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Game News Serpent in the Staglands Kickstarter Update #23: Post-Release Thoughts

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Serpent in the Staglands; Whalenought Studios

Three weeks following the release of Serpent in the Staglands, Joe and Hannah of Whalenought Studios have released a new Kickstarter update discussing their thoughts about the game's reception, the upcoming expansion pack, and the future of Whalenought, in both video and text format. Here's the video, and some of the text:



Marketing without an easy button

While we've had and cherished a modest amount of user reviews, marketing continues to be a bit tough — it’s a game without an easy mode, and journalists can’t just jump in and make quick impressions, and we think that makes it difficult to get those early impressions reviews. We hear of a few folks that attempted that and got whiplashed with a learning curve like they haven't seen in years, which though kind of humorous to hear about, does filter the reviewers down to gamers that have patience, which is of course an incredibly slimming population. But learning to play and learning the world is part of the game, and a part we're really proud of.

Try to sit me in front of an Ultima again and I’m going to need an hour just to learn the ins and outs of controls and how to interact with the world in all the various ways — but that’s part of it — it’s a game with learning, not just consumption like television — learning the game world is kind of lost in a lot of RPGs today, and it’s something that makes it so much more engaging. Hearing people's accomplishments of navigating the Hallowed Doors to traversing the death-bog is as much an accomplishment for us, and we're thrilled when we hear about people enjoying them. Games are certainly much easier to consume if you’re just jumping to conversation to quest with knowing exactly what to do, but we think that can get a little tired and misses something we love so much, which is the exploration of the world and how to win it.

There’s a few wonderful reviewers that have contacted us saying they are really taking their time to finish the game prior to reviewing, and their initial playtime just wasn’t enough, they needed to actually finish it. Beyond exceptional journalism, we think that’s a testament to our open ended story and player explored world — it’s really about the whole experience, your whole adventure, and a couple hours getting stomped by foxes and wolves and learning how spells work isn’t really scratching the surface.

While our next project will refine this, and maybe present this in a more sophisticated way, the ‘learning the world’ design is a philosophy and foundation we'll continue to use for all our games. It’s a concept we've heard a wonderful response for, and we'd love to fill that demand in new and fun ways in future games — we'll never take our p&p-inspired RPG roots and cater them to a modern audience for as long as we have an audience to continue.

Expansion

A lot of you have asked about the expansion, and while we can’t give you concrete details on a release and of course don’t want to spoil anything (for those of you who haven’t guessed who the antagonist is), we can assure you it will be available to anyone who purchased the game, and will be automatically added with a (big) update. You’ll be able to jump right into it with that final save, so if you’ve beaten the game you can just continue on right there. The expansion update will feature a few new systems, and include Grade 4 Skills and Spells along with any rebalancing needed for the core game.

The expansion content is in the works, but we’ve been listening to players on what they like and want more of, and have already begun adjusting some things to fit that. We love hearing these ideas and building this game’s world mechanics, and the expansion will likely be the last time we visit Vol for a while so we want to end it on a wonderful note.

We’ll have more announcements and blog posts on that in the coming months while we’re in full-development of it!

Joe and Hannah already have plans for their next RPG, which will be formally announced later this year. This time around, they plan to make an effort to involve fans in the game's development at a much earlier stage. Godspeed, you two. :salute:
 
Joined
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Hopefully once some of the Pillars of Eternity fatigue subsides this game's unique qualities will get around, and a few thousand more people will buy in. Enough to make it into a bundle perhaps.
 

Shevek

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I haven't played much but I have enjoyed what I have played thus far. These guys have my future support.
 

Vociferon

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Any news on when they are going to fix the patcher error? Every time I try to update the game (GOG ver.) I get the same patch file path IO System Isolated Storage crap, and I'm not sure if the game updated successfully because afterwards it just freezes while checking game data...and I can't get myself to play this beauty when I know it's not as functional as it can be.
 

getter77

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Still hoping this Expansion really gets the fires going so that, down the line, they can return to the unmet stretch goals from their KS campaign for yet more along those lofty lines. Though the intrigue is definitely there for whatever guise their next project winds up assuming...
 

Diggfinger

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Tags: Serpent in the Staglands; Whalenought Studios


Expansion

A lot of you have asked about the expansion...we can assure you it will be available to anyone who purchased the game, and will be automatically added with a (big) update.​

Great news:hug:

Congrats again, Joe and Hannah, for making this awesome game. I will be buying it soon on GOG :salute:

Gonna try to tweet around and get some more reviews done - what the hell are IGN and Gamespot doing???

Btw. do we know how well the game sold??
 
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m_s0

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Tags: Serpent in the Staglands; Whalenought Studios


Expansion

A lot of you have asked about the expansion...we can assure you it will be available to anyone who purchased the game, and will be automatically added with a (big) update.​

Great news:hug:

Congrats again, Joe and Hannah, for making this awesome game. I will be buying it soon on GOG :salute:
I recommend buying it directly if you want to support them. They get a much bigger cut that way.

Gonna try to tweet around and get some more reviews done - what the hell are IGN and Gamespot doing???
Making money by not wasting their time on games no one's heard about.

PC Gamer mentioned it a few times, though.
 
Joined
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
There's also a chance sales will increase in the distant future when Eitr releases and people start asking if there is anything like it.
 

paintinggrey

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Jan 29, 2013
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These guys sound like really nice dudes!!Your game is in my wishlist until i get some cash. Congrats on the game, I am sure its awesome.
 

CRD

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
I think that they mismanaged the release and made a lot of PR mistakes that are gonna hurt them, and it is a real shame.

1- They released the game pretty soon with a lot of bugs, and took some patches to fix.
2- You simply don't release a game so close to the steam summer sales, huge mistake. Do it 1 month later or after, but not just 10 days before when everyone knows that the sale is coming and they are saving the money to purchase big deals.
3- Join the early access program and then launch a proper release, if you do that you have double chance of appearing on the front page banner of steam, a lot of games do that successfully
4- Before the final release, wait 2 weeks with the "final" build and send that to the journalist saying that is intended to be the final but telling them that you are still correcting minor bugs daily. They will have the review the day you go out from EA program and if they find any serious bug they tell the reader that will be probably fixed on release.
5- Add a really good tutorial for dummies, some people are noobs or doesn't have enough patience to learn and they will talk bad about your game. You don't need to make it easy, but you need to give the option of a tutorial to explain your game mechanics for dummies
6- Promote that free dlc / expansion A LOT, like CDPR did with the witcher, people love free stuff, seriously insist in that a lot and put it on your front page game info.

A good game that is not selling as they deserve.
 

Diggfinger

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Tags: Serpent in the Staglands; Whalenought Studios


Expansion

A lot of you have asked about the expansion...we can assure you it will be available to anyone who purchased the game, and will be automatically added with a (big) update.​

Great news:hug:

Congrats again, Joe and Hannah, for making this awesome game. I will be buying it soon on GOG :salute:
I recommend buying it directly if you want to support them. They get a much bigger cut that way.

Gonna try to tweet around and get some more reviews done - what the hell are IGN and Gamespot doing???
Making money by not wasting their time on games no one's heard about.

PC Gamer mentioned it a few times, though.

Do you get a GOG key when buying from their site?
 

Bonerbill

Augur
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Nov 25, 2013
Messages
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Location
North Carolina
The game is in a niche genre with a niche artstyle with RPG elements that most Biowarian/Obsidianites find unappealing. Whether there was advertising or not, I never thought this game was going to sell that many copies. If you're trying to cater to the oldschool, then money \isn't going to be too great.
 
Last edited:

roshan

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Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
What's the KKK on the game?

Incline. Mix of Fallout 1 (completely open world with Falloutesque world map, investigative story structure, focus on setting rather than characterization, no quest grinding) and Baldur's Gate (wilderness areas, RTWP combat) with lots of unique elements of it's own (lots of puzzles, no handholding, interesting system for combat builds and a different approach to abilities and spells, gothic setting, lots of little secrets). Extremely grognardy (you have to translate runes, manually type out incantations, keep track of your quests and bounties yourself, search for clues, everything even flat numbers are expressed as dice rolls, all death is permadeath).
 

Ninjerk

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Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
Any news on when they are going to fix the patcher error? Every time I try to update the game (GOG ver.) I get the same patch file path IO System Isolated Storage crap, and I'm not sure if the game updated successfully because afterwards it just freezes while checking game data...and I can't get myself to play this beauty when I know it's not as functional as it can be.
Whalenought_Joe whalenought_hannah
 

Volrath

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May 21, 2007
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Are they going to release a pdf of Erlein's handbook for us steamtards? :(
 

NiM82

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Kolechia
Any news on when they are going to fix the patcher error? Every time I try to update the game (GOG ver.) I get the same patch file path IO System Isolated Storage crap, and I'm not sure if the game updated successfully because afterwards it just freezes while checking game data...and I can't get myself to play this beauty when I know it's not as functional as it can be.

Try running the patcher with admin rights (right click > run as admin), fixed the error for me.

Game is great, my only real complaint is the rather lengthy loading times. I've taken to alt tabbing to neo-scavenger whilst areas load, to maintain my intake of incline.
 

Diggfinger

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Jan 6, 2014
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Do you get a GOG key when buying from their site?
You've got a choice between direct download, GOG or Steam if you grab it there.

Thanks for the tip, I will do that! Because its in Dollaz its even slightly cheaper for me, plus Joe and Hannah get all da dough.

Any news on when they are going to fix the patcher error? Every time I try to update the game (GOG ver.) I get the same patch file path IO System Isolated Storage crap, and I'm not sure if the game updated successfully because afterwards it just freezes while checking game data...and I can't get myself to play this beauty when I know it's not as functional as it can be.



Game is great, my only real complaint is the rather lengthy loading times. I've taken to alt tabbing to neo-scavenger whilst areas load, to maintain my intake of incline.

Yeah load times are rather long - takes time to get them pixels on screen I guess.
 

HiddenX

The Elder Spy
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Messages
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Germany
Divinity: Original Sin Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Review at Greek site RageQuit -> Google Translation

RANKING 90/100
+ POSITIVE
  • Huge, magical and truly open world.
  • Long duration.
  • Excellent rule system in the development of the characters, the magic and combat.
  • Real hardcore old school RPG ...
- NEGATIVE
  • ... That automatically means that younger players should stay away!
  • Several bugs (thankfully corrected very soon).
 

CRD

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 23, 2014
Messages
297
Divinity: Original Sin 2
That is something that pisses me off, because when is someone a "younger player"?!

PSX2 gen and later are normally the people who avoid any kind of complexity and difficulty in games.
 

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