Today, I implemented the 37th scene out of the remaining 73, which means we’re almost exactly halfway through this final countdown. It’s exciting to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel!
One of the co-working sessions with the writers
As more content gets implemented, testing it all becomes an issue. The more we can get done while working on the remaining scenes, the sooner we can release the game. We spent some time with Gracjana in the past few days, doing an improvement pass, but we could use some help.
If you are one of the pre-order owners and would like to lend us a hand with finding bugs and typos, fire up an email my way and I’ll hook you up with the test build.
Cinders scene-by-scene screenplay is complete! Writers are also not far behind, working on the final parts, which means I can focus on putting all the missing scenes in. The final countdown for the game’s release starts!
Implementing a scene is a pretty straightforward process, but it takes some effort and carefulness, to make sure that everything is staged properly, looks nice, and works with the rest of the game. It takes some time, but I’m going to work hard on it every day to try to finish it up as soon as possible.
At the point of writing this, I have exactly 73 scenes left to implement. If you want to join me in this final countdown, I’m going to post daily updates on my progress via Twitter and our Facebook page.
It’s obvious that designs evolve. The final game always strays in some ways from the initial idea. I’ve learned it the hard way while working on Magi. What seems to work on paper or in your head, doesn’t always translate well to gameplay. And when you think you finally got it right, playtesting starts, forcing you to change features that you thought are set in stone.
Still, I was surprised to see Cinders evolve so much. And I’m not talking about the game’s design and technical side here (it’s obvious we had to catch up with all the features people are used to thanks to Ren’Py). It’s not a gameplay-based project, after all. It’s a story. Stories shouldn’t change that much during the draft-to-final transition, right?
And yet, working on the final scenes for the game, I can’t help but notice how much we derived from the initial concept. As we grew accustomed to the characters and themes of the game, it started becoming more personal, reflecting our own experience and observations. Here’re a few core elements that evolved the most during the development:
The Sisters:
From the start, we wanted to give The Evil Stepmother and her daughters some believable personality. Simply being evil doesn’t cut it. Still, we saw them as supporting characters and the main focus was meant to be on Cinders and her potential love interests.
Now it almost seems like the sisters stole the spotlight. They get significantly more screen time than other characters, and the relationship between themselves and Cinders became one of the core elements of the game. Why Cinders can change her life and they can’t? Why they are how they are? Is there a chance to “fix” them? I think it makes for a more interesting reading and reinforces the game’s theme of the one’s choices vs social conditioning.
Feminism:
The game obviously had some feminist overtones from the get go, with the whole ditching the passive Cinderella stereotype thing. But it evolved into something much more engaged. It’s a game about women, doing what they can to gain independence in a fairytale world that isn’t that different from ours.
The Stepmother and Cinders are willing to do almost anything to take control of their lives, just in different ways, while the Sisters are victims of expectations put on young girls. We aren’t really activists, so I’m surprised to see my own story go that way. I really wonder how it’s going to be received.
Choices vs Fate:
The game’s theme of choices and free will evolved significantly. Initially, it was a basic story about changing ones fate through conscious decisions, but we found this message to be too naive in the end. Sure, carving your own path is important, but we’re all entangled in the social constrictions left by our upbringing and environment. To leave that out, would be like keeping the original fairytale’s simple morals.
As the story evolved, it became apparent that we need to show that Cinders is actually lucky to be able to decide her fate, contrary to her Stepmother and Sisters.
Cinders Personality:
This was encouraged by the various writers and other VN developers who played through the game. They pointed out that by allowing the player to make all the decisions for Cinders, we make her own character too neutral and indecisive.
We realized that we need to allow for evolution of her personality. Some choices should be made for the players, depending on how they acted earlier. Cinders from the end game should act differently from her initial stoic and lighthearted demeanor. She can become cruel and promiscuous or cold and calculated, depending on how you played. It takes some choices away, but we feel the story is much better if you can see Cinders reveal her true nature (whatever it may be) as it goes.
We’re all very curious how these aspects are going to be received by the players, as they started to become really personal for us. It was great to see some beta testers analyze the personality of the game characters on the forums, and we hope to see more of that once Cinders is finally out. It’s going to be interesting to see the criticism as well.
Now let me put my pretentious beret back in the closet…
Indie Underdog Pack, a fundraising campaign where you can help indie developers and get many cool games in the process, just went live!
Click the Underdog to go to the campaign’s website.
The idea is simple. Several talented but less known indies banded together to fund their future games by giving away their existing ones. It’s like a kickstarter campaign mixed with a bundle deal.
You can get the six bundle games for just 5 bucks, while $25+ also gets you the titles you help to fund. Higher contributions are of course welcome and grant you even cooler rewards. The whole thing is ran through 8-Bit Funding.
On our side, we are giving away Magi. The funds will go towards finishing Cinders and the development of our future projects.
It’s a new thing for us, and we don’t put our expectations too high. But the more we get out of this, the less we have to borrow, which allows us to focus on the development instead of looking for further funding.
Check it out. It’s a nice way to help promising developers and a good deal on some fun indie games at the same time. I especially recommend Koya Rift (a crazy flashy shooter) and Caveman Craig 2 (quirky caveman strategy game, available from $25 on).
Magi was our only game missing a gameplay video. Five years after the release seems like about the right time to finally fix that.
It’s nothing too fancy, but I don’t think it has to be. It shows the core gameplay and how it all works, and for folks interested in quirky strategy games, that should be enough.
For the rest, it’s gonna be a nice warning sign saying: “Beware! This game is nerdy as hell!”
Our small experimental arcade game for two players, made in co-operation with the artist Marta Dzikowska, is out!
The game is free. We plan on releasing its source soon.
It’s a small diversion, made for fun during the DBC game jam, so we decided to release it for free. The game is very simple, but can be pretty fun when played with a partner. Let’s say it’s a belated Valentine’s Day gift from the Moa.
Co-Op is a space shooter with no shooting. The only way to kill enemies is to cut them with a flexible power beam connecting players’ ships. The goal is to max your score before you inevitably die due to your partner’s mistake.
The new preview build of Cinders is finally ready and available to all pre-order purchasers.
If you bought the game, please check your email for a new download link from BMT Micro. If you are a member of the press willing to do a preview, please contact us and we’ll fix you a copy, too.
The new version includes a lot more story content, along with numerous fixes and improvements. Writing took much longer than we expected, so to make use of that extra time, we got around to implementing some cool new stuff from your suggestions and our own wish list.
Notable changes:
Branch icon appears when current events are an outcome of earlier choices.
Every character now has several more poses for specific situations.
Small face icons were added next to character names for better readability.
From now on, save files will be compatible between game versions.
Several bug fixes and other minor improvements.
We hope you’ll enjoy the new build. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments or on our forums.
As for the general development progress — we’re getting there, but there’s still a significant amount of writing left to be done. We have hired an additional writer to speed up the process. If everything goes well, we should be able to set some release date soon.
Christmas is around the corner and the year is coming to an end. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your support and wish you all a Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if you so prefer).
It’s also a perfect opportunity to reminisce at the passing year. And boy — what a year it was!
We finally managed to make the transition to full-time indie and launch MoaCube. Which — who knows — may as well be one of the most important decisions in our lives. And, thanks to your support, we’re still afloat. Sometimes, it’s still hard to believe this is happening for real.
On the other hand, we failed to release Cinders this year. Showing that no matter how much you learned on your past mistakes and experiences, threading into a new territory is always much harder than expected. Unfortunately, it likely means that no matter how good the game will be, it won’t be profitable. We’ll probably have to take some more commercially-safe project next year to secure our indie-ness.
Still, I can only wish the coming year to be as exciting and challenging as this one. When the goal is so enticing, who cares if the road is a bit bumpy.
I just received the remaining graphics for the little co-op arcade game I wrote about before. They are so lovely that I just had to share them.
Especially these ferocious (but lovable) space monsters:
The planets are nothing to sneeze at either. Like this space-pretzel. Home of the peaceful race of Pretzelorians.
All the art is done by Marta Dzikowska. An artist I’ve met on the DBC game design workshops. Assets are first drawn on paper with pencils and crayons, then photographed and tweaked in Photoshop. The whole thing has a paper craft aesthetic to it.
The game itself just needs a few more tweaks and a proper game-over screen and it’s good to go. It’s not more than a day or two of work, but with Cinders taking the priority, I can’t really tell when it’s going to happen. Probably after the new preview build is sent to the pre-order owners.
Each time we test Cinders, we end up with a small list of potential issues to fix and small improvements we could make. This time, we’ve came with one of those silly little features, that mostly go unnoticed, but look pretty and make us feel good about ourselves.
Whenever current events are an outcome of your earlier decisions, this branch icon appears in the corner of the screen (with a cool blooming flowers effect):
We like to boast that Cinders has more choices than most indie visual novels. But the problem is that players still experience only one story at a time, unaware of all the subtle things that change based on their actions. This feature clearly marks the moments where the storyline branches, hinting that things could be different on another playthrough. It should help those who want to find all the endings and their variants.
It’s pretty subtle and definitely not critical to gameplay, but in our philosophy it’s the little things like that that make the game. Like the idea?
