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[Orymus]

i think the numbers give a good indicator of the breadth of this project.
1000 areas is no small feat and I'm assuming its not a linear progression either so it really speaks for itself.
Id keep at least that number.

[ANtY]

of all numbers this one is the most impressing so you could keep it

[feminazi]

seperate feature list from the pitch like the site http://studioeres.com/sd/

[aberrantmind]

that's a really long elevator pitch with a bunch of info i think most gamers won't really care about until they actually start playing. gotta condense, cut, and emphasize the more interesting parts. leave the details for players to discover. y'know, like layers.

Saturated Dreamers is an open-ecological-and-non-linear game world in which you pilot an upgradeable spaceship while exploring an alien sentient Lake.

Discover over 1000 hand-crafted areas, accompanied by atmospheric music, and inhabited by 60 types of creatures from which the player can gain new abilities! Use your observations of the  alien ecology to befriend native creatures, solve interesting puzzles, and unlock secret paths.

[karlozalb]

This is weird, but I like it

[Impmaster]

How many years have you even been working on this now, Paul?

[eyeliner]

I think 6, or something close. A testament to dedication.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

that's a really long elevator pitch with a bunch of info i think most gamers won't really care about until they actually start playing. gotta condense, cut, and emphasize the more interesting parts. leave the details for players to discover. y'know, like layers.

yeah but one thing to remember is that the game isn't for most gamers, it's for gamers who like to discover things on their own (e.g. people who liked la mulana). so i don't really want to word it to appeal to the average gamer, just for it to appeal to the game's specific audience

anyway thanks for all the advice so far everyone, i'll combine these ideas with the ideas i got on my facebook and do a second draft of the description soon

[antoniodamala]

Well if it isn't a game for most gamers, you shouldn't approach the quantity of stuff like a big list, because that's what most games do. What if you just changed all those numbers to: "This game was 6 years into development". Looks far more meaningful to me that somebody spent six years developing the same game, and it definitely make you wonder why.  

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i wouldn't say most games do that -- i can't remember the last time a game was advertised as being a long game as a positive thing, it was something that was common for rpgs in the 90s but has fallen off. today i think most gamers have short attention spans, they're used to games that last 6-10 hours long, especially for indie games, so saying a game is 30 or 40 hours long would attract gamers who want that in a game

still i think separating it into a feature list at the end of the description as eva suggested is probably the best idea; but i don't want to keep them too separated, so it'll be like a description + feature list right after, closely connected, so that they don't read the first and miss the second

[PsySal]

FWIW the sheer scale and knowing how many areas are in it has always been part of what makes me interested.

Buuut, one useful side note: I also know the TLC that Paul is putting into these areas. Since you seem open to suggestions I might humbly suggest "1000 hand-crafted, {x} areas" where x is another verb to indicate quality (e.g., "beautiful", "detailed", etc.)

[Orymus]

although, in that regard, an imagw speaks louder than words

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

says the guy with the annoyingly huge image signature

[Orymus]

touche...
There!

[gimymblert]

Saturated dreamer is a massive non linear ecological adventure game 6 years in the making. It takes place on a sentient lake inhabit by many life form. The goal is to befriend the sentient lake before it poison you with hallucination and dream. Instead of fighting the 60 types of creatures you better befriend them, by learning about their preferences and behaviors, to gain abilities that allow you to progress across the 1000 handcraft areas.

That's all I need to know to get interested

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i like the combination of the creature number with befriending, that works well; i'll try using that in the description too

anyway, here's a pic of the title screen, which i worked on coding some more today (coding a wave motion effect and some other transparency layering effects, not really visible in a static screen though)



right now i'm working on the sound effects task; which is a collection of small things that i still needed to do with sound, such as give the different types of weapon fire in shmup mode different types of sound effects, and improving some of the more annoying / loud sound effects with replacements or by softening them, that type of stuff

also, i've been thinking about eventually doing another kickstarter, mainly because i still need a story illustration / cutscene artist (as well as other things) to finish this game, because the previous artists have all vanished, so the only way to get one to stick around is probably to pay them, and since i don't have money to pay them pandara-ra (currently my sole alpha tester) suggested doing another kickstarter

i did have one in 2009, but it only got $1500, and that was back when kickstarter was starting up, and nobody even knew what the site was. i think another one would help a lot, as the game still needs a lot of work before launch and i'm not sure i can do what it needs to get finished on 0 funding

[Uykered]

Ya, may as well try? That would be cool to get more artworks/polish. Pls have voice acting as a stretch goal if you do!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah we had that in mind as well; it'd be nice to see important scenes voice-acted, even if it's not every single scene (since there's a lot of text voice acting all 300 pages or so would be pretty expensive)

[airman4]

I think 6, or something close. A testament to dedication.

More than the Phil Fish ?

I can try some pictures too
your job is well paid ? (i mean how many can we expect )

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah SD has been in production for about twice as long as fez was in production. it's not really comparable though because fez had a budget (a fairly large one, several million dollars), and a full-time team. if i had a full-time team and as large of a budget it'd have been done a long time ago

and i'm not sure what you're asking for your second question, but you're asking how much i'd pay a cutscene artist, it'd depend on how much the kickstarter was funded for