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Game News Revolution: The Spark is an upcoming steampunk RPG set in an empire on the brink of revolution

Novruzj

MOR/ANN Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 6, 2020
Messages
2
Location
Azerbaijan
Hey guys,

The Lead Designer for Revolution: The Spark here. My name is Novruz, and I'm here to provide some more info about the team, answer any questions you might have, and clarify some of the issues raised here. I found about this post through our Youtube analytics, you are in our top5 viewership traffic so far!

First of all, I appreciate, and I'm very grateful for raising awareness about our game! I'm also glad for all the feedback points you have given us, and we'll try to improve as much as possible! We are happy that people are beginning to notice us! We began with a small team of 6 people (hence the name) from Azerbaijan, and since have expanded to a bit more than ten with the new additions being mostly part-time freelancers. None of us on the initial team had English as their native language, so we didn't know about another meaning our team name might have, but I'm going to be honest, we found pretty soon from our writer (she joined us a bit later, and she is native in English). That said, we found it goofy enough and kept it, but the original meaning of MORANN was simply a combination of the first letters of our names (Mehman, Olivia, Rashad, Amil, Novruz, Natiq). We added slash to get away from 'moron' pronunciation, but doesn't look like it's helping much.

As for the game itself, I'm very saddened to find out that you guys don't like our art style. The shaders that we have right now are more of a placeholders, and we know that we need to work a lot to improve the overall looks. Overall, is it just the cel-shaders that make you dislike the art style? What do you think about the third screenshot from our steampage? Do you like the visuals for the houses?

Story-wise we are planning to start with 100k+ words for Early Access covering five different endings of the game. Seeing how some of the people here are frustrated about playing for revolutionaries, there are some options that let you side with the nobles, and even one where you are so selfish you end up betraying everyone who ever trusted you, but I won't go too deep to not spoil it. Overall, I would say that we have developed the story pretty extensively, and there is a relatively deep background for almost all major characters - playable or not. The first thing we did when we started working on the narrative design with our writer is we developed the Lore for the world, so in addition to the 100k+ words from dialogues, there is an extensive backstory for the whole world, and for some specific characters. As for the setting, Infinitron got it right, it's more of a mix between Russian and British Empires, rather than just a tale of 1917. The nobles, and Empire's structure is more close to that of British Empire, while the problems of commoners are more close to the ones that Russian Empire had. The mystical beings hinted at in the trailer also shaped the world to become very different from our own world, so its history has changed (we have been inspired by many real world rebellions, revolts, and uprisings though - focusing mainly on Russian ones). Athough the motives are very similar, this story isn't exactly about communist revolution. I think the heart of our game is the journey of the protagonist (Alex) caught in a world of extremely high income inequality where he has to decide whether to continue to live minding his own business, or to try create a better future for his family, and specifically daughter. When Alex's direct family gets involved, and his brother gets arrested for an attempted coup, Alex will have no choice but to take on a more hands-on approach. There are many ways for Alex to achieve his goal of ensuring his family's safety, and which faction will he end up siding with will depend on no one but you guys.

Finally, as for the DE comparisons, here is a little bit of a backstory on how we got to the idea of making The Spark. In a simplified way this is a game that was inspired by Banner Saga (beautiful art style), Shadowrun Returns (turn-based combat, narrative design), and Dishonored (as you can guess from my profile pic - incredible world-setting with darker tones). When we started out a year ago in June 2019, Disco Elysium wasn’t out yet, and some of us didn’t even know about it, and those that did only knew about a game with great art style called No Truce with the Furies. But since it has been released we’ve been in love with DE, and yes, it has influenced, and inspired us! Right now, we are aspiring to create a product that is similar to Banner Saga with a little bit of Thronebreaker and Disco Elysium thrown in. Now we know we can't expect ourselves to get anywhere close to their levels given how most of us in the team lack experience, but we all try our best.

Hope this helps to answer some of your questions, and if anyone wants to know more, I'll be here to reply back!
 

Novruzj

MOR/ANN Games
Developer
Joined
Jul 6, 2020
Messages
2
Location
Azerbaijan
Also, hope I can rock portraits from our game one day here!
Alex_portrait_small.png
 

Lady_Error

█▓▒░ ░▒▓█
Patron
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Messages
1,879,250
So unlike Disco Elysium it has turn-based combat and you can side with either faction too? That sounds pretty good actually.

One thing to beware of though: 100k words shouldn't be a goal in itself. As Torment has shown, “we have a lot of text“ does not mean it is good - editing and shortening the text where necessary is just as important.

Aa to the theme itself, I hope that you will include more options than just straight up communism, “siding with nobles“ or betraying either one. Rising inequality is a big issue, but shilling for communism as the supposedly only solution is something that I am personally very wary of.

I am originally from Kazakhstan by the way, so not too far from Azerbajan.
 

Gyor

Savant
Joined
Dec 11, 2017
Messages
731
Hey guys,

The Lead Designer for Revolution: The Spark here. My name is Novruz, and I'm here to provide some more info about the team, answer any questions you might have, and clarify some of the issues raised here. I found about this post through our Youtube analytics, you are in our top5 viewership traffic so far!

First of all, I appreciate, and I'm very grateful for raising awareness about our game! I'm also glad for all the feedback points you have given us, and we'll try to improve as much as possible! We are happy that people are beginning to notice us! We began with a small team of 6 people (hence the name) from Azerbaijan, and since have expanded to a bit more than ten with the new additions being mostly part-time freelancers. None of us on the initial team had English as their native language, so we didn't know about another meaning our team name might have, but I'm going to be honest, we found pretty soon from our writer (she joined us a bit later, and she is native in English). That said, we found it goofy enough and kept it, but the original meaning of MORANN was simply a combination of the first letters of our names (Mehman, Olivia, Rashad, Amil, Novruz, Natiq). We added slash to get away from 'moron' pronunciation, but doesn't look like it's helping much.

As for the game itself, I'm very saddened to find out that you guys don't like our art style. The shaders that we have right now are more of a placeholders, and we know that we need to work a lot to improve the overall looks. Overall, is it just the cel-shaders that make you dislike the art style? What do you think about the third screenshot from our steampage? Do you like the visuals for the houses?

Story-wise we are planning to start with 100k+ words for Early Access covering five different endings of the game. Seeing how some of the people here are frustrated about playing for revolutionaries, there are some options that let you side with the nobles, and even one where you are so selfish you end up betraying everyone who ever trusted you, but I won't go too deep to not spoil it. Overall, I would say that we have developed the story pretty extensively, and there is a relatively deep background for almost all major characters - playable or not. The first thing we did when we started working on the narrative design with our writer is we developed the Lore for the world, so in addition to the 100k+ words from dialogues, there is an extensive backstory for the whole world, and for some specific characters. As for the setting, Infinitron got it right, it's more of a mix between Russian and British Empires, rather than just a tale of 1917. The nobles, and Empire's structure is more close to that of British Empire, while the problems of commoners are more close to the ones that Russian Empire had. The mystical beings hinted at in the trailer also shaped the world to become very different from our own world, so its history has changed (we have been inspired by many real world rebellions, revolts, and uprisings though - focusing mainly on Russian ones). Athough the motives are very similar, this story isn't exactly about communist revolution. I think the heart of our game is the journey of the protagonist (Alex) caught in a world of extremely high income inequality where he has to decide whether to continue to live minding his own business, or to try create a better future for his family, and specifically daughter. When Alex's direct family gets involved, and his brother gets arrested for an attempted coup, Alex will have no choice but to take on a more hands-on approach. There are many ways for Alex to achieve his goal of ensuring his family's safety, and which faction will he end up siding with will depend on no one but you guys.

Finally, as for the DE comparisons, here is a little bit of a backstory on how we got to the idea of making The Spark. In a simplified way this is a game that was inspired by Banner Saga (beautiful art style), Shadowrun Returns (turn-based combat, narrative design), and Dishonored (as you can guess from my profile pic - incredible world-setting with darker tones). When we started out a year ago in June 2019, Disco Elysium wasn’t out yet, and some of us didn’t even know about it, and those that did only knew about a game with great art style called No Truce with the Furies. But since it has been released we’ve been in love with DE, and yes, it has influenced, and inspired us! Right now, we are aspiring to create a product that is similar to Banner Saga with a little bit of Thronebreaker and Disco Elysium thrown in. Now we know we can't expect ourselves to get anywhere close to their levels given how most of us in the team lack experience, but we all try our best.

Hope this helps to answer some of your questions, and if anyone wants to know more, I'll be here to reply back!

I'm fine with the art style, I'm sure you will refine it during development and EA.

The story looks interesting. I'm curious about the 7 classes, what are they?

And are there other races in the game then humans?
 

Fenix

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 18, 2015
Messages
6,458
Location
Russia atchoum!
Everybody seems to assume this is based on Russia 1917, but I think it's more like a mix of Russia and Great Britain. The "strongest Empire in the world" ruled by an Empress (they even use the term "Victorian"), a country that apparently has law enforcement officers called sheriffs.

Azerbaijan dealt with UK in th epast on the basis on Azerbaijan's oilfield throughout 19th-early 20th century.
 

Fenix

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 18, 2015
Messages
6,458
Location
Russia atchoum!
Hey guys,

The Lead Designer for Revolution: The Spark here. My name is Novruz, and I'm here to provide some more info about the team, answer any questions you might have, and clarify some of the issues raised here. I found about this post through our Youtube analytics, you are in our top5 viewership traffic so far!

First of all, I appreciate, and I'm very grateful for raising awareness about our game! I'm also glad for all the feedback points you have given us, and we'll try to improve as much as possible! We are happy that people are beginning to notice us! We began with a small team of 6 people (hence the name) from Azerbaijan, and since have expanded to a bit more than ten with the new additions being mostly part-time freelancers. None of us on the initial team had English as their native language, so we didn't know about another meaning our team name might have, but I'm going to be honest, we found pretty soon from our writer (she joined us a bit later, and she is native in English). That said, we found it goofy enough and kept it, but the original meaning of MORANN was simply a combination of the first letters of our names (Mehman, Olivia, Rashad, Amil, Novruz, Natiq). We added slash to get away from 'moron' pronunciation, but doesn't look like it's helping much.

As for the game itself, I'm very saddened to find out that you guys don't like our art style. The shaders that we have right now are more of a placeholders, and we know that we need to work a lot to improve the overall looks. Overall, is it just the cel-shaders that make you dislike the art style? What do you think about the third screenshot from our steampage? Do you like the visuals for the houses?

Story-wise we are planning to start with 100k+ words for Early Access covering five different endings of the game. Seeing how some of the people here are frustrated about playing for revolutionaries, there are some options that let you side with the nobles, and even one where you are so selfish you end up betraying everyone who ever trusted you, but I won't go too deep to not spoil it. Overall, I would say that we have developed the story pretty extensively, and there is a relatively deep background for almost all major characters - playable or not. The first thing we did when we started working on the narrative design with our writer is we developed the Lore for the world, so in addition to the 100k+ words from dialogues, there is an extensive backstory for the whole world, and for some specific characters. As for the setting, Infinitron got it right, it's more of a mix between Russian and British Empires, rather than just a tale of 1917. The nobles, and Empire's structure is more close to that of British Empire, while the problems of commoners are more close to the ones that Russian Empire had. The mystical beings hinted at in the trailer also shaped the world to become very different from our own world, so its history has changed (we have been inspired by many real world rebellions, revolts, and uprisings though - focusing mainly on Russian ones). Athough the motives are very similar, this story isn't exactly about communist revolution. I think the heart of our game is the journey of the protagonist (Alex) caught in a world of extremely high income inequality where he has to decide whether to continue to live minding his own business, or to try create a better future for his family, and specifically daughter. When Alex's direct family gets involved, and his brother gets arrested for an attempted coup, Alex will have no choice but to take on a more hands-on approach. There are many ways for Alex to achieve his goal of ensuring his family's safety, and which faction will he end up siding with will depend on no one but you guys.

Finally, as for the DE comparisons, here is a little bit of a backstory on how we got to the idea of making The Spark. In a simplified way this is a game that was inspired by Banner Saga (beautiful art style), Shadowrun Returns (turn-based combat, narrative design), and Dishonored (as you can guess from my profile pic - incredible world-setting with darker tones). When we started out a year ago in June 2019, Disco Elysium wasn’t out yet, and some of us didn’t even know about it, and those that did only knew about a game with great art style called No Truce with the Furies. But since it has been released we’ve been in love with DE, and yes, it has influenced, and inspired us! Right now, we are aspiring to create a product that is similar to Banner Saga with a little bit of Thronebreaker and Disco Elysium thrown in. Now we know we can't expect ourselves to get anywhere close to their levels given how most of us in the team lack experience, but we all try our best.

Hope this helps to answer some of your questions, and if anyone wants to know more, I'll be here to reply back!

In general I would suggest to use native artstye. If Azerbaijan has some specific artstile, like Japan has anime, in the past, maybe religious based or something, use this. Modify it if it doesn't quite fit but use elements from it.
 

Lord of Riva

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 16, 2018
Messages
2,805
Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
Hey Novruzj, welcome.

Since I mentioned not liking the "look" of the game some details on why I think that is for me.

The cellshading look lends itself way better into the cartoonish when i see the trailer I see a pseudo realistic (let's be real here, as an indie I am not expecting magic from you) look on the world with cell shaded objects and actors around.
The characters however do lack consistent strong features to look styled for a good cell shaded effect.

SlR3mBg.png


Here in this example you may be able to see what I am saying. The models used in the green circle have strongly colored clothing they look distinct enough that they do feel separate from the surrounding drab colored earth around them
The two in the in the red circles do not mesh well with the surrounding textures in my opinion, they get lost and when i see them my eyes feel irritated by the black outline around them.


7TBHThY.png


Some of the Objects you have around just look outright messy, I see what you are going for here but it just does not look good. This kind of style would look more in place in games like Cuphead and your other outlines just look to sharp and clean in contrast.

I am also not a huge fan of Brown in Brown, even in times of war the world does not stop having colors, even if the people feel the world has lost all it's sheen.

That's all my opinion anyhow though so you need to decide what you want to do with that.

That said, when I started gaming i played games were you had trouble distinguishing any features on a Character, so just be assured when i say it does not "look" good that it is one of the least likely reasons I would base my purchasing decision on, I would say that is the case with most of the people here. And your odd mix of Styles paired with a bit of quality fluctuation is really not that much of a deal.

If you manage to write a good story and have decent gameplay you will not lack interest here.

Just pointing out: You may trigger PTSD for some when you mention your wordcount as advertisment some have not yet managed to get over Torment: Trolls of Namibia.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
Happy
Vardavar
Everyone!
 

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