price, of course. There’ll be a lot more content in the second episode compared to the first one.
And if you keep in mind that around 10-15% of those reviews were about the developer itself and not the game, the result of 70% positive reviews is quite good. When I was exhausted after the release, all these reviews made me feel bad and I even stopped working for almost a whole month, but now with a clear head and knowing how unfinished that build was, I consider the result to be quite good.
Now let me get things straight about the criticism. I’m the only one in our team who actually reads the reviews from time to time. And to be honest, I just don’t take negative reviews seriously. Sometimes I don’t even read them.
I honestly don’t believe that a player who’s never had any experience in developing a game can know more than people who’ve been purposefully trying to get good at it for the last five years. And we still aren’t good enough for we’re still learning. It’s a complex and hard work.
My attitude to feedback doesn’t imply that our games have no problems. Our games have tons of problems and we’re well aware of every single one of them. Some of them can be fixed, others are in the core of the game; it’s always a compromise between your desires and possibilities.
And with all that, feedback can be important in those moments when a developer can’t see a problem due to lack of «fresh eyes». Like, something can be obvious for us who work on the game, but for a player who hasn’t taken any part in the development process it might be a difficult problem.
By the way, about problems. Not so long ago I watched a video about QTE, and it gave me some ideas. I noticed a few mistakes we’ve made when implementing QTE. For example, we’ll make it so that MC can’t die when fighting vampires during QTE sequence. All future QTE sequences won’t be able to kill MC too. Other events couldn’t kill the main character anyway. We’ll also give you more time to react to QTE if you play on easy difficulty.
As for financial aspect of things, the question is still open. For as long as we have funds to get by, we’ll keep working. I can’t give you any exact dates, it’s possible we’ll make a test release for our Patreon with around half content planned, just to test the build. After all, the bigger the update, the more difficult it is to catch all the bugs. I’m not planning on making this release available on Steam. I think many of you know why. For those who don’t, I’ll explain…
I’ve had enough of the early access release and those 10% of negative reviews from those who don’t know what «early access» means. I don’t want to engage in similar experiments anymore. Yes, considering the current situation, the early access release was a saving decision because we earned the money that helped us keep working, but when I read that we only did that to get money… in short, it’s not the best feeling. I mean, of course we earned something, but why wouldn’t we release only the finished product (with higher price) and thus earning even more money if we so cared about them, that I don’t understand. But I’ll repeat myself, that decision, which was heavily imposed by my colleagues, kind of saved the day. No matter what’s happening, it’s all for the best. Maybe one day we’ll even get the cut from current sales.
Thanks everyone and bye.
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