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.

The rest can still follow our progress on my Twitter and our Facebook page.

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.

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…

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).

Thanks!

Still, it’s been a while since I blogged, and I thought we should update you on where we are both personally and professionally. Especially as many things are happening right now that can be crucial to our future.

Cinders:

Cinders scene script is quite a beast by now

Cinders is my main focus. Damn, it’s been the main focus since almost a year now. It was in a bit of a turmoil a few months ago, when the rate of new scenes coming in was more that worrying. We’ve had an honest talk with Ayu and came to the conclusion that she might be too busy with her own projects to finish writing in a timeframe that would work for us. We realized we have to hire an additional writer to help us out. Someone who could devote a significant part of their time into this.

We went through a few candidates before meeting Hubert and Agnieszka (I promise to write more about them in the future). They are friends of our artist and were very excited to join the project, bringing in their own ideas on how to improve it. So far everything is going well, and we’re thrilled at the perspective of finally finding someone who could potentially become a more permanent writer for our games, just like Rob is our musician. Thanks to their hard work and enthusiasm, we were able to finally close Cinders storyline, and the missing scenes are coming in at a very steady pace.

If we can keep the current speed, I think we should be able to release the game somewhere in April. It’s not an “official” launch date, but if nothing bad happens, we think it’s a good estimate. The game took too long to be a  meaningful commercial success, but we really hope it’s going to succeed artistically. The more I work on it, the more I find myself pouring my personal experience and ideals into its story. Some of its elements are deeply important to me, and I’m very curious to see how the players react to them.

Future projects and the search for money:

Taken during one of the design sessions for the new project

As Cinders enters its final stage and our involvement in the development lessens, we shifted our perspective towards the future and began seriously considering what our next project should be.

Unfortunately, the long delay with Cinders made a huge dent in our wallets. When I went full-time indie, I had savings for around 6 months of development. The game took twice as much, so I had to spread really thin to get by. If not Magi sales and Cinders pre-orders, we wouldn’t be able to do it (thanks again!). Even if Cinders really comes out in April and sells relatively well, it likely won’t be enough to fill up the hole in our budget that the delay dug. To make the next project a possibility, we’ve had to look into some form of external funding.

Our first idea was to look back at casual games in the vein of Phantasmat. We were mulling over an adventure game since quite a while and even had a rough design, so we decided to finish it up and pitch it to interested friendly companies. Casual games quality bar is set very high these days, and we wanted the game to be really top-notch, so it was a pretty big project, requiring around $150k to make.

All went well and it looked like it’s going to get greenlighted, but then BigFish Games, a major pusher in the casual space, raised it’s Collector’s Edition requirements, making everything too risky for both us and the would-be investors. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make this game in some other way eventually. Maybe as a more traditional point and click adventure. We were pretty invested in the concept. I should also really consider writing a blog post about the downsides of the modern casual market one day.

Our second idea was to find someone to partially fund one of our upcoming MoaCube projects (we have at least two games after Cinders planned ahead). Much less money required, much less risk, but also a much lesser payoff for the investor. We’ve entered negotiations with two friendly indie companies. One deal we had to decline, as it affected our long-term plans too much. The other was much more leeway, but couldn’t supply the full amount required. Eventually, our luck turned as friend’s family offered to borrow us the missing funds. The project can finally get started, without having to worry we’ll starve before it even becomes playable.

I don’t want to talk too much about it yet, but it’s something that should appeal to both Magi and Cinders players. It’s much more “gamey” than a visual novel, but still with an important story component and Gracjana‘s familiar art style. Taught by the Cinders delay, we also want it to be something we can make with just our core team, without having to rely on external contractors. Even if the game is relatively complex, being in charge of the whole development gives us a lot more control over when and how it’s done.

Crowdfunding:

Website for the upcoming IUP campaign

I also started looking into crowdfunding websites, like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and 8-Bit Funding. Cinders made us painfully aware of how fragile a new indie company can be. We don’t have a steady passive income yet, and probably won’t have it for at least two more games. Any delay or failure poses a serious threat of sending our big dream down the drain.

If we would be able to tap into crowdfunding during critical moments, it would make us feel much safer. After all, it’s the support we’ve got through pre-orders and investment bundles that saved us now. Being based in Poland also means that we need a little less money than western developers to get by.

We plan to run a campaign mid-way through the next project to complete its budget. The more money we can generate, the less we have to borrow, and I personally want to avoid debts as much as possible.

To learn the ropes, I got involved with a crowdfunding project ran by a few fellow indies. The plan is to gather up some cool but less known indie developers, and raise the funds for their upcoming games while giving away their existing ones. So something like a kickstarter campaign + bundle. I’m not sure how well it’s going to work, but I like the overall idea and the chance to learn how it’s done. I’ll surely write more about it when the campaign gets official. Should be within the next few days.

We’ve been through some hard times recently, but it looks like we’re getting back on track. Cinders is progressing at a good pace again, making the next game much more feasible, and we think we know what to do next both artistically and business-wise. I admit I’m very tired and stressed out at this point, but this new year looks pretty promising to us. And the fact that we’re still here, doing what we love, despite all the unexpected problems, fills us with energy to work twice as hard to make this dream a reality.

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!”

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.

System requirements:

WINDOWS:

Should work on anything with at least 512Mb RAM

MAC:

Intel Macs with at least OS X 10.5

Pre-order to play the preview build of the game now. Learn more.

Cinders is an atmospheric visual novel, illustrated by Gracjana Zielinska.
 
It’s a story of four women and the choices they make, inspired by the classic fairytale of Cinderella. It focuses on the characters and their motivations, features an active female protagonist, and questions the naive morals of the original story. It’s also heavy on player choices and role-playing. The game contains many more decisions than most visual novels, some crucial to the story, some simply allowing to shape the protagonist’s personality.

Learn more about the story and themes of Cinders.

The game is under steady development and should be released around Q2 2012 for Windows and Mac OS X.

 
Why it’s cool:

• A classic story gets re-shaped as you want.
• Beautiful art by illustrator Gracjana Zielinska.
• Tons of choices and several different endings.
• Enchanting soundtrack by Rob Westwood.

Extras:

• Wallpapers
• Main music theme
• Dramatic music theme

System requirements:

WINDOWS:

Should work on anything with at least 512Mb RAM

MAC:

Intel Macs with at least OS X 10.5

The game is free. We plan on releasing its source soon.

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 game features several types of lovable enemies, cute cardboard aesthetic, combos, and many ways to break a friendship. It’s pretty fun and requires some good coordination between the partners to be any successful. It’s also possible to play it solo, if you are ambidextrous enough.

System requirements:

WINDOWS:

Should work on anything with at least 512Mb RAM

MAC:

Intel Macs with at least OS X 10.5

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.
• Rewards visible in the main menu for completing various events.
• Auto-play option is available.
• Fast-text option for the quick readers out there.
• Many new sound and visual effects were added.
• 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.