TIGSource Forums

One player is the hero.

The other is the boss fight.

A boss rush action game of asymmetric competitive combat. Unique control schemes create unique experiences to being either the Hero or one of four Guardians standing between him and freedom from an ancient temple.

Play as the Hero for tight and responsive controls, like your traditional fast-paced action platformer. Collect unique abilities from downed bosses to fight the subsequent ones. Choose your order of combat. It's like Megaman, only not!

Play as the Guardians for an unique control scheme that allows the creative and strategic use of several maleable attack patterns to try and bring down your nimble opponent and create a challenge no AI could match.

Will feature online and offline multiplayer.

I'll be handling all coding duties.


I'm looking for:

- [MOSTLY OPEN] Artist(s) willing to animate many special effects and bosses, as well as background art. Drop me a line so I can see your work and judge whether you have a style that fits with what I have in mind. I will most likely handle the main character's animation and general spriting, but help cleaning up frames and stuff is welcome. I welcome discussion in creative boss designs. If you're only good with spriting or only good with backgrounds, no problem, I can take two. ;D

- [CLOSED] Musician(s) that always wanted to make a set of badass boss themes and a few mellower tunes for the in-betweens. I'm looking for boss songs that are dramatic, melodic, memorable (none of that stuff that likes to sit on the background and you can't remember it 5 minutes after playing) and get the blood pumping for ass-kicking.


I'll be posting progress as often as possible. Stay tuned! ;D

That is a cute... mammal... thing

This sounds... really, really good. I am extremely curious to see the boss designs, and the game sounds like an utter thrill. How will fighting on one keyboard work? Or is it online?

Right now my idea is to have the boss control scheme be mostly mouse-focused, so the keyboard is free for the hero player.

EPIC. EPIC. EPIC. Idea.

Okay, I'm very much looking forward to playing this one. My fighting game matches against my brother are typically one sided anyway, so let's see how this changes things...

I can make some music for you, sure.

Great idea, and loving the mockup!

This looks extremely fun. Keeping an eye on this one. :):handthumbsupR:

GOOOO MELLYYYY

GO

GO

GO
 
GO

Very much looking forward to playing as a Guardian.  :handthumbsupL:

FINISH
THIS
GAME


 :gentleman:

Holy fuck. Yes please!

I look forward to everything but the furry fan art that will result from this game.

Wow, that sounds great! And... ambitious? And on top of it online multiplayer for a twitch-based fighting game, you are totally insane.
Don't you dare not to finish this game now, Melly!

By the way, did you do the mockup? Because it looks awesome!

Indeed I did the mockup. Thanks. ;D


Haha, well if they ever enjoy my stuff then who am I to judge?

EDIT: Tonight I'll prepare an explanation (with pictures!) of my planned control scheme for boss players. I hope you guys can give me some input and suggestions then, since I don't think this was ever done before.

Plus a new Guardian design I came up with yesterday. The resident projectile spammer.

EDIT2: Can you say radial menus? :eyebrows:

Listening to a lot of music from people offering their help. :-*

Started trying to design another boss tonight. Something sleeker, faster, projectile-spammier:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bfBoss1.png)

I'm probably going to redraw it later with a more "ancient magic robot" feel in mind instead of just "megaman boss".

Going to prepare a little explanation of my proposed control scheme for bosses.

 :handclap: :-*

This definitely looks like something I'd be interested in trying out! I especially love the concepts you've got going for it and your art style in general. I will be keeping tabs on this one! :beer:

Boss Player - Primary Control Scheme (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the radial menu)

In Guardian Soul, one of the players will control the bosses that will fight the player controlling the actual hero character.

In order to make it easy for people to play the game offline, as well as to make the control of boss attacks and patterns more flexible, I decided that bosses could be controlled entirely with the mouse, if the player so chose.

Only the left mouse button will be used, as I'm making this is Flash.

It all starts with a crosshair:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl1.png)

Bugger looks a bit lonely. Lets place him on the play field. Lets position him on our attack's start position:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl2.png)

Lets click, and be greeted by our friend, the radial menu:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl3.png)

Now just look at those possibilities! So many creative ways to dish out some punishment upon your unsuspecting opponent. Each option of the menu is a different 'attack', essentially a different action your boss character can perform.

Lets see what the one on the left is:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl4.png)

A machinegun attack. After the first click, the main crosshair is locked in place, and a secondary cursor is used to select which move you want, highlighting it and giving out its name.

Lets try it out. We click again on the Machinegun attack to select it:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl5.png)

Now we're given an arrow pointing at where we want to fire the attack from the starting position. This will be the way to control many attacks, but the idea is that there will be several attack and patterns with their own unique ways to be controlled. I'll design the whole thing to make learning these different controls as intuitive as possible, but there will be a comprehensive tutorial as a last resort.

Lets point the attack at the hero player, clicking for the third time and ending our input: (the crosshair will now be free to move again and issue another command while the first one is ongoing, allowing the boss player to queue attacks. There will also be a way to cancel the attack in the middle, within reason)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl6.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossControl7.png)

A simple attack, but the first of many possibilities. There will also be a way to make the boss simply move to a new position, if it can do that (some bosses may be more stationary and other very agile).

Well, I'm open for feedback and suggestions. I'm not sure something like this has been done in the past, but if it has I'd love to see a working solution to compare this to. ;D

Wouldn't it be easy for your other player to dodge, since they can see everything you're doing?  :concerned:

Yes, that is something I thought of and am looking into.

Generally, all boss attacks have some telegraphing. This is to maintain the traditional boss fight feel. Over the intertubes, the boss UI isn't visible to the hero player, so the telegraphing is something to allow him to even react to the attacks, depending on what they are. Generally it won't be very delayed and there will be a tendency of boss attacks that can come very quickly.

Offline, I'm thinking of removing pretty much all telegraphing, and making bosses in general faster. The boss' UI will be all the telegraphing needed for the hero player to be able to avoid attacks if he's fast enough. Of course, this will require testing to be balanced properly.

This sounds wicked! I love that mockup too, it has a nice, fresh, digimon-like look to it.

Mockup looks sexy, I hope you find someone to realize the game the way you're picturing it.  Any reason why you wouldn't take a crack at it yourself?  I'm guessing the time limitation?

Thumbs up for radial controls, it would make it perfect for console if you decide to brave an XNA port post-compo.

Two reasons. Time limitation, and I have two other projects I don't want to completely neglect while I'm working on this. It's insane, I know, especially since me and hard work have felt like antithesis for far too long, and humans are notoriously shitty at fighting inertia. Still, I'm becoming increasingly and painfully aware that I have no choice in the matter anyway, so expect a lot more production coming from me this year.


I'm not sure gamepad controls would allow the agility I think is required for the boss player to feel like he's more than a sllugish elephant trying to swat a cafeine addicted wasp. Mostly aiming the cursor where you want it to be for the attack's starting point would probably be a lot slower without making it unmanageable.

I also know jack shit of XNA so if that port were to ever come there'd need to be some huge incentive. Like Microsoft giving me an opportunity to publish an improved version of the game on XBLA. Then I'm all for learning, though I imagine I'd learn C++ for that (oh, how I miss messing with pointers and very specific syntax [/sarcasm]).


I might post a little painted comic with the details of the simple backstory I have for this. It won't take you to a realm of intrigue and plot twists, but I'm hoping it's just charming enough to give a good feel and a reason to go through it for more than the novelty or the opportunity to be the most jackass boss fight your best friend has ever fought, and we all know that's the biggest draw here.

Also I'm having a single-player mode, but that's the very last on the list. This is a multiplayer compo. Still I like the idea of making AI's for these guys that can show you how it's done. Because the idea of willingly making pushover bosses without a hint of satire is alien to my brain. Konjak start taking notes, I wanna see some actual boss challenge come Noitu Love 3.

No no, luckily not! XNA is a C# library. I don't know what you like, but I found C# to be very resonable. (Actually it's one of my favourite languages.)

I'm not normally a fan of mouse control for characters, but it might work in this case. It will be interesting to play it and see how it feels.
Also really liked the mockups, I was especially attracted to that bottom GUI with the health bars, I hope that you will keep it for the actual game (though I know that probably would not happen)...

Still not decided on how the GUI in general will look, but it's likely it won't change much. It's a fairly functional design.

I love action platformers, and the radial menus look fantastic. How could a game like this possibly go wrong? (hint: it couldn't)

I wish you the best of luck in finding the perfect artist(s), musician(s), and finishing this game! Although I must say using 8 attacks for every boss (like in the mockup) for 4 boss could be quite a lot of work to do. Even if the number of bosses/attacks would turn out to be less I would very much like to play this.   :coffee::handthumbsupR:

I think the bosses require some complexity and variety to make them interesting to use and get good at. 4 bosses is my goal, but I may just end up with less than that.

Hello!

Melly, I love your mockup art D:

You've been talking a lot about the bosses; what about the 'player' character? What kind of abilities will he (or she; goddamn pronouns) get? Of course, it's a slightly less thrilling (and less difficult) topic since the player's control scheme is the more commonly seen one :3

On the topic of radial menus and the mockups thus far: What about bosses who can do things to the environment? The best (only) example I can think of is a boss who can move along the screen, forcing a scroll for the player to follow, but will everything step from the boss entity?

And my last interrogation topic: What will the boss player do while his actions are being carried out? Wait, watch, and plan for the next one? Can actions be set up while the previous one is going on? Can they be interrupted?

INQUIRING MINDS MUST KNOW but seriously why do I have to ask so many questions ._.

~

Melly, this looks rad :3 I look forward to this. I think that maybe you will end up with more interesting bosses than most games have, too.

Finally: I might try throwing some music at you, but don't you dare rely on me for music.

You could add an option for offline play that hides your cursor while selecting an attack, for people that know what the attacks are and don't want to telegraph them as much.

Yay! Why sadface though?


I'll be elaborating on the hero player's controls sometime in the future. With pictures.

Though I did mention that he'll get special abilities from downed bosses, because I haven't been watching megaman challenge gameplay videos enough.


I'll decide the best way to control each boss's ability. The one I showed is the simplest one, but it's likely each attack with have a slightly unique control to be issued, all in the spirit of making it both intuitive and fast.

Yeah, I'm not going to constrain myself to bosses that can't do more than move and attack. I have an idea for a boss that can alter the environment significantly around itself. That should be a little unique to design.

Waht do you mean with "but will everything step from the boss entity"?


Like I mentioned previously, after the action has been issued the cursor is freed for the player to queue the next attacks in sequence, the boss entity following through with them as fast as it's able.

Yes, actions can be interrupted. Most by the boss player, but I have ideas for some that the hero player can also stop short with skill (like a healing ability). I'm thinking of implementing soemthing to limit a bit how crazy the boss player can be. Maybe an action bar that's used up by issuing commands, and interrupting an attack to make another surprise one won't be a free action. It's possible that the hero himself will be affected by something similar as well, though without restraining him so much as adding a little strategy, maybe to the use of special attacks.


Because you're interested? Thank you for that by the way. ;D


Haha, thanks, though I don't believe I'll have problems with music-getting for this one.


Mmm, possibly. It does feel like this concept would work a lot better online, but I will make sure to work on the offline as well to see how to balance it. That can be an interesting idea to implement.

Whoops. stem*, but you answered things well. Thanks!


Yeah, after I wrote that I realized you'd mentioned having received a billion musics from interested parties :3

Maybe you could give the bosses the ability to spawn a handful of minions (just some little enemies that go down easy but stall the player to buy the boss some time). That way they can keep the pressure on the player while their prep their other attacks.

Different boss attacks would have different 'energy' requirements. This also means that each would have at least one very powerful attack that would leave them unable to act for a short moment. If used improperly it could give the hero player a lot of free time to dish out damage on the defenceless boss.

I'm chilling out a bit today, but with my promise of working on this and my other stuff daily, I'll still have some progress to report later. I'm hoping the weekend is very productive.

EDIT: Mostly design work tonight. Coming up with bosses and attacks, though I have nothing to show at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something good for you all. ;D

Minions:

Could cost a boss' health but be individually controllable with a few of their own mini-abilities to manage? :D

Or more generally:

Melly, will you make boss with separated entities who can move and be controlled separately?
If not, then it is an idea I offer up to you :x

yo dawg how about a boss where the boss is the level: like Hero man is on top of a train that's trying to kill him, or some military base facility where the computer mainframe boss controls hazards around the arena and shizz like-ah dat?

Those are interesting ideas, though right now the setting is "ancient temple"tm.

Does anyone here use Adobe's Stratus service for P2P connections between Flash apps? I have a couple of questions for anyone who does.

oh.
replace "train" with "ancient enchanted mechanical dragon"
and "computer mainframe boss" with "vengeful spirit"
:)

No, you need a magical-rune-powered-train, and a sentient-local-spirit-network.

I'm currently sending the musicians that offered help the tracks that I'll want. Anyone else interested can still try and hop in. That includes you Droqen. ;D

I'm in for trying some music

Send me some examples of your work through PM.

Hey Melly, thought I'd let you know I said "woah..." out loud when I saw the concept art. I'm lookin forward to whatever you churn out! Will the players switch roles, let's say, after each round(assuming there is more than one round per battle)?

Not at first. The plan is for the boss player(s) to stick as so until the end of the 'round' (which would be the whole game). I'll probably create soemthing for the players to easily switch roles, though, because that's a neat idea.

I'd be totally down to do some tunes Melly, as would anosou and hyperduck (Chris). We're also willing to collab madness for this.

Please explain.

Also thanks. ;D Send me a link to where I can listen to stuff you guys made.

Yes, this is true. We were sitting in our tower of madness and this stopped us from our insane cackling session. Awesome stuff.

We want in, who do we have to kill/maim/burn/slap/tickle?


BY collab he means me, anosou and josh collaborating on a tune, together, holding hands, that kinda business.

Some of the stuff I've done

http://soundcloud.com/chris-tg
http://music.hyperduck.co.uk

We're a trio of musical death!

My demo reels: http://soundcloud.com/anosou/sets/anosou-music-demo-reels/
A lot of other music: http://soundcloud.com/anosou/

I made music for a few games and was nominated for Excellence in Audio at the IGF and your game smells good. Beep boop  :beer:

They'll respond (responded) accordingly. I have boss-type demos here:

http://music.jwmusic.org/track/kyrie-immanis (http://music.jwmusic.org/track/kyrie-immanis)
Indie Brawl Medley (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6006189/Indie%20Brawl%20Medley%20%28D1%29.mp3)
Remix from Final Fantasy Tactics, bossy orchestral synth etc (http://blog.jwmusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/OCR_FFT_-Tactics-WIP-D2.mp3)

(:

I'm on the Jury for Excellence in Audio at IGF, which puts me one level of sophistication (but not talent) ahead of anosou. (;

Haha, thanks guys, I'll check those out and let you guys know.

I'd better start picking up the pace. Lots of expectations around here! :o

First things first, a series of speed sketches of possible boss designs:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossSS1.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossSS2.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/bossSS3.png)

Now, for coding!

Also, Mecha, anosou and soundofjw, which one of your should I send the track descriptions to?

Melly, in case I haven't mentioned it before, the premise of the game is  :-* and the concept art you're posting is  :-* :-* :-*.

Just saying. I look forward to playing this. :D

Thanks. I'm hoping I can deliver. I'm trying to improve my work schedule for this a lot, but I guess I still have a ways to go.

Wow, nice boss sketches!  :o

I really like the Death sketch (or Death-lookalike). Is it too much too hope for that it will play like Death in castlevania games?

If you could send an e-mail to multiple addresses that'd be great:
mattias [at] anosou [dot] com
chris.t.geehan [at] gmail [dot] com
josh [at] jwmusic [dot] org

We have means to discuss it all together once the e-mail arrives  :gentleman:

I really like the bird-like helmet but I get more of a hero vibe off of it. That magma/eye/shield is "boss" in the truest sense. It made me think of a shield that a hero would pick up and it twists him into a boss monster to do its dastardly deeds.

Melly this project looks rad, I'm quite impressed ;D Loving the art style and the gameplay is quite promising

Ah, too lazy, I'll send you three PM's.

EDIT: PM's sent.

You are forgiven and we love you anyway. Reading NOW!

EDIT: We talked a bit so I sent you a PM back with a few small thoughts on the track list. :)

I'm closing music admissions. There is already plenty of interested people and I'm starting to have trouble deciding who'll do what, and I think I'll have to cut a few off to put quality first. :wtf: I'm hoping they won't take it personally.

Of course, I could always have some work on sound effects instead of the songs. Taht could be very useful too.

IT LIVES

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/screenShot1.png)

...kinda.

trying to implement the boss controls. I'm having to do some healthy figuring-out-action with the code since I've never done an interface like this one before, but I'm progressing.

I've also put some time to create a single color palette to use in all the game's assets:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/paletteTest.png)

I would love feedback on the color picks. I actually took a palette Arne posted on the Pixelation forums that I liked and added a couple of extra colors to it.

26/01 - Progress report:

I'm gonna make these reports of progress daily, so I'm always updating giving myself incentive to keep working hard on it. I hope people don't find it too annoying.

Spent most of my time working on the game trying to figure out more thoroughly how the boss interface should be coded, so it's easy for me to use it for many different attacks with different ways to control their effect.

I've decided to make sure no attack needs more than two mouse button presses to pull of. You press to bring up the radial menu, hold the button to move over an option, release it to choose it, then more aiming, pressing and holding to alter the attack's behaviour. Hopefully this will make the boss control simple and easy to learn.

I'm also not feeling very well so I'm gonna head to bed.

EDIT (I'm going to edit my last post in the thread instead of making a new one unless I have something actually worthwhile to say or show in these updates):

27/01 - Progress report:

Today wasn't that productive. I did some more work on this interface and I feel I'm getting somewhere quickly enough. Hopefully tomorrow I won't be so stupid with my time.

28/01 - Progress report:


Hahahaha. ha... I worked some more on the code, I guess. <.<

29/01 -

Better today, not nearly as good as I wish it was, but whatever. Still working on the boss behaviour and interface. I'm progressing constantly, falling into issues I obviously never saw coming (as is usual), and so on.

I'm hoping tomorrow I can put up a small test for people to play around with boss attacks and the controls for it.

30/01:

It's more alive!

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/screenShot2.png)

The general core of the boss controls are in place. A bit of polishing, extra functionality and some different attack types and I'll have something to test with a hero character.

Yeah! That purple squares are machinegun-like bullets? :D

Can't wait to see that bosses in action. It's going to be really original :D

It's more like a cone of slow projectiles.

31/01:

More work on the boss controls and a new attack type. I've actually worked a fair bit more today than usual, but managed to progress more slowly because a lot of that time was figuring out how to do stuff.

01/02:

Not much done today. I'm kinda stumped in a collision problem I'm having, but I should have some help tomorrow.

Heh; so I herd you liek Shojin?

He's a fuck awesome musician; treat him well.  :wizard:

This game, and team of musicians, are gonna be awesome.

I declare this game idea to be good enough as a non-competition game. :handthumbsupL: With that being said, should there be any reason you don't complete this game within competition time line, you should not feel the need to abandon this game  :eyebrows:

I've been working on it daily, but my rate of work has been kinda crappy. I'm doing the best I can into picking up the pace with it.

Good to hear you have been working on it! Keep it up :)

Throw us a bone, Melly. Got anything new to show?  :beg:

So, deadline is looming, and I have far less than I should by this point.

You guys know what that means.

OVERSIMPLIFICATIOOOOOON

Musicians don't worry, I'll still add whatever tracks you guys finish for me. Just may not be in the previous intended fashion.

Just wanted to let you all know you can download my musical contribution if you all would like... :D

http://artembank.bandcamp.com/album/sanctuary-guardian-soul

Im very glad you decided to post this.

Melly I think you've found beethoven here. No offence, but I wonder if Gaurdian Soul can live up to this.
I see you're afk I hope you dont shelve GS because now I'm curious, what with music like this..

Thanks. :D

I don't know if I'm going forward with GS. I'll need to think about it carefully. In the end, it was my own fault, again, that made it fail.

This has become a tradition of mine in competitions. A tradition, and an aspect of myself, I deeply hate.

I need to rethink some stuff.

Props to shojin for still going forward and making the song despite my lack of progress. I can recommend his work to anyone interested.

That's a shame, seemed like a nice idea.  I think you should run with it and ignore distractions.

Easier said than done, Sir Bacon.

Don't beat yourself up Melly, it's too easy to to caught by a deadline. I am interested in helping this project if I can, although I currently have zero experience in flash dev  :-\

I'm going to keep working on this:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/511152/main2.png)

Will update this thread until the voting is over, then I'll link to a devlog.

Looking forward to the devlog  :laughter:

That's some truly spectacular artwork  :o

If you're continuing development... are you going to get the other musicians to finish their tracks?

If not, I could help with the soundtrack. :D

I'll see. You'll probably have a bigger share of the soundtrack to do this time. But I'm planning on this game being profitable somehow, now that it won't be for the compo.

As long as if I help there's some sort of back and forth there it's all good. I'm okay with profit.

lol who isn't :P


Glad to see you decided to work on this more, Melly. I really think the concept has tons of potential. Really looking forward to this, guys!

lol didnt see this.

shojin's last reply got me wondering how you were treating the project. haha this is all too familiar. "All or nothing" I've found is the solution 

Stil working on it~ I'll show things to you all when I have soemthing nice. I wanna wow people a little more.

However, the main reason for this post is to ask a question.

I've been wanting to make games for a living for a while, and my plan for Guardian Soul was always for it to eventually have a more complete and polished version for sale someday after the compo (a more polished and blanced version of whatever I posted at the compo would eventually become the demo for it).

That's still the plan, but I'm thinking of doing something a little different. The game itself, with 1 or 2 bosses, is completely free. Then I'll be making new bosses after that, and you can download them for small prices (one dollar each is the plan right now).

I was wondering what you guys think of that idea. I know it would be cooler for everything of it to be totally free of charge, but like I said, I don't want to suffer through a boring dayjob to pay my bills, I want to spend all that time making awesome games, and I have to start somewhere.

I'm also thinking of changing the name to Guardian Spirit, because I found out there's already an iOS game named Guardian Soul.

Depending on how long you think it's going to take you to finish the free version, you could always try kickstarting it.

Or you could work on making one boss and put that up as a standalone on Kongregate or something, and keep working on more bosses and releasing them individually (if you make the bosses somewhat complex to defeat, like in Shadow of the Colossus, they might warrant singular releases like that). Once you have a few, you might then create a free android/iPhone version, with additional bosses as microtrans, as you already pointed out. Depending on the amount of gameplay, complexity, and amount of explorable space with each boss (design space: different tactics, different ways of beating the boss, etc, not physical explorable space) $1 per boss might be warranted, but some people might think it's a tad steep. Perhaps you can release additional 'Boss Packs' with 2-3 bosses for $1. The exact details are up to you.

I'm happy to see you're still working on this, one way or another!  :handthumbsupL:

The main issue I see with a per-boss transaction system is that, prior to purchase, the player doesn't have a way of knowing how to use that boss/if it fits their playing style/is it fun. For example, I wouldn't want to pay money to unlock Chun Li just to find out I hate her playing style. If you can find a way around that, like a try before you buy system or something so the player is informed as to what they are buying, it'll better serve the player.

Just to toss out an idea, how about a system where the player can unlock all the bosses in-game (by grinding or some kind of time-sink system), but the player can pay a small fee to instantly unlock everything?

The focus of the game is still in the multiplayer, one player as the boss and the other as the hero. Bosses are planned to all be fairly elaborate. Buying the boss would give you the ability to play both with it and against it. I'll have to make sure that's very obvious in whatever marketing I do, since I feel that kinda doubles the value of the boss.

The plan is also to go all mega man up in this and have the hero being able to collect abilities from defeated bosses. So buying a boss also buys you a new ability for the hero.

'Try before you buy' can work, and I agree it's a good idea to give people a chance to see if they'd really like to have a new specific boss. Not entirely sure how I'd accomplish that, but it's something to keep in mind.

I honestly don't like the idea that all the bosses are unlockable, but can also be instantly bought. First, I hate repetitive grinding. It's an artificial way to extend a game's lifetime, it has you trade too much of your precious time for in-game stuff instead of skill, and have that time not advance anything else. Second, I don't like the idea that you can either buy something to get it instantly but you can also get it for free with some work. If I make people work for getting something, I'll feel compelled to make that work worthwhile. If I let people also cheat their way through with money, I'm undermining my own effort and design, and they're undermining the experience they could have with the game.

I can understand why this idea leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but (putting my commercial designer hat on for a moment) I can tell you from experience that it works financially (or has for where I work anyway). People are more than happy to pay money to bypass the grind if the perceived value is great enough. Moreso if the base game is free. This is one of the keys of social games.

Just thought I'd point out my experiences in case anyone else can benefit from it. It can be tough as a designer to create a system intended to make things tougher for the player, but if your goals skew more toward financial success than critical, it can be useful. My 2 cents.

While I want to be successful financially, I don't want it to be at the cost of the game's design. While just making a game with the intent of selling any part of it already changes your mentality toward its development, I want to limit it to "make it polished and balanced so people will actually want to pay money for it and not just download it as a curiosity", and not have it extend much beyond that.

That suggestion kinda reminds me of how free mmo's tend to work. I've read about them, and how the design works in there. It's entirely built around profit, built around exploiting logical fallacies, emotions and social interactions to get the most people in the game and as many of them spending as possible.

I'm not saying that this is what you're suggesting I do. I'm just saying that I don't want to have anything close to that mentality. Doing so would go against everything that made me love this medium in the first place.

I understand what you're saying :)

Having to think like that at work is what got me into indie development in the first place, so I could think more about engaging the player instead of exploiting them.

TF2 has a pay-to-get-it-faster system, although I don't think the system would work as well with an indie game.

IMO, pay-to-play wouldn't work unless people got a good dose of the core gameplay and want more. So, buy the game, fight 10 bosses and have to buy new, harder ones = OK, but having to buy each boss one by one = not OK.

Sounds like a really cool financial model, man.


Why not make it so you can play against the boss even without owning it? After beating it you get the message "BUY NOW BLABLA" and DONT get the Megaman-ish item. But you can buy the boss now to unlock the item and play as that boss!


Its a lot like when you unlock achievments in Xbox Live Arcade games.


"HEY MAN GOOD JOB. But if you want to keep that achievement and not lose your awesome progress, you better BUY THE FULL VERSION BEFORE YOU END THE GAME."


This way, you can see the boss and his attacks, see what weapon you would unlock, but to play as the boss or with his weapon, you buy it.
If its cheap, this should work for impulse buys.
Imagine you tried to beat this boss like 20 times in a row now, and if you buy it NOW, you get to keep that weapon you worked so hard for.

Also, you can see his attacks and think "hmm, this looks like it could be fun".



Profit?  :handmoneyL:

I was going to suggest the same thing ??? as battlerager.

On another note, you should think about player psychology if you want to pay your bills. To me, pay $1 to extend gameplay is not good, I feel like I am being fleeced before I even start playing. But pay for a new character is A-OK. Perceived value is important.


Edit: lol oops @ random smiley

Oh, also, "Guardian Spirit" sounds just fine to me :)

I agree.

Mmm, could you elaborate?

I think the business model depends a lot on the platform you're working with. People that play games on Facebook, for instance, are used to paying for stuff inside games and would accept that, can't tell the same about flash portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds.

The main point of going away from a conventional one-price scheme is to price discriminate. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

This is a big part of why carving gameplay up into unlocks and resource grinding, with "accelerator" items for sale, has been successful for a lot of F2P games: if you don't really want it you can grind for it instead. Facebook games extend this strategy by forcing a viral loop into play(invite x friends to get...) and that acts as a second kind of price discriminating behavior; players can spend "social capital" instead of "monetary capital" to continue advancement.

When doing this it has to be put in an appropriate context - are the features you selling the "real value" of the game? i.e. is it something that is expected to be basic functionality(save games) or is it a thing that makes the experience substantially different(multiplayer)? The more people percieve value, the more likely it will be successful at monetizing.

I think selling characters is right at the borderline, to be honest. The main reason why this is likely to offend people, is that because the game is multiplayer, new characters will be perceived as advantageous. So the game becomes "pay to win," and many players want "grind to win" instead because they have time and little money(13-year-olds...) or they are interested in a pure-skill competition(most core gamers...) Balancing both types of player is really tough, and so a common alternative is to focus on monetizing outside of the "pure competition" aspects - visual customizations, socialization features, etc.

So, in my opinion, it isn't actually a matter of whether monetizing in this way can work - it's a matter of which population of players you are primarily aiming to capture. That's going to depend on the context of the game and who is most likely to see it.

Will the final product have online/network play, or will it be hotseat only?

Yeah I saw that, but since it's been so long since the first post, I was curious if that was still the plan.

Online is still the plan, though it's still up in the air a bit how exactly it'll be accomplished.

Thanks for the insight guys. I'll put plenty of thought into this. It's not exactly certain I'll go with this scheme, or just go more traditional, or pull something unique out of my ass (I thought of Farbs' registration thing, and how interesting it is, though I'd probably do it differently than he does, or did. Been a while since I checked it out).

I hate DLC. HATE. You should just offer the full game for a price. Much better tactic IMO.

But then they can try before they buy..

It depends on the game. I personaly prefer buying once, though it would be interesting to see this implemented. I'm thinking people would need to love the gameplay to want to upgrade or buy new features.
It's going to depend on the quality and playability of the game. whereas there'd be more lee way for non DLC games interms of quality IMO.
Also you'd have to monitor hacks and all that BS.

If you've got a plan figured then go with it, but I think non DLC is more solid, complete and less Hassle!

If the game is liked then you could have optional DLC characters for pro's but I think most of your players will be noobs/average and wont care about upgrades (especially if they have to), until they get tired of the game.. and thats when you release Gaurdian Spirit 2 :)  (Just like MK & the rest)

I know you're Pichachu and want to make it like Pokemon but you'll need a TV show, Trading cards and so on, you dont have any of that right now.

IMHO
Thats my 20cents

If you're willing to pay $20 for a game -
Then paying 15$ now and 5$ later for extra content that doesn't exist yet isn't such a bad deal.

It's when they charge you 60$ and then 20$ for content that was a) already paid for because it was already there and b) not worth 20$ (especially if the total game content isn't worth $80) that it's a bad deal.

Maybe, but some (most) people, including myself, wont look at dollar value and calculate when buying a game. Instead they'll say "I just bought this game ... WTH? It wants more money??!" or "MOM ... the game wants more money .. can I borrow your card again" lol

The only alternative I see is where the DLC costs more than the client or base program. and (&&) where the client or base program is rediculously cheap or free.
But it's only conjecture, I've never actually seen this kind of thing done first hand.

So Melly if you got a plan dont listen to us nobody's! XD