Sovereign Syndicate - isometric narrative RPG set in steampunk fantasy London

[Grampy_Bone]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

You gotta play this shit for something, it doesn't have any gameplay to speak of

 

[Lord_Potato]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

And what would that message be?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Imagine playing a game for "the message"

And what would that message be?

'taur lives matter.

 

[Tyranicon]

I probably would've bought this game if it had combat. As it is, I'm not a huge fan of Disco, so a Disco-like in a setting I'm not super keen on is a hard sell. <--- I expect that's the perspective of a lot of would-be buyers.

That being said, I can respect some studio following their indie dream and putting out a complete product in a competent manner. Good steam reviews and not too many bugs (for an RPG).

That's pretty rare these days.

 

[Konjad]

I tried it a while ago and didn't post about it as I left it to try to play some more later... but I never did. So here are my thoughts about it.

It copied the formula of games such as Disco Elysium or Planescape Torment - where the bulk of the game is reading, making some dialogue choice or two and reading more.

But where DE or PST succeeded many games failed. It's easy to see why. PST was a game which touched a lot of philosophical matters about mortality and morality, ideas people thought about thousands of years ago and will probably think about it in thousands of years in the future, and an abundance of text was the consequence of it. Disco Elysium was a game which brought into question modern politics and culture, with the player making choices about his own worldview and spiralling into it, and a lenghty texts were the result of such approach.

Sovereign Syndicate, however, is written with a contrasting perspective. It reminds me more of Torment: Numanuma. It's a game that was made with the design like "let's make a game like that other one 'cos it was popular, it had lots of text, so we need a lot of it too". So you read through pages and pages of tedious dialogues to get dull stories in a passionless world to complete jejune quests. Then you start skipping it more and more and finally ask yourself "why do I even play it?"

 

[Lord_Potato]

Kind agree on this one. With this kind gameplay the game had to be carried by the writing and the story - and ultimately they were too underwhelming to make the whole experience memorable. Where Disco Elysium succeeds, Sovereign Syndicate fails.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674920/view/626663487688409686

Celebrating One-Year of Sovereign Syndicate!
Year in Review and What's Next
Hi Everyone!

We’re celebrating one year since the launch of Sovereign Syndicate, and I thought I would take some time to reflect on what we’ve done so far and where we’re headed.

I’m really proud of the game we made and humbled by the positive reaction from the community. I still read all the comments, reviews, and watch YouTube and Twitch content, and I’m glad that what we’ve made has resonated with so many of you and that you’re hungry for more content in the world we’re building.

So what’ve we been up to? Generally the studios activity can be broken down into three main categories:

- Re-investment in Sovereign Syndicate including bug fixes, localizations, console porting, and additional quality of life features.
- New projects, investing in developing new game prototypes to further develop the IP or other new games, or doing contracting work for other studios.
- Debt repayment, the studio took on significant financial debt to get the game made, part of our financial resources go to making interest payments and repaying this debt.

We’ve tried to find a balance here, ensuring we’re meeting our debt repayment obligations while also bringing Sovereign Syndicate to a larger audience through localizations, porting, and other development activities, and thinking about what’s next for the studio and Sovereign Syndicate and working on projects that interest us and teach us new skills.

So far, we’ve released localizations for Chinese and Russian language markets, and we’re working on releases for Turkish, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. We’re also looking for partners for German, Polish, Japanese, and Korean, but no firm commitments there yet. We’re also working on console porting and hope to have an announcement there soon with the intention to bring the game to Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch platforms in 2025.

Finally, we’re working on “Sovereign Syndicate: Director’s Cut” which will be fully voiced in English and have additional comic panels and quality of life options. More on that soon, but we’re hoping to deliver it in late 2025 / early 2026.

That’s all for now, thanks again for all your support, and as always you can follow all the latest developments and chat directly with the developers by subscribing to our newsletter or joining our Discord.

Newsletter: https://www.crimsonherring.com/newsletter-signup/

Discord: https://discord.gg/vrVrE3vBSx

Until next time, Take Care!

That's a long time.

 

[Lord_Potato]

It seems this wasn't a flop in the end.

 

[Tyranicon]

It seems this wasn't a flop in the end.

From SteamDB:

Not sure what other platforms they're on. User reviews are decent.

I wonder if the devs will come back on codex.

 

[Isaac (Crimson Herring)]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

Glad you found your audience, even if it wasn't my thing.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

I would love a console porting since my PC is garbage lmao

 

[Isaac (Crimson Herring)]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

I would love a console porting since my PC is garbage lmao

Thanks, we're working on it! Should have an announcement soon.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

does full vo really affect audience interest that much? Honestly partial VO is enough for but i grew up in the 90s, so that's just the norms. From dev perspective, it's an incredibly long and expensive process, i do realize a lot of younger gamers prefer VO.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

Isnt full vo really affect audience interest that much? Honestly partial VO is enough for but i grew up in the 90s, so that's just the norms. From dev perspective, it's an incredibly long and expensive process, i do realize a lot of younger gamers prefer VO.

Current audience expects full VO, and has for more than a decade now. It's not like adveture type games can go without it too.

 

[Isaac (Crimson Herring)]

Yep, I'm still here. Game wasn't a flop, just a more limited audience at release because we were PC only and English only.

Re-investing this year to bring the game to a larger audience, localizations, console porting, and Directors Cut with full English voice over.

For owner estimations above Playtracker is the most accurate for us.

Isnt full vo really affect audience interest that much? Honestly partial VO is enough for but i grew up in the 90s, so that's just the norms. From dev perspective, it's an incredibly long and expensive process, i do realize a lot of younger gamers prefer VO.

I think the largest audience limiters were localization and console porting. Only about a third of the PC Gaming audience is English speaking, so only delivering the game in English severely limited the size of the available market for the game. And while I still think games like ours are primarily a PC audience, consoles are a large enough audience that it would likely increase our sales significantly. Other similar games development teams that I've spoken with get between 20 and 50% of their total sales from consoles.

I tend to read faster than a comfortable voice reading, so tend to turn VO off. But I get that a lot of the English market might prefer it, especially when playing on console where you tend to sit further away from the screen. Certainly delivering it would increase the availability of the English speaking market for us.

Time will tell how much what we're doing will increase sales, glad to provide more information here when I have it.