Wadjet Eye Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

[Jaesun]

MRY have you heard or or ever tried the http://dead-code.org/home/ the Wintermute engine? I don't know if it also suffers from that terrible patching problem that the AGS engine has though.

 

[MRY]

I looked at Wintermute years ago -- well before working on Primordia. I looked into it again about a year ago. My impression both times was that the small number of games (and lack of any familiar commercial titles) suggested shortcomings that might not be obvious on the face of it. ("The White Chamber" may be the only one I've heard of.) In addition, it looks like development of Wintermute is dead (last release 4+ years old, last beta almost 2 years old), which is never a good sign.

Just FWIW, our engine has been in development for months, so it's not likely that we're going to scrap it at this point, unless something happens like our coder becomes ill or we hit an insurmountable barrier. The big-picture perspective I have here is that we'd like to have an engine that will be useful for a number of titles down the road if we're successful with our next one. Primordia established that we can make a commercial title, now we just want to work on building the pipeline that will enable us to make commercial titles with enough efficiency and profitability that we can sustain full-time employment for team members who want it (like Vic).

[BTW: I definitely appreciate the crowd-sourced efforts to help us on this!]

 

[MRY]

Cross-posting this from our FB page:

Over time, I've bought (or Kickstarted) a bunch of interesting, beautiful games that I'll never get around to playing, which has led to me having a large quantity of unused Steam keys going to waste. As a way of thanking people for their support, and of releasing the keys "into the wild" as it were, I'd like to give them out to Wormwood Studios fans.

I have not, however, been able to come up with a great approach for this. I don't want it to be a "first come, first served" type thing because that encourages neurotic behavior. On the other hand, I don't want it to be totally random because that increases the likelihood of it being gamed by bots. The approach I was thinking of pursuing was this:

I will list the keys. If people are interested, they can (1) email me and (2) follow us on Twitter (the latter being a way of limiting it to one per person). Every day, until the keys run out, I'll do a drawing. The winner can pick one of the remaining game keys. I'll then remove the winner's name from the "bowl" and remove the game from the list. That way everyone can only win once.

That way has the downside of requiring people to follow us on Twitter. That seems especially annoying in that I myself don't use Twitter for anything other than promoting Wormwood Studios, so it seems silly to require other people to use Twitter for the competition. Perhaps an alternative would be that they could email with some other way of confirming they aren't a bot / clone (I guess I could use Codex user names). But it seems like the basic approach would work pretty well. Is there a better one I'm missing?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I think you'll be fine so long as you don't have a key for Secret of the Magic Crystals.

 

[Infinitron]

Cross-posting this from our FB page:

Over time, I've bought (or Kickstarted) a bunch of interesting, beautiful games that I'll never get around to playing, which has led to me having a large quantity of unused Steam keys going to waste. As a way of thanking people for their support, and of releasing the keys "into the wild" as it were, I'd like to give them out to Wormwood Studios fans.

I have not, however, been able to come up with a great approach for this. I don't want it to be a "first come, first served" type thing because that encourages neurotic behavior. On the other hand, I don't want it to be totally random because that increases the likelihood of it being gamed by bots. The approach I was thinking of pursuing was this:

I will list the keys. If people are interested, they can (1) email me and (2) follow us on Twitter (the latter being a way of limiting it to one per person). Every day, until the keys run out, I'll do a drawing. The winner can pick one of the remaining game keys. I'll then remove the winner's name from the "bowl" and remove the game from the list. That way everyone can only win once.

That way has the downside of requiring people to follow us on Twitter. That seems especially annoying in that I myself don't use Twitter for anything other than promoting Wormwood Studios, so it seems silly to require other people to use Twitter for the competition. Perhaps an alternative would be that they could email with some other way of confirming they aren't a bot / clone (I guess I could use Codex user names). But it seems like the basic approach would work pretty well. Is there a better one I'm missing?

Obviously if you were doing this on the Codex only, you could ask people to PM you and that would be your proof. But since you aren't, email+Twitter is as good a method as any.

As for bots and clones, people CAN create fake email and Twitter accounts, or use additional ones if they have any, so that's not foolproof. For maximum security you could use the NeoGAF method of not allowing free email accounts, but that would shut out a large portion of your audience.

In any case, you might want to inform people about this here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...beg-beg-beg-beg-beg-beg-beg-beg-thread.78755/

 

[agentorange]

do a contest

 

[MRY]

I dunno, I don't want to put people out too much. Plus running a contest would be a lot more complicated.

 

[MRY]

[Cross-posted from our site.]

Over the past few years, I've assembled a modest number of Steam, GOG, and Desura keys that I'm never going to use. Basically, when games go on sale, if they're games that I really liked, or are simply super cheap, I'll pick up copies, and then give them away to friends or, occasionally, to unsatisfied purchasers of Primordia. Also, I've backed a number of Kickstarter projects that have by now come to fruition, but which I'll never have time to play.

Anyway, I wanted to find a way to give copies out in a fair way to people who played Primordia or otherwise have supported Wormwood Studios. But after much agonizing and deliberation, I couldn't find an easy way to do it: running even a basic giveaway would take time I don't have, and my various means of trying to screen out bots/duplicates seemed like a pain to everyone involved.

So, alas, what I'm going to do is just post the keys at irregular intervals on our Twitter feed @WWSGames. This is perhaps the most inequitable way to distribute something, since one compulsive fast typist may get them all, but it's the easiest way to do this, and at least I'll be releasing the games "to the wild" rather than keeping them penned up in a text file.

[Not cross-posted]

I realize this is a totally non-ideal way to do things and that people hate Twitter, but it seemed the least bad option.

 

[felipepepe]

You're giving out free stuff bro, you could be doing by hiding it beneath stones on the desert and you would still be a bro.

 

[MRY]

I've taken rudimentary steps to discourage that.

 

[MRY]

For those who are curious, I've posted a brief postmortem for the stillborn follow-up to Primordia, Cloudscape: http://www.wormwoodstudios.com/2014/09/eulogy-for-stillborn-cloudscape.html

Still hopeful we'll make it someday, but in the meanwhile I figured I'd show some of our work. Also, gearing up to give away some more random keys, but they're almost all from rather crappy recent bundles/sales.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I love that art of the miner, complete with a caged bird :D

But one thing,

ambitiously imagined as the first game in a trilogy

Please don't do this. I don't think I can name any book, movie or game that wouldn't suffer in various degrees from being "planned as the first in a trilogy" from the get-go.

 

[Alex]

I love that art of the miner, complete with a caged bird :D

But one thing,

ambitiously imagined as the first game in a trilogy

Please don't do this. I don't think I can name any book, movie or game that wouldn't suffer in various degrees from being "planned as the first in a trilogy" from the get-go.

Well, I already told you to play Ultima 7...

 

[MRY]

You should read The Demon Princes! That was planned as a five-book series and it's fantastico! In fact, the trilogy structure is pretty standard in science fiction. But each game would be self-contained, thematically and narratively; it wouldn't end on a cliff-hanger or anything.

 

[MicoSelva]

Cloudscape really looks like it had tons of potential which makes this, for me, the most depressing gaming news since cancellation of Chaos Chronicles.

Now I am rooting for Fallen Gods even more. Put it on Kickstarter if you have to, I will pledge.

By the way, did you consider crowd-funding Cloudscape before making the final decision to can it?

 

[Rake]

No I am rooting for Fallen Gods even more. Put it on Kickstarter it if you have, to I will pledge.

?

 

[MicoSelva]

No I am rooting for Fallen Gods even more. Put it on Kickstarter it if you have, to I will pledge.

?

Official Wormwood Studios site, mate:

In 2013, the team expanded to include Steven Poulton, an English programmer, and Ben Chandler, another Australian artist. That team made Salt and Like A Raisin in the Sun and worked on the now-defunct adventure game, Cloudscape. In 2014, the team shifted to include Dan Miller, a pixel artist dividing his time between Japan and America, Zoltán Tóbiás, a Hungarian artist (and doctor!), and Connor Brennan, an American programmer. This team is working on Fallen Gods.

 

[iqzulk]

With all the people on board (props for Ben304/Ben_Chandler! - did you play PISS and The City demo, by any chance?) will Vic still play the first violin in the envisioning, development and setting in stone the style of the game, so to speak?

 

[MRY]

Neither Vic nor Ben is involved in Fallen Gods. The current team is me, Miller, Zoltan Tobias, and Connor Brennan. Dan and Zoltan are driving the visual style, but I can tell you that two inspirations are Arthur Rackham and John Bauer. But the pixel art is sort of its own beast.

 

[iqzulk]

So, what is Vic doing (game-development-wise), if I may inquire?

 

[MRY]

As far as I know, his art for the past six months has exclusively been mural painting.

 

[iqzulk]

IRL mural paintings? And what about those "at least three game-related projects" he was hoping to realize?

 

[MRY]

Yes, real murals. People's lives take unexpected turns; I think he wanted to get away from computer monitors and have a more tactile/social engagement with his art. But you'd really have to ask him. Obviously, it was a disappointing turn of events from the standpoint of Cloudscape, but as his friend, I'm most interested in his enjoying the use of his prodigious talents. Also, those talents derive in part from his practical and diverse artistic experience -- I think if he comes back to game work, he'll come back even better than he was before.

 

[Starwars]

Do you have a release date for the next Primordia patch? Kinda itching to replay it but might as well wait until the patch hits.

 

[tuluse]

Looks cool. miner1b looks like he'd be right at home in Primordia .

But Mark, if someone ever ever asks you about lore you never say you haven't written it! You use the Tolkien argument: I can tell you what's behind that mountain, but then I'd have to write another mountain behind it.