Review Frayed Knights review

[Carlos' Bitch1]

29$ *seems* extraordinarily much. I.e. is the market really SO small that at its production costs Frayed Knights must command more than half the price of a AAA game?

Is the independent/old school CRPG market bigger than the wargaming market? I do not know.

I do know that all of my attempts to get Matrix Games to consider publishing CRPG's failed. They categorically stated that 'Not enough people are interested in them'. Unless that was a flippant/couldn't be bothered remark (Doubtful since the Matrix guys consist of about 50% old SSI staff), then I am guessing that; yes, the market is indeed that small, if not smaller.

Logic then dictates that, since there are three successful wargaming publishers out there, with multiple titles each for sale, while CRPG's don't even have one...come to your own conclusions. It could be said that 20 odd zog bucks is far too little to pay after considering the above.

At the end of the day, I think wargamers understand what they have to do to get what they want. CRPG gamers don't. If you have another explanation, I am all eyes.

 

[Metro]

Hate to quibble over it but $20ish seems like a reasonable enough price especially if the estimations I've heard on the play time are accurate. That said I'm a huge conformist and I demand Steamworks and Steam achievements! Speaking of which, and Vogel touched on this, the price you charge is relative to the audience size you are shooting for. Sure you can say, 'oh well no one outside of true turn based crawler fans will buy this' and charge $25+ or you set it at $10 and hope for some volume. Of course that won't work without a platform and apparently they were unable to get Gay Ben to put it on Steam. Still, if an indie developer can do that it's probably a lot better for their bottom line to lowball a game in the hopes that people on the fence will give it a shot a la Dredmor. If you do price it at $25+ you've basically truncated your audience by choice (barring sales).

Now, I'm not a developer so I don't have to live my life by the seat of my pants and rely on that extra $5-$10 in pricepoint to put food on my table but I'd think pricing it such that you risk just barely turning a profit (without going insolvent) is the better strategy in the hopes you get a bigger audience and set the ground work for future projects. Otherwise you just paint yourself in the corner from the getgo.

 

[Jaesun]

This thread Is honestly amusing in that I was the person who did set the price of items on a website. And I can tell you a game with a price of $25.00 is a terrible (what we call price point) price. $19.99 would be better, and would sell better. (it's a very attractive price point, its one of the better price points).

That said, I don't know the particulars of what costs they incurred when making the game (art costs, programming etc..) and are worried about covering.

Still, I'm a bit short on cash at the moment, once that is remedied, I will be purchasing this.

PRO TIP: For future indies, $19.99 is a VERY good price for selling your game, from someone who has had quite a few years of experience in this.

 

[Lightknight]

Okay, i caved in and played the demo a bit.
Bad models/textures were expected and, frankly, ignored. But what i didnt expect was the GUI that rivaled the shittyness of its counterpart in Vogel games. My god...
I'm not even complaining that if you remove the frame you cant barely see the log, or the standard windows listbox, but the way everything is organized...the inventory screen, the magic casting interface, the stats...my god people, it doesnt take money or even a long time to make good GUI, do you honestly like using it yourself ? Nothing you could improve, are you sure ? Have you ever played any semi-modern game, ever ?
My god...

 

[Grunker]

Played the demo. The combat was really nice, the character customization (which is my alpha omega) seem excellent for a blob game. All in all it was a pleasurable experience, but...

WHAT THE FUCK JESUS OMG THE UI WAAAAAAAAAAT

So many games of this type. So many UI designs to choose from. Why did they go with this smattering of horrible, horrible shit? I'm not asking for graphical updates or anything of the sort, just a simple, clean inventory system and perhaps a paperdoll - is that too much to ask for?

Game seems to definetely be worth my time, but considering how time you spend interacting all the various parts of the GUI in a crawler such as this, it's baffling that is THAT bad.

 

[Grunker]

Please answer yes to the following question:

Is there a source that will give me further details on enhancements and skills?

If not, are you supposed to level up in complete blindness? Dual weapons: "You are able to fight with two weapons but at a penalty." What penalty? Is this worth it at low levels? Monster Watcher: "You gain bonuses against familiar monsters." Which bonuses?

 

[Metro]

I believe there's a .pdf manual.

 

[Grunker]

Is there?

I thought there might be but I can't locate it in the directory.

The only manual I can find is the one online which is copy-pasted from the game and lacks a lot of info.

 

[Grunker]

I found the manual, but its sadly as lacking as the one online

 

[Jaesun]

I found the manual, but its sadly as lacking as the one online

Rampant Games - Frayed Knights Discussion

 

[Metro]

1000 sales would net him 22,000 zog bucks (bearing in mind the above outlays). A poor wage by any means. So, 2000 sales would be a bare minimum.

As an extremely small indie developer it's probably a bad idea to think you're going to be able to quit your day job and transition instantly into a new self-sustaining career on your first couple of games.