Editorial Eisenwald, IndieCade, and the Cult of Simplicity

[HiddenX]

Rake I like Fallout 1 best - but Fallout 3 is playable with the Fallout 3 - Wanderers Edition (FWE) mod:

Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition (FWE) is a major overhaul mod for Fallout 3 that changes underlying game mechanics and adds new features to the game. The aim of the mod is to improving the challenge, sense of immersion, depth of gameplay, and range of options compared the vanilla game. Generally, you'll find the wasteland to be a more dynamic but far less forgiving place.

FWE's development is guided by two objectives. The first is to enhance the First-Person-Shooter (FPS) elements of the game (while still preserving non-FPS options). This includes making combat faster paced, exciting, and more player-skill based. The second objective is to enhance the role-playing elements of the game by emphasizing choices and consequences, balance, character development, immersion, and the range of viable options. Both these objectives aim to increase the replay value of Fallout 3.

 

[daveyd]

The only reason this public can't get through publishers is because they're completely talentless pompous posers, basically parasites on the industry.

p.s. There are, of course, notable exceptions.

Such as? I keep hearing how Super Meat Boy is amazing and it got 9/10 all over the place, but it still looks and sounds like a shitty NES platformer.

From top of my head

Expedition Conquistador

Theres more but the list is getting long.
Just skip the shitty clones and you'll do fine in the indie jungle.

Oh I agree and I'm aware of some really good indie RPGs and Strategy games. For some reason I just thought that Irxy meant there's some exceptionally good indie games that fit Indiecade's apparently narrow definition of indie games: retro platformers, arcade style games, and artsy visual novels with little or no gameplay, etc.

 

[Rake]

Rake I like Fallout 1 best - but Fallout 3 is playable with the Fallout 3 - Wanderers Edition (FWE) mod:

Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition (FWE) is a major overhaul mod for Fallout 3 that changes underlying game mechanics and adds new features to the game. The aim of the mod is to improving the challenge, sense of immersion, depth of gameplay, and range of options compared the vanilla game. Generally, you'll find the wasteland to be a more dynamic but far less forgiving place.

FWE's development is guided by two objectives. The first is to enhance the First-Person-Shooter (FPS) elements of the game (while still preserving non-FPS options). This includes making combat faster paced, exciting, and more player-skill based. The second objective is to enhance the role-playing elements of the game by emphasizing choices and consequences, balance, character development, immersion, and the range of viable options. Both these objectives aim to increase the replay value of Fallout 3.

Does it anything about the retarded writing, or is it purely a gameplay enhancement

 

[HiddenX]

-> gameplay only.

 

[SuicideBunny]

so, in fact, not playable at all.

 

[HiddenX]

so, in fact, not playable at all.

If you are a storyfag: No - not playable.

 

[Machocruz]

There is nothing wrong with arcade games, whether platformers or otherwise. In theory. In reality, indie devs are just not every good at them. The bar is set too high, and it's like they don't even see the bar to begin with, because they don't seem like they are trying to reach it. The worst Mario sidescroller is a clinic in expert design in comparison to indie output. The arcade masters weren't trying to make "art," at least not in the Modern sense. They were more like the M.C. Escher or Renaissance artists who were learned in mathematics, physics, architecture, design and applied those disciplines to their work, or even worked in those disciplines directly.

The attempts at shmups I've seen have been laughable compared to what Treasure, Raizing, or Cave could do on their worst day. Metal Slug and Contra: Hard Corps will forever be beyond them. There have been some ok hack and slash games when they avoid 'artistic' pretension, but they are in no danger in competing with the good Castlevania games.

 

[SuicideBunny]

If you are a storyfag literate: No - not playable.

fixed to be more appropriate, considering i am an explorerfag and don't give much of a fuck about story outside of sr2 and ie games.

 

[mindx2]

An update but it looks like they're in trouble:

#57
Legends of Eisenwald: a year in review

Posted by Aterdux Entertainment


Remember we said a year ago: “This next year (2014) will be very important for us because that's the year when Legends of Eisenwald will be released”. Unfortunately, we were wrong once again with our estimations and we decided at about the middle of this year to not give any more exact dates or plans when we will release.

Having said all that, we have no other choice other than to release Legends of Eisenwald pretty soon. This time things look much better - the game is content ready, all eight chapters of the campaign are playable and there are currently over 20 people who finished the main story at least once in our closed beta (which is ongoing in Russian). Average playtime seems to be over 40 or even 50 hours, and everyone seemed to really like the story. The English beta will be starting in about two weeks, and the signup is here.

The beginning of 2014 was good, but the more we went towards the end of the year the harder it got. Denis had heart surgery done then crunch time to try and wrap up development but that didn’t go according to plan. One of the reasons is the brand new UI - and while the redesign didn’t take a lot of time, the reprogramming did (the UI code is now 25% of the entire game code, and more than half of it had to be programmed anew).

Closer to the end of the year the money was starting to get tight and for a moment we even considered running a 2nd Kickstarter campaign to raise some funds for marketing but decided against it. (We wouldn’t have done it without asking your opinion first anyway).

Why marketing? This needs a bit of an explanation.

This year of 2014 is a year where many things changed. While we were really happy with our launch on Early Access, Legends of Eisenwald was one of the last Early Access titles that got featuring on the main page. More and more games were released (in the first four months of 2014 more games were released than in the entirety of 2013). In order to attract more attention to our game we tried to participate in the summer sale but Steam didn’t get us any space on the front page. Then we were lucky to have a Daily Deal in August. We didn’t get a spot in Halloween or the Winter sale probably because our sales since the beginning of Summer were far from great. In a month or so I plan to write an article with a breakdown of our costs, units sold etc. In short, a few months at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 were the months we were doing alright. We didn’t raise our salaries or anything like that but we participated in two game expos - GDC Play and Igromir - and it was a mistake.

With all these changes, we are now trying to see what else can be done for the release. And that’s why we are thinking to get some funds for marketing. One might argue that if a game is good it will find its audience and there is no need for any paid marketing activities. But right now we disagree. To show Valve our game is good, it needs to sell better in order to have some visibility at the launch and while we have good hope for our PR activities, we feel some marketing would give us a bit more. The Legends of Eisenwald release will determine the future of our company. If it goes well, we can continue working on the game and add all the nice features we wanted to have and even more. And if not then it will be hard to predict what’s going to happen. We don’t want our game to be lost or go unnoticed. And we will use all necessary options to make our game survive.

And about doing sales - we want formally to ask you for forgiveness that we participated in a few. We wish we had enough funds to continue development without them but longer times require more funds. I wish we were like the Age of Decadence (a really good hardcore RPG by the way) developers, they have enough funds not to make sales during the Early Access phase of their project. That is not our situation unfortunately and we want to make up for this.

We’d like to offer all of you an extra key for the game if you feel the value of your pledge was diminished by these sales. PM us here on Kickstarter and we will send you one as soon as we can.

To conclude, we wish all Happy New Year, and we will release the game as soon as we can.

Alexander and all of us at Aterdux

I was wondering about this one just recently.

 

[Infinitron]

mindx2 wrong thread http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...wald-thread-early-access-now-available.79801/

 

[Grunker]

Keep It Stupid Simple.

You're on a roll as of late

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

call me old fashioned but 'independent' seems to have lost its meaning when it comes to games; taken over by dye-haired trannies and professional troughers with delusions of poseur

indiecade, more like idiotcade

the sooner proper independent gaming studios give these clowns the middle finger and either 1. move on, or 2. create a proper indie games thingy the better

 

[commie]

Rake I like Fallout 1 best - but Fallout 3 is playable with the Fallout 3 - Wanderers Edition (FWE) mod:

Indeed. With 4x less EXP, no respawns, tougher combat, rarer weapons, little ammo, rebalanced VATS, the game was 'good for what it was(tm)'. Managed to visit almost every location(except two, one kept crashing everytime I'd go there, the other was full of super tough mutants and rad scorpions that were a grind), and finished all DLC's and ended up Level 28, which meant that I was never overpowered for the main areas and the game was suitably 'tough' in the areas it should have been for the most part. Had to get rid of ammo weight though as it was a pain to haul some precious rockets back to base to save on weight, every time I came across a rare stash.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Fallout 3 is still too high

Its Watchwitz the place of torment and gnashing of teeth for KKKodex Exiles Comrade; what you expected?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

http://www.indiecade.com/games/selected/mountain/

Yep. Yay for Indie Gaming!