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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsGuild of Dungeoneering [now out on iOS and Android too!]
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Author Topic: Guild of Dungeoneering [now out on iOS and Android too!]  (Read 88226 times)
gambrinous
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« Reply #340 on: January 19, 2015, 08:27:56 AM »

So we were selected as a finalist for the Indie Prize at Casual Connect in Amsterdam in February. So I'll be along as will Steve our soundtrack composer to showcase the game there for a few days. Anyone else here going?

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gambrinous
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« Reply #341 on: January 21, 2015, 03:51:34 PM »

More EXCITING NEWS. We've teamed up with Versus Evil to publish Guild of Dungeoneering!

They have previously published The Banner Saga and I'm really looking forward to seeing them do their thing for our game :D

This also means Guild of Dungeoneering will be showing at PAX South (I fly tomorrow!), GDC, PAX East, and EGX Rezzed, with a launch date in and around end-of-May...

If anyone here is going to be at PAX South this weekend come say hi at the VS Evil booth!
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gambrinous
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« Reply #342 on: January 26, 2015, 06:42:01 AM »

Phew! PAX South was amazing but also incredibly tiring, I feel worn out now! Very fun to meet so many people and see them try the game. We had 4 PCs running the game in a great location so there was someone playing at every PC for essentially the entire three days.



I'll write up a proper postmortem when I get home
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adambn
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« Reply #343 on: January 27, 2015, 11:17:33 AM »

Have you taken the game off your site?
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gambrinous
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« Reply #344 on: January 28, 2015, 03:33:50 AM »

Oh good point. Yes, I've taken down the playable version on the site now. I will amend the first post to explain.

Now that we're going to be adding much more of the final game content like the guild mode I'll just be sharing stuff via videos and screenshots here.
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gambrinous
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« Reply #345 on: January 29, 2015, 08:40:12 AM »

PAX South Postmortem

So first ever PAX down. Very interesting experience. Versus Evil (my publisher) had a very professional looking booth in a really great spot. We had four PCs with Guild of Dungeoneering on them and they were facing directly into the path of the main corridor people were walking down right after they came past the biggest booths at the show. One very lovely thing about doing this with a publisher is that they set up everything for me. I just had to turn up and chat to people. No lugging PCs around and worrying about decorating the booth.



Their setup & location meant that for basically all three days there were four people playing the game at once, with a few people watching (and sometimes a big crowd of people watching).



I would generally hang out nearby and watch people play. Occasionally we had a crash bug in the demo we had people playing so I'd have to restart the game if that happened. When folks were waiting I'd chat to them about the game. If I saw people play for a long time (like a half hour+) I'd approach them when they finished to ask them for feedback. Feedback itself was incredibly positive. People loved the aesthetic, really liked the concept, and generally really enjoyed playing the demo we had brought. That last bit surprised me as I guess I see all the negatives of it (it's not fun yet!). I guess since it was people's first exposure to the game everything was new and interesting and they didn't quite get deep enough to see the problematic parts.

We were showcasing the game in 1920x1080 resolution for the first time and it looks totally hot. A lot of passersby were drawn to folks playing. We even have an ATTRACT MODE like an arcade machine where if you idle in the title screen it starts playing by itself, but basically because there were so many people at the booth the whole time this never featured except right at the start of each day.


[click for massive]

We were also showcasing our battle mode for the first time. No more autofighting; now you choose an attack move each turn. This first attempt was ready just in time for PAX, but it needs a lot of work. We've now reworked it to be MUCH more interesting (less like a paper/rock/scissors guessathon) while still retaining the essential idea: you gain attack moves from your equipment, thus building your character depending on what loot you place for them.


[click for massive]

Now there were lots of potential fans at the show and it was really great to meet them and hopefully they will see the game when it comes out on Steam and be that little more likely to try it out. But the real win for us at a show like this was reaching some press and other influencers. For example check out this tweet:


Yep that's Randy Pitchford the president of Gearbox randomly checking out our game and tweeting it to his 288K followers. Eh.. thanks!

We also had Dodger and Jesse Cox drop by the booth and play the game. They both seem to really like it: see this video. That's two youtubers with really big followings. Hopefully when we finish the game they'll be streaming it.

Finally all this attention got us some great new press articles. Firstly from TouchArcade (we plan on going to tablets after the PC launch), with whom I got to have a little chat while he was playing the game. Secondly from Rock Paper Shotgun, who I don't think were even at PAX but must have been reminded of us because of it.

So big win. Very happy to be working with VS Evil who put together a superb spot for the game here. They are also showing the game at GDC, PAX East and EGX Rezzed - all in March. Now we just need to make the game really fun, finish it, and I have high hopes we'll have a bit of a hit on our hands.
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Darkfox190
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« Reply #346 on: January 29, 2015, 08:59:50 PM »

The playable version disappearing from the site has made me really glad I downloaded the version that was up! Glad to hear there's more being added, but sad to see the demo vanish.
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gambrinous
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« Reply #347 on: January 30, 2015, 03:26:03 AM »

Heh, sneaky! Don't worry though, it'll be back as a proper polished demo once we're ready to launch
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gambrinous
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« Reply #348 on: January 31, 2015, 02:14:11 PM »

Here's a bunch of screenshots at the new 1080p resolution. Looks lovely if you ask me!

http://imgur.com/gallery/otXxf/
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gambrinous
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« Reply #349 on: February 09, 2015, 04:30:03 AM »



We won a prize! Most Promising In Development from the Indie Prize at Casual Connect in Amsterdam last week. This is our first time to win something like this so it's pretty cool. Other than that there were 120 indie games being showcased so it was really cool meeting some devs working on some very interesting games. The rest of the show was incredibly businessy and basically not relevant to me (just mobile publishers and ad networks and the like). Worth the trip though!

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AD1337
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« Reply #350 on: February 09, 2015, 09:29:37 AM »

Gratz! Cool stuff!  Smiley
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gambrinous
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« Reply #351 on: February 10, 2015, 04:10:02 PM »

Finally got to expand on the PAX South postmortem in a long blog post:
http://blog.gambrinous.com/2015/02/11/exciting-times-at-pax-south/
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GroZZleR
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« Reply #352 on: February 11, 2015, 05:37:40 PM »

Congrats on all the success!  Sounds like things are really snowballing quickly.  Any insights on how you signed with a publisher, what they offer and any sort of non-NDA covered figures you're comfortable with sharing?
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Darkfox190
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« Reply #353 on: February 12, 2015, 06:41:51 PM »

I don't suppose there's a chance we'll get to play with that demo version?
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gambrinous
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« Reply #354 on: February 13, 2015, 05:09:51 AM »



Fun feeling seeing this for the first time!

I don't suppose there's a chance we'll get to play with that demo version?

Not til release I'm afraid! I will be sharing playthrough videos showcasing new stuff here instead, at least. Also if you are planning on attending GDC, PAX East or Rezzed next month you can have a play there.

Congrats on all the success!  Sounds like things are really snowballing quickly.  Any insights on how you signed with a publisher, what they offer and any sort of non-NDA covered figures you're comfortable with sharing?

Very good question. I'll expand on this into a proper blog post at some point but here's some initial thoughts. I can't share specifics of the contract I signed or others I was offered under NDA, but I can talk about some more general stuff.

Why use a publisher?
The main reason to use a publisher has gone away. They used be the only way to properly reach the market, be that getting your game in boxes on shelves or on the top digital platforms. This is no longer the case. Any game worth publishing can breeze through greenlight and get onto the xbone/ps4/wii without a publisher. Boxed copies is a different story, but fuck that.

The other reason was traditionally moneys. You could pitch a game idea to a publisher and if they liked it enough they would pay you to develop it. In return they would generally own it (as in IP, the idea itself, the right to get OTHER PEOPLE to make sequels, etc) and you would only get a small percentage of the money it brought in. In return you were paid (sometimes a lot of money) to be able to make the thing.

Personally I think there are better ways to fund small games nowadays. Kickstarter, bootstrapping, 'wifefunding', you name it. So what's the point of getting a publisher involved?

Well for me it came down to this: marketing money & expertise. I've always strongly recommended indie devs invest serious time into marketing, and you should certainly do that. But there are some things you cannot bootstrap. For me it was getting Guild of Dungeoneering to some of the really big consumer game shows (like PAX). These things will cost you about $10K a pop, and that's doing it on the cheap. So I decided to find a publisher to act as a 'launch partner'; someone who would fund some marketing stuff like consumer shows and who would help with press outreach, PR, marketplace partners etc.

Are there indie-friendly publishers?
I started with one publisher who I had seen was doing exactly this for small scale games: Devolver. I then asked around on twitter and reddit for suggestions and eventually compiled quite a good list: http://blog.gambrinous.com/2014/09/02/the-list-of-indie-friendly-publishers/

I then pitched almost every single one of the companies on that list via email.

Pitching a publisher
You should have a 'press pitch' for your game which you are continually refining. This is what you send out to games journos to get them excited about what you are making (or your own story, in making it) so that they write about your game. You can take this pitch and tweak it slightly to get a publisher interested. Personally I kept most of my press pitch and just added a couple of sentences about what I was looking for with a publisher. I would then get into more specifics if they got back to me.

Here's what I was sending to publishers last September:
Quote
Hi folks!

I'm making a pretty awesome game called Guild of Dungeoneering and I'd love to have a chat with you about bringing it to a wider audience.

It's a turn-based dungeon crawler with a twist: instead of controlling the hero you build the dungeon around him. Using cards drawn from your Guild decks you lay down rooms, monsters, traps and of course loot! Defeating monsters lets you place better items for your hero to use, but placing ever harder monsters is the only way to keep the Dread Meter in check. Let it get too high and Bad Things start to happen! Meanwhile your hero is making his own decisions on where to go and what to fight. But will he be strong enough to take on the dungeon's overlord?

Despite only releasing a bare bones alpha demo so far I've already attracted some great attention from press and players alike.

Guild of Dungeoneering was greenlit for Steam in May after over 8,000 yes votes in a month, reaching the #5 spot out of over 1,700 games on Greenlight before being chosen by Valve.

I'll be releasing on PC & Mac first with tablets to follow and am currently looking for some help around launch to be able to make the biggest splash possible.

Check out some more info about the game below and then get back to me for a chat!

Thanks,
Colm

More info on Guild of Dungeoneering (including web-playable alpha) can be found here:
http://gambrinous.com/games/dungeoneering/

Our video trailer can be seen here:




Some notable press articles include:
- "I love the hand-drawn style, evocative of every schoolroom doodling ever put to paper by a bored geek!", Boing Boing, Apr 2014
- "There’s a huge amount of potential in the concept ..", Rock Paper Shotgun, Feb 2014
- ".. a lovely sketches-on-graph-paper aesthetic ..", IndieGames.com, Feb 2014

Here are some examples of positive feedback from players:
- "Looked at the style, loved it, read about the influences (card games, dungeon keeper, etc) loved them as well. Always willing to fund indie games I believe in", via email
- "After playing the demo about a half-dozen times, I decided it was well worth $10 to pre-order Smiley", via email
- "I heard about the game on Rock Paper Shotgun, and after a (very) brief go on the demo, I was sold Smiley I love the boardgame aesthetic. Looking forward to the final build!", via email
- "Uh oh, looks like the playable demo of #GuildOfDungeoneering was updated since I last tried it. Bye bye Saturday", via twitter
- "Guild of #dungeoneering looks like it'll be a great game, no doubt something I'm buying when it's out", via twitter
- "WOWOW! Guild of Dungeoneering seems like an interesting project. Love the art style!", via twitter
- "Guild Of Dungeoneering is absolutely BRILLIANT so far, keep going!", via twitter

Usually this was a cold email, but in a couple of instances I had tweeted the company to get an email address so they knew it was coming. I followed up politely a 2nd time one month later with folks who hadn't answered. Out of about 15 companies I pitched I think I heard back from 12, which is pretty good.

How far along should you be?
It really depends on your own situation but I think a good rule of thumb is if you know with decent certainty when your game will be finished. Sadly this is one of the hardest things to be correct about, in my experience! You should certainly know exactly what your game will be like when finished (full scope defined), where you will be selling it, why it's interesting, who will like it, etc. Bonus points if you have good validation of your concept already from press, players, greenlight, kickstarter and the like.

What does the publisher get out of it?
Generally speaking they will get a cut of all game revenue for their involvement. A handwavey ballpark amount I heard before I started this process was the publisher getting around 30%, and that's in the case where they aren't funding actual development of the game (like salaries), just partnering with you to launch it. Secondly any money they spend is generally an 'advance', ie it is loaned to the game and paid back in full from game sales before you the developer start seeing any of the revenue (this is to make up for the fact that they are taking a risk on you with this money). (Note: all of this depends entirely on the contract you sign with your publisher, and all contracts are negotiable.)

As a first time gamedev I thought it was very worthwhile to give up a cut of revenue if partnering with a publisher meant the overall amount of sales was going to be higher. IE if their marketing money/expertise meant the game sold 50% more copies then giving up 30% of that was still an overall win.

How long does it take?
For me the process took about 4 months from pitching various publishers, to getting actual offers from a few, to negotiating the actual contract we ended up signing. At certain points this took up all my time, so be aware.

[that's all for now, I'll certainly be turning this into a proper blog post though - thanks for the poke about it!]
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AD1337
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« Reply #355 on: February 13, 2015, 08:30:26 AM »

Thanks for that post, very informative. I'm still thinking whether or not to partner up with a publisher to release Painters Guild and that helped me a bit.

A question: how involved with the development is your publisher? Do they make requests? Do you need their "ok" to release the game? I've heard some horror stories about publishers asking for too many changes and delaying release for months.
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gambrinous
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« Reply #356 on: February 13, 2015, 02:14:02 PM »

The publishing deal I was looking for was one where I retain all IP ownership and full creative control of the game. This was one of the first things I brought up and the publishers I talked to were all on board with that. I think of this as the main difference between an oldschool 90s-era publisher deal and what I'm calling a 'launch partnership' here. Of course there are middle grounds as well.

I did need to spell out exactly what we were going to deliver, which meant for the first time I wrote an actual game design doc (my first!). That's pretty useful in any case. I'm hoping to get useful feedback & suggestions from the publisher (and am!), but they don't have specific control of what we're making, no.

Hope that helps!
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dadiomouse
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« Reply #357 on: February 15, 2015, 05:47:27 AM »

Great that you're keeping us all up to date with such detailed information.  Smiley I *love* your game! (Played the demo *a lot* when it was up)... could I ask you why specifically you chose to remove the early demo from your site? I was sad to learn you had pulled it. Also, I was one of those who pre-ordered (when you still could) quite some time ago... would it be possible for us (those who pre-ordered) to still have access to the demo? And/or do you plan on making a new demo/beta available at all to those who pre-ordered?
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gambrinous
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« Reply #358 on: February 15, 2015, 10:39:14 AM »

Thanks dadiomouse! On the demo it was always my intention to stop updating it once we were closer to launch & adding stuff I didn't want to be freely playable. I guess I could have left it 'as is' there and we could keep working on new stuff separately, but it just didn't feel right to have it out of date. EG when we show the game at PAX and then people go look at the website they would be playing a demo that's several months old.

On the plus side, I'm strongly considering doing a closed beta just before launch (say the month before), and I'll be inviting everyone who preordered into that for sure  Coffee
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« Reply #359 on: February 15, 2015, 11:41:02 PM »

I saw positive report from articles and youtubers. I was like, I should download the demo and preorder if I like it. The demo was gone along with the preorder button. Sad
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