Excellent artwork.

Lots of questions!

Are battles purely player vs. players, or are there AI controlled enemies as well?  How are PvP matches arranged?  Is it a lobby-style match selection, or do you just encounter other players as you traverse the galaxy?  Are destroyed ships gone forever, requiring you rebuild your fleet?  Or is it some kind of more forgiving setup?

What tech are you using for the client and server?

From one of your recent dev blogs:

I’m very glad to say this, but I feel like the core engine is almost done.

Famous last words. 

All kidding aside, it's been so much fun watching your progress updates, both here and on the SFML forums, Elias. 

The in-game console and associated lua functionality looks really slick.  I can see how massively useful it would be.  Those lua function calls you type into the console are wicked cool, and I imagine great for quick testing and prototyping (no recompile!)

But one of the reasons I've shied away from too much scripting in my own games is because you lose the power of the C/C++/C#/whatever debugger.  Have you encountered many issues with this?  Dealing with bugs arising in lua code which would have been easy to debug had it been in non-scripted code?  How do you deal with tracking down bugs in lua?  Are the lua debuggers any good?

For sure, parrying and blocking helps a lot.  As do different enemy types with varied behaviour.  

For me, a big part of good action combat (especially melee) is how much I have to respond to my enemy (or enemies) while in combat.  If I have to watch out for their attacks, and react (dodge/block/parry), that's great.  If I have to adjust my own attacks based on the number or type of creatures around me, and what they're doing, that's great too.  The enemy animation and timing has to be just right so that I can anticipate their move, have time to respond (either to attack, move, or defend), but I have to do it quickly.  That's what engages me.

Alternatively, if I can just ignore what the enemy(s) are doing and beat them using the same repeatable tactic to win, that's boring to me.

I like it when each combat scenario, even against the same creature type, has the possibility to play out a little differently.  Against single enemies, they may have a toolbox of moves that they pick from, with a bit of randomization.  Or even just changing up their timing (e.g. the delay between their attacks).  Against crowds, the combat AI can be much simpler, as I don't have time to watch a single enemy closely anyway.  As long as the enemy swarm keeps me focused on moving away from harm, while getting in my own attacks.  And perhaps the occasional "holy crap" moment where I use up one of those magic staff charges.  

I hope you don't mind the wall of text.  Or me chiming in with my general combat design thoughts.  You guys really seem to know what you're doing, so I'm sure it'll all work out great!

Cool - I remember following your guys' work way back with the Book of Unwritten Tales, as I was doing Ogre3D work at the time as well.  I'm very happy to see you guys are still alive and kicking.  Your stuff always looked super professional and polished even back then.  Congrats on the successful release!

If you're keen to share, I'd be interested to know the rough sales breakdown between consoles vs. non-consoles.  But I understand if this is not info you're public with.

The approach to develop a custom physics & combat simulation in vanilla C# outside of Unity and to use that as the basis for the ingame combat encounters paid of.

Very interesting thoughts on working within the "blackbox" of Unity, and finding ways to mitigate the associated risks.  I've always disliked closed source game engines for this exact reason.  But I like how you guys dealt with it.

Reading the actual comments and reviews to find out what players liked and what they disliked you'll find a lot of contradictions. Some liked the combat some didn't. Some liked the turn-based strategy parts (played out on the boardgame like world map) some found it superfluous. The same goes for the story-telling, the control-scheme etc... by making a game that was part point&click adventure, part action RPG with twist (control 4 characters simultanously instead of only one) and part turn based strategy with the additional goal to faithfully tell the story of popular fantasy book (that was written without a videogame in mind) we made a game where it was very hard for players to like all elements of. Especially as the combination also meant that non of the individual parts reached the depth that it could have if this part would have been the core focus of the game.

Ugh.  That's preaching to the choir with me.

Mixed genre games are notoriously hammered by reviewers.  Because if your game includes say a strategy element, but that element isn't as deep as that reviewer's favorite pure strategy game (and how could it be?), you get blasted for the omissions, rather than kudos for the extremely difficult task of mixing genres into a greater whole.  It's a shame, and probably part of the reason there is less innovation within the established genres than there could be.

I very much appreciate the post-mort.  Thanks.

Me and my big stack of "Savage Sword of Conan" comics thank you for this game.
    <- barbarian mead.

Interesting writeup.  Haha, it's funny, only game devs would understand how much mental torture effort goes into pricing a game.  I guess especially so for an ascii(ish) roguelike, which many fans are used to being free, and don't quite understand the amount of work that goes into a game like this.  If anyone wants to complain, they should be forced to read every page of this dev log first.  

Indie devs in general tend to undervalue their games, though it's nice to see that a growing number of devs aren't afraid to charge a (minimally) decent price for paid roguelikes

Well said.

Upvoted.  Looks great!

The gameplay strikes me as similar to another indie game I played called Ziggurat.  It might be worth checking that out.  Perhaps to read the steam reviews and forums, and see what people liked and didn't like about this style of game.  Just in case that helps you make any tweaks to Immortal Redneck before release that might help it get reviewed as positive as possible.

It certainly looks like there is an audience for this type of game.
Good luck!

Holy crap is this pretty.

You guys really nailed it in the trailer.  I might have thought a game about rotating mirrors would be a tough sell.  But the trailer made it all feel super epic.  Really came across as a beautiful puzzle-world filled with mysteries.

Nice work.
Thanks for sharing.

Wow, you guys have accomplished a lot, very fast!

I checked out the video on your website, and one of the earlier dev blog vids in this thread.  Figured I'd give some feedback.

I like roguelikes/lites.  Lots of people like roguelikes.  This had an instant appeal to me, so that's good.

It was super clear what the game is.  I feel like I'd clearly know what I'm getting, if I bought it.  With lots of games, that's not always the case.  You guys have done a good job focusing on and presenting the action roguelike dungeon crawl.  It presents well.

The art is stylin'.  Lots of character.  Good atmosphere.  I dig it.

Procedurally generated levels is a great idea for a game like this.  Provided they have enough variation to actually change up the experience from one run to another.  It seems to me one recipe for success for small indies in today's market is to keep players engaged for a longer period of time.  That helps grow a community, and word of mouth.  So if you can accomplish making the game replayable for a long period of time, that would help with the game's sales I think.

If I were checking out this game on steam, my only reservation (based on some of the earlier videos I watched) would be the combat mechanics.  I'll discuss this in a little more detail than the stuff I liked (which there was lots of), only because critique usually involves a little more explaining.

I did like that there was movement (forward/backward, or circle strafing) to avoid hits.  I didn't like that there wasn't much going on outside of that, as far as I could see.  Particularly when you were fighting a single creature, it seemed like one simple technique (e.g. circle strafe and attack) meant win.  I did see a group of creatures attack you, and things got more interesting as they got more chaotic.  But you ran past them rather than fighting them so I didn't get to see that play out.  

Quickly browsing the rest of this thread, it seems like you may be adding new stuff that would sell me on the combat mechanics.  But I didn't watch all the new dev blogs.  I understand that this is a work in progress (and it looks great!)  Just wanted to give my take, if I were looking at it today to buy it, say in early access or something.

Thanks for sharing.
And for what it's worth, I wouldn't have bothered to post any feedback unless I thought your stuff was really cool.  Which I do!  

Catchy title, slick art, and interesting devlog!

I especially appreciated the post on the sand shader, I really like how your technique fills sand into the floor cracks.  Thanks for sharing!

Wow, that's a daunting project for an indie team, but the video and screenshots looks great!  Congrats for pulling it off.  You guys look like you've targeted the hardcore arpg market really well.

A google search tells me you guys roll your own game engine, too?
You guys certainly don't mind taking on a challenge. 

Good luck with the launch!
And thanks for taking the time to share your devlog during what must be a really crazy time.

I just stumbled on this devlog today.  I once had a similar idea, but with a space creature zoo instead of monsters.  Seeing what you're doing with the idea makes me jealous I didn't go further with it.   

I really like how you're hammering out the gameplay nice and early, while working in tech (e.g. pathing) as you need it.  That makes a lot of sense.  Getting that wrong can result in a lot of throw-away work.

Good luck, and thanks for the dev log.

Looks like you guys know what you're doing! 

At first, I was wondering why you went to all the trouble to model the insides of the buildings, with all the associated activity inside.  Seems like a lot of work for what I assume is a cosmetic feature.  But at the end of the trailer there's a camera fly-over of the base with all the workers and bots milling around doing their thing.  Everything just looks/feels so alive.  So, you won me over on that.

Good luck with the launch! 
That wish seems double fitting for a space colonization game.

What struck me the most is the sense of scale and world you've achieved with a 2D side-scroller.

Also, the dev log is a pleasure to read, with all the design thoughts, feedback, mistakes, and corrections you're sharing.

Thanks!

I first saw re:creation over on the SFML forum.  I'm happy to see it's made it's way over here as well.  

I agree the new artwork style looks more clean.  And I've learned a new word today, "axonometric".  

The fog/snow/water is looking pretty cool, too.

Well done on the release, and thanks for the intriguing dev log.  It's fantastic that all the reviews are positive so far.

Astoundingly cool artwork and game idea!  Thanks for sharing.  First impressions count for a lot, and your game really strikes a chord.

That's pretty amazing savings with texture packer pro, will have to check into that.

I like the clean and uncluttered look of your art style.  Lots of room for fancy spell effects and other gameplay-related graphics. 

I've been working a lot on procedural level generation lately, and always enjoy hearing other dev's experiences with it, if that's something you ever want to talk more about.

Gorgeous concept art.

I noticed from your company's website you have unity experience.  Why did you choose to create your own 3D engine?  Are you building it on top of SDL, or was that only for the tech demo?

Networked multiplayer is a huge amount of work - are you guys using any middleware?  Although being a strategy/tactics game, you will probably avoid some of the headaches around latency.  Is it turn based?

Thanks for the detailed updates, it was a fun read.

This blog can tell you more

http://martiancraft.com/blog/2014/08/an-unreal-decision/

+1.  Fantastic blog.

It took a a couple of months and required exuberant lobbying by certain members of the team for me to authorize the switch.

I think you handled this correctly.  You should require some pretty heavy convincing to make such a major shift in tech.