I hope it's okay to post our renditions of other video game characters? I did one of Magitek from Final Fantasy VI about 4 years ago. Here it is...



If it's against the rule... please don't kill me. Just thought it might be fun for FFVI lovers

Hey Ducky
I didn't know you were the composer for Iji too. Geez, that was the first indie game I actually beaten. So much fun... and so much content.

As for the thread topic :
Just wanna add on a young developer point of view. For me, I haven't made a lot of games myself (created 2, involved in 2 as an artist), but the musician (Adam Alonso) I'm working with was introduce by a fellow developer, and I've introduced him to other developers as well.

Now that I'm looking to work on the next game, I'm looking at a change of musician (to know more people, and try out different style of musics for my game). The way I look for musician is pretty much the same. Hunting down games with great music, and check out the credits, and chat up to see if the guy is nice and professional to work with.

Unfortunately though, as I'm already paying for the programmers, my budget for musician are usually largely affected by it. I suspect this is going to be the case for developers that's just kicking off (in most cases, hiring artist).

A 12 years indie project? man, I wanna see that

But personally, I would never work on something that's going to take more then a year... nor will I want to lead a 7 man indie team, especially when everyone is working home and communicated via email/msn. It sounded like a full-time job, and all you end up doing is planning timeline and communication. Producer stuff.

My recently release game (on XBLIG) took me 9 months, and it's more of a 3.5 man team, with friends and hired helps working over misc stuff. The 1st 3months, everyone was sort of part time. Follow by 4 months of absolute full time hell, working more than 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. And the last 2 months was me preparing promo stuff while the programmer work on peer review over the weekend.

I was working as the producer, game designer and artist the whole time and was losing lots of hair, lol. I don't think I ever wanna do that again.

The visual reminds me of Nitrome game, also based on Viking too.
http://www.nitrome.com/games/icebreakergathering/
I'm a fan of their game, and I hope yours is just as fun. But a video will probably help sell it better

Ninjas are supposedly Asian if I'm not mistaken. I hope no one is offended by that

Because it's okay to catapult into asian and kill them all? Or Asian eat cats? I'm confuse .

95 point just for the visual alone. The sad part is, I'm 5% of game dev population that still doesn't own an Iphone to actually buy it...damn

P.S.S we printed out own cover art and placed it in a Sonic 1 box, epic!

Wao, you guys actually did that? Now I hate myself for selling all my games back then...Do you think you can grab me a photo of it? I'd certainly explodes in tears of joy

And yes, I'm tempted to print a 100 copies of the manual just for kicks, and yet it's so god damn expensive, lol.

Would highly recommend a PC port. I bought it on XBIG, think it's a lovely product but since XNA gives you a fully playable PC version for free all you need to do is stick it on some download payment service and you've got a huge audience opened up to you.

Well, our current PC version isn't exactly stable for some reason. It lags the system quite a bit, and the programmer has no clue why it happens. Now I hate myself for not being a programmer too. Damn, this world is wrong.

hmmm... the visual is pretty blurish when I play this... any idea why? I hope I'm not the only one with this issue

[Stegersaurus]

Stegersaurus : I agree with that. A patch can only savage so much, but it's the least we can do for now.

We have our reason to force the release. It's a bad choice, but the team was breaking apart by then, as the game was supposed to have completed by 2-3 months ago. The programmers were in the National Service, and spending their precious weekend at home working on the project, and I felt bad about it too.

Knight : There's been quite a few requests about bringing the game to PC too. While I love to do that, I'm completely clueless at the moment. Like I said, I'm an artist + game designer, but know nuts about programming, hence nothing about port too.

As and XNA game, we get to build and play the game on PC, which I figured it can actually be all the porting I need. But the player need to install a whole lot of software, so I'm kinda confuse. It will be great if anyone can show me the path a little 

[http://tobesadventure.squarespace.com/]

So some of you might have known about our game, Tobe's Vertical Adventure on the XBLIG.
If you have not, here's the link to our website
http://tobesadventure.squarespace.com/

I actually spent quite a bit of time and money to get attention for the game, so I really want to hear what you guys think about the effort so far. The game has only been released for 7 days, so perhaps if there's something I am not doing right, I should do so now. Anyway, here goes...

A little background of myself and the game...
I was previously running a small design studio with a couple of partners, but I quit my share in mid 2008 and went on to develop indie games. I was the Art Director, and have worked on multimedia stuff like website, and advertising games.

I learn game design from scratch, and have zero programming knowledge till today. I hires freelance programmers, and Tobe's Vertical Adventure is my 2nd game.

About the game...
Though I know XBLIG user base is impossible to support the sales, but I was hoping to get enough attention with a solid title, and hopefully get some reputation for future games. To me, this is the main reason, and less of the sales.

I choose to make a platformer because it's easier on the programmers, and I can focus more on the artwork, game and level design. I believe we have an interesting title now, though the final product also has problem with crashing, bugs, and most importantly, the lack of thumbstick support.

I quickly announce that a patch will be released with thumbstick and minor bug fix, but it's hard to do everything because the programmers have move on to serve his national service and is only available on weekend. On top of that, I have to pay him for the work, when the sales barely cover anything.

The website...
I added some elements in the game that I thought were interesting, like having unlockables password that allows you to download soundtrack and gallery from the website. I also update the site at least once a week with interesting retro findings, random artwork, downloads, etc. I wanted people to visit the website, and have some interaction with them.

The reaction wasn't too good right from the start. We had about 60 unique viewers, and it soon drop to nothing. Then the game got release, and we have an average of 50 viewers a day. I haven't send our game for review on Tigsource or Indiegames as our game doesn't support thumbstick at the moment. I thought I'd send it when the controls are fixed, but I am not sure if it will make significant different at the moment.

The reaction so far...
Though many has complained the lack of thumbstick support, crash, and minor gameplay issue, most of them notice the effort, and felt it's a shame that the game had these issue. Some did not encounter such issue at all, and were very used to the dpad. They enjoyed the game and actually played for hours the first time.

Still, the game only got a 3 star rating, which is pretty average on XBLIG, and plus the fact there is so much massage games in the competition, its kind of disappointing. I wonder if the reaction would have been better if not for the lack of thumbstick though.

The future plans...
So we're gonna release patch to include a thumbstick support soon, and a bit more probably in February. Hopefully making another playable character by then to keep the interest alive.

On top of that, I was hoping to create some simple freebies for fans and reviewers. I've already printed some pins, and designed an instruction booklet which will be available for download soon. I'm also thinking of spending some money to print some hard copies, and send it to reviewers, friends, etc.

What do you think?
Does the website interest you to return in a few more days? Do you think all the money spent on the marketing is a waste? Is there anything you like about it?

Whatever the comments, I like to hear it, and hopefully increase the interest even by a little 

my heart bleed a little when the baby photo goes on to become a pile of shit on the table

There seems to be more good games on XBLIG these days, but I wonder how many Xbox gamers are even browsing the store. If I weren't working game, I would have just stop visiting after the 1st time due to the all those massage games in it.

Anyway, I didn't do too well. Good luck with yours though

what was wrong with icarian?
i remember hearing about it as icarian a while back.

i find NyxQuest to be a terrible name.
the x, the capitalization, it's awful.
it tells me nothing about the game.
at least with icarian it gave you an idea of what to expect.
something the flies or what have you.

changing your name mid-way is never a good idea, but i really think you could have done better.
the game looks good, and seems interesting, but that name is incredibly off-putting.
i bet a whole lot of people who thought icarian looked cool didnt even give any consideration to NyxQuest based on the name alone.

also, wiiware.

Hey Fish, I agree that NyxQuest isn't a great title, but there are tons of indie games with lousy titles that garner attention (hell, even adoration) based on their merits. What does "Iji" tell us about the game? Not a damn thing. I'd argue that it's even sort of misleading--it makes it sound like it's some kind of anime game. How about "Cave Story"? Just hearing it the first time, I practically fell asleep. Oh, a story about a cave. That's...zzzzz. Still, they're good games. Why not give him some real feedback here, while you're posting?

Though there has been games that garner attention despite having names that tells nothing about the game, I don't think anyone should go ahead and just give their game a random name.

If sales is not your main concern, sure. But if you need to ensure you get to sell every copies you can, then I guess developers should give it more thought. Afterall, the title is one of the first impression you get, and people need to be able to be able to remember how to spell so they can google for more information.

Then again, I made a XBLIG with D-pad support, so who am I to say, lol.

Nana has some serious junk in the trunk - approved.  I really like that music too.

First thing I thought of. Does this make me bad? 

Also as a strong supporter of XBLIG I will give this a try. Looks good, hope it plays as good as it looks

Yes, a big part of Nana's design process was to design a female character that summons the pedophile in you. I don't know why though, lol.

HyperDuck, hopefully you get to try a the updated version that we're working on when you're back... one with thumbstick support

we're trying to force-feed players a manufactured story. Why?

Stories help to give a game an overarching sense of place. They tie it to reality.

Here's a pretty sparse example: say we have a game where you are a green dot and you fire a red line at a black dot. This action is not very interesting. However, if we add just a tiny bit of text before this action, something like, "Shoot the mayor!" the game becomes slightly more engaging. The player now is not only thinking about the game on a literal level (red line, black dot), but also on a metaphorical level, thus stimulating more levels of their brain at a time. I believe this principle holds true for any game, no matter how detailed the graphics or gameplay.

sucks to be a mayor, lol

Sorry to be shallow, but good graphics are a must in beat-em-ups for me. That's not to say up-to-date SF4 level of quality, just well drawn. Most popular beat-em-ups have good graphics anyway, especially games like SFA3 and Vampire Savior.

Also plenty of characters and epic combos.

I came in to say about the same thing. Not just nice character, but a big part of the game is about traveling to the different places of different themes for me. The same can be said for platformer actually.

That's true... and damn, now that I think of it, Nana deserve a game of her own.

Pee Seeeee. :p (I'm gonna keep bugging you for a PC release, you do realise this, right? :p)

"Pee Seeeeee" that's probably the kinda sound geek zombie makes. But honestly, we receive a number of feedback we have to fix before moving it over to the PC... and I need to hired new programmers... the pppaaaiiinnn ...

That's true... and damn, now that I think of it, Nana deserve a game of her own.

the right timing and satisfaction when you punch a guy in the face... Pish* Pish* Pish* PISH*

we really odd to have this topic for every genre.. for study purpose

I was very interested with the initial post, but the rest of the thread was just... too many text. Seems like lots of suggestion, but no one to decide what to do. If you want to do this, you probably have to draw a line somewhere. Else, it will just turn out to be a massive idea dump.

Still, the idea of a 4 player zelda sounds great and there's just so many ideas that comes to mind. If I were to do it though, probably not different nation or whatever. Maybe zombie, pirate, ninja and robot. Man, that would so kick ass.

Maybe Design forums should have a Design Doc dump or something. I don't know if many people would be interested in that or anything, but I know that at Poppenkast we have a topic where we post interesting or noteworthy public domain game design docs (such as Grim Fandango), and it's pretty cool.

Yes, I was searching high and low for a design doc dump a while back.

When you think about it, there's probably a million ideas that's great, but not develop due to reasons like over ambition, communication, dedication, technical knowledge, etc. This does not mean that the idea is bad at all.

Who knows, someone else might pick up, and decides to develop the idea in his own way. It would be fun to see just how someone else handle my idea