Filled with respect for your work I must say: this is wrong. This is deeply and insanely wrong.
I don’t think you should allocate infinite budget to endlessly develop the game, but we are in 2013. Indie Games change after their releases. This is their strength. This is the power of the tight connection between community and developers. Think about Minecraft.
Of course the game can’t change its main aspects. Nobody can reasonably ask to change core mechanics, assets, and so on… It can’t be rewritten or redesigned, but it must be tuned. Patch after patch.
Most of the ideas here on the forum can be easily implemented, with a small budget, by a single developer (do you have improved test suits right? xD).
I hardly suggest you to consider a continuous development pattern, according to financial capabilities.
Given the huge popularity spike of the game, it would be wise to revisit this. A few popular tweaks along with some bug fixes would certainly make the audience happy…
I agree with codinghorror and Gendolkari: The game doesn’t need to be completely remade with each 1.x version but it certainly needs to be tuned. Adding major features that would be better suited for a version 2 is not necessary, but keeping up with bugs and adding minor features that are highly requested would not be a bad thing.
The game could certainly use more clarity with how training works, as well as being much more transparent with what makes a game highly reviewed or failed miserably.
Oh, soooo much this. Too much of the game is just blindly stabbing in the dark. Even if there was just a mechanic that showed where customer dissatisfaction was would make a huge difference.
And I have a minor user interface suggestion with the sliders. Have the sliders represent actual percentages and when you move a slider have it move the other sliders to match their new percentage. They would be much easier to use and read that way.
Exactly, one of my biggest gripes is that if you turn the sliders all the way down the game will be horrible, despite the mix of time spent on each category being exactly the same as if all the sliders being fully maxed.
Yeah, there are definitely things like that which would be much better in a 1.5 release.
I think that ultimately though we can all agree: This game is not done, and it’s disappointing that the developers believe otherwise.
I agree with Gendolkari, indie games biggest claim to fame is community. And I’ve been reading the forums all day and see a fairly large outcry for some bug fixes (which you even coded into the game itself as post-release bugs ) as well as some Quality of Life improvements like explaining reviews, sliders’ effects, what tech does what, training effects.
All of these would go a long way to maintaining the small following you’ve earned as well as garnering further support.
Word of mouth is the best advertising for indie games. It’s free and people will sell your game for you.
i absolutly agree this game has SO MUCH potentiel an i would kill to see this game get updated every now an then please PLEASE dont brick wall this game theres so many great things to be added an thought of an considerd i mean have you seen all the idea forum posts? there great ! im not over exadirating at all when i say this could easly be the next minecraft or project zombnoid let alone if it hits steam could you imagine please just consider it
I agree. The response which was quoted was before we had such a spike of users. Our financial situation and the way sales have been going simply would have forced us to focus on our next project immediately. This has changed and while I still think that most ideas belong into a sequel we will look at some important tweaks and adjstuments.
In short: Don’t expect a massive amount of features or new content (this is intended to be a small game) but we will fix/adjust a couple of things.
IMO, the game is finished but needs some more balancing and polish.
I must say, I think the game is fine in terms of features currently. I think you’re right in a few fixes/adjustments though.
Things like the longer game titles, and possibly being able to edit them again before final release. Fixing MMO’s being diamond mines! The weird bugs with some employees not gaining experience and such.
I think the gameplay and features are sound, I’ll admit when I first looked at the game I thought it may lack depth and be rather more simplistic. I watched Total Biscuit play it for a bit on his stream, and purchased it that same night.
The depth of the game is great, and it plays well on the management side of things which some games don’t do! My one request for a sequel, would be to be able to develop multiple games at once. Being able to branch out my empire into different studios, just like in the real world. That would add an entirely new level to the game, though I’m sure you know that
I’m in agreement, the game is essentially done. Just needs that little bit of tweaking to ease on player frustrations. New features or options are not necessary at all.
Glad that sales took off for you guys, from playing this game I get a very small idea of how frustrating it must be to spend all this time an energy making something only to have it seem to flop when it hits the public. Obviously the game doesn’t showcase the real life hardships that come with being an indie developer but we get a some level of insight from playing.
I’m glad you changed your position on that, because clearly the game need some polish and some balancing.
Maybe you could ask (but that’s only a suggestion) what kind of settings some user put that should have made a must-have (like we saw in real life) but made a crappy game.
And like[quote=“Dvalkass, post:14, topic:997”]
Fixing MMO’s being diamond mines!
[/quote]
It’s really too easy with MMO.
yes we need to somehow collect situations where players think that the game is wrong. but I don’t know how to do this effectively. best would be save games.
Wanting to do it is a good start though! Besides, given how recently the game has been released, it’s probably best to wait a little while anyway in case anything else pops up which could be fixed. That gives you a little time to collect data etc.
But first, some user have already done some screenshot with the setting they put and the result they got (I saw some post … we would need to put them together).
[quote=“PatrickKlug, post:17, topic:997, full:true”]
yes we need to somehow collect situations where players think that the game is wrong. but I don’t know how to do this effectively. best would be save games.[/quote]
The best bet would be to set the criteria you’re looking for then have players that encounter the issue save their game and upload the file to an FTP or something similar. In this way you will be able to dig through the save game and see exactly what caused it.
I’m sure a lot of it will be a trend of unfortunate choices made by the player but if there is a legitimate bug or balance issue you should be able to spot it with enough data to sample from.
) as well as some Quality of Life improvements like explaining reviews, sliders’ effects, what tech does what, training effects.