Teemuki, thanks for the great advice! We're still in the process of growing our follower base. At the moment, we have about 10% of our anticipated KS goal "pledged" by some of our closest supporters. I'll make sure we're working on growing that number. 

I straight skipped over most of this discussion because it made my face tired. Here are my two cents anyway:

The wife has been playing this thing on and off since release. I've watched her slug through it. The game has a ridiculous amount of issues, but it's definitely not without redeeming qualities. On the up side, some of the environments are breathtaking and feel truly alien. The combat is somehow tense and compelling despite bad enemy AI. On the down side, the plot is full of holes, and the characters like to do weird stuff, maybe more for their amusement than ours... (What if they're self-aware?!) Earlier today, we watched a Krogan who was part of a protest break into some kind of weird, silent dance animation. Very expressive with the hands, those Krogan. Nice people. ANYWAY.

For reasons which aren't entirely clear to me, I still want to play this game.

I also want to throttle the industry which produced it. It's really obvious that AAA games have big issues right now, issues that are not likely to go away any time soon... And I think the source of those issues is company culture that forces people into convoluted hierarchies and keeps them away from anybody who might actually want to play the game they're working on for fun. I think if you asked the Andromeda team what the fans of the franchise valued most about it, they would not be able to come to any sort of consensus. Tremendous budgets, deadline pressure, titanic over-specialized teams that don't have time to communicate with each other directly, and lack of interfacing with real players... All of that contributes to the glaring issues that are becoming the norm with any AAA studio.

I don't think it's necessary to try to engage in some sort of witch-hunt. You can't identify the people responsible for this, because they are in the thousands. The culture has to change, or we'll keep seeing more of the same.

Actually, you could probably get away with using your company name here, which would strengthen the brand. You already show up pretty high in Google's search results, and the company name has a cool and memorable sound. So, consider "Giyomu Tactics." 

If you want to see a decent number of downloads, the name becomes pretty important. Not only does it need to represent the game without infringing on any copyright, but it also needs to be something your potential users can easily search for. Let's use "Fantasy Tactics" as an example here: both are common words which are already used in the names and descriptions of tons of successful games. These all come up if you search for "Fantasy Tactics" in the store. Odds are, you're going to start near the bottom of that list...

A couple of different things you could try:

-Invent a unique compound word.
-Keep "Tactics" since it very succinctly describes the appeal of your game, but precede it with something unique. (Maybe the name of the world the game is set in or something along those lines?)

Hope that helps.

Seconded. Game mechanics seem very nice, but the name is problematic for several reasons. In addition to not being distinct enough, it's similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. That has the potential to create legal issues for the project.

No final decision on that yet, but we're thinking somewhere between 7.5-10k.

The final version of the game would have over 100 spells, 20 levels, multiple story branches and endings. Quite a bit of content. The game is feature complete, and it takes us a relatively small amount of time to generate new content for it, but there are so many things that should be more polished.

Hi everyone,

We're hoping to roll out a Kickstarter campaign for our game, Spellspun. It's a retro-styled shooter with an unusual twist: the sidekick character constantly antagonizes the player. It's possible but difficult to win his friendship over through smart dialogue choices and stylish play. How much the player character is liked and trusted by the sidekick dramatically changes the story (and constantly changes little things in the dialogue, as well!)

We plan to direct potential backers to our demo, which is still in relatively early stages, but I think is starting to give a good indication about the game.

With all this in mind, we would love a few of you to take a look at our demo and let us know if it's Kickstarter-worthy! If it's not, what should we be trying to improve in a short time-frame to give us better odds? Some tutorial text for the spell-learning section is definitely necessary. If this was your project, what other changes would you make?

The game demo can be found here:
https://sagegonerogue.itch.io/spellspun

For the interested:
Quick gameplay GIF


Teaser trailer:




Thanks for everyone who has some advice to share!

I haven't gotten the chance to play too much yet, but wanted to chime in and say that a lot of the visuals and audio are really slick! The music is nice and atmospheric. I'm really looking forward to seeing the combat get more fleshed out. Will definitely keep an eye on this.

I dunno if this kind of thing exists already in the game but perhaps there could be 'powerups' that reduce a given spell's warning level, so there could be a strategic reason to not shoot wildly all the time?

We do have some spells made that reduce cooldowns, empower spells of specific elements, etc. Not in the current public build as we're still balancing things, but you can expect to see them soon. 

Regarding the aiming, we've experimented with a couple of things... Having a "quick turn" key was one of them. Unfortunately it didn't work out so well. Mouse aiming for "easy mode" might be a good idea! That would be a great way to let people who are more interested in the story (or just playing with a bunch of spells) have more access into what is normally the harder content of the game. Really great suggestion!

Regarding items, we have drop rates similar to many games with RPG elements. A destroyed column or baddie might drop one of two or three items, with the rarest one having the least chance to drop. Right now, after you have learned a spell, it will show the item prerequisites for evolving it further... Definitely something for us to fix, because being able to evolve a spell right away could play a big part in whether someone wants to learn it or not.

We'll play with the current build and see if we can get that pesky slime to show up in the cinematic. The auto-fire for spells that don't cause self-damage, like Candleshot, is also a great idea. Thanks again for all of these!

Hi NealWh,
Thanks for the very thorough feedback, it's greatly appreciated!

The bar on the right displays your equipped spells, and the runes around them will turn warning colors and then display a warning circle when you're near reaching the self-damaging state with that spell. Argenstrayd's sprite in the center field will also display a warning circle. We're trying to think of good ways to make this more obvious, as right now, I think it's a bit too easy for it to be overlooked in the action. I like your idea about capping self-inflicted damage as well.

Mouse aiming is probably something we're going to avoid. We have a lot of spells that hit in interesting patterns or wide areas, and being able to very quickly react with the mouse would make the game too easy once those are learned. Re-balancing everything for mouse would probably require a lot more monsters, and make it less relevant what spells you're throwing out, as long as they're wide-area. Still, interesting thought. (Definitely true that the game can punish you quite a bit if you miss a few shots as the monsters pile up!)

Items that come out of the destructible scenery as well as monsters are used in evolving spells. We definitely need to add a little tutorial that better explains the system for the first time the player is able to see the spell screen...

"- could see enemies popping through on the intro cinematic" If you have a chance, could you send a screenshot of this? It would help tremendously in identifying and squishing the bug.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to write the feedback! Glad you're enjoying the game so far. 

Just downloaded and played the demo. Really nice atmosphere, and great art! I did manage to find a small bug: I jumped off the area at the top of the building where you can yell at Stanislas, trying to go as far to the right as possible... The character stayed off the screen and became stuck, leaving me unable to progress.

Hi everyone,

Looking for some feedback for my baby, Spellspun: https://sagegonerogue.itch.io/spellspun
(This is a demo, as we are currently in the middle of development. At the moment, Windows only.)

Spellspun is a tough, story-driven arcade game. You assume the role of Wren, a low-ranking mage struggling to defend the Citadel. There is no side-to-side movement, no dodging: you are rooted to the center of the screen. Your only defense against hordes of monsters are spells taught to you by your companion, Argenstrayd. One little problem: as an incredibly powerful animate artifact who is used to working with only the best mages, Argenstrayd hates your guts...

As you play through the game, the choices that you make as well as your playstyle will shape your relationship with Argenstrayd, and eventually, the entire story. Argenstrayd takes note of many hidden factors, and he is quick to judge you based on them. Can a real friendship be forged between our unlikely heroes?

Spellspun is intended to be a challenging game. We would love to have more feedback regarding the gameplay experience and the difficulty curve. Please help us make Spellspun great! Download the demo, and tell us about your most and least favorite parts of the gameplay experience. Any feedback is welcome, but if there were parts where the game frustrated you, or felt like it wasn't rewarding enough, that's the information that would be most beneficial to our small team.

We are very open to ideas for new spells. If you have an idea for a great spell, please let us know, and you may see it in an upcoming update!

I will take a look at many games in the Playtesting section of the forum as well, but if you want me to take a look at your game specifically, please send me a message and I will do so at the first opportunity. Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to test our game out.  

Download link: https://sagegonerogue.itch.io/spellspun

Hello everyone,

My name is Michael. I've been making games in some form for as long as I can remember. As a young lad, I started with complicated but fragile paper creations, and eventually moved on to teach myself Q-Basic. Game mechanics are a bizarre compulsion for me... Whenever I encounter an interesting game, I tend to figure out the ins and outs, and proceed to break them. At this point, I've been floating around the game dev industry for nearly 15 years, mostly as a freelancer, doing primarily game design and 2D art stuff.

The most important life lesson taught to me by a game is: you can let your sins crush you, or make you into a better person, and that choice is entirely yours. That game was the woefully underrated Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. (It's also taught me not to use a weird feather to sacrifice my friends. No opportunity to apply that lesson yet.)



Card games are my jam.

Current project is Spellspun, an indie game about friendship and magic. And disappointment. And dying a lot.
Demo link: https://sagegonerogue.itch.io/spellspun

I hope to be around quite a bit and get to know everyone here.