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

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
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Messages
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California
That requires an absurd amount of work from us for marginal financial return and a tiny new number of eyeballs. The opposite is true of this—likely nothing comes of it, but if it does, the rewards are high and the effort is low.
 

bertram_tung

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Sunco Gasoline Facility
Insert Title Here
That requires an absurd amount of work from us for marginal financial return and a tiny new number of eyeballs. The opposite is true of this—likely nothing comes of it, but if it does, the rewards are high and the effort is low.

I guess I'll just have to hope that machine learning AI up-scaling techniques improve so maybe an ambitious fan can make it one day. Of course it would never be as good as using the source artwork.

Or maybe if this potential animated adaptation takes off, it will gain the attention of enough new eyes to make it worthwhile :)
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
This old thing came to mind:
http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/index.html
Though I would assume that Primordia would be an especially hard case due to the art style and colour palette of mostly browns and such. See the picture of the Doomguy in the paper.

Looks fucking awful all of them.

Fuck hi res meme. Just make it run in modern computer without crash. (Not that primordia ever crashed on me)
 

bertram_tung

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This old thing came to mind:
http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/index.html
Though I would assume that Primordia would be an especially hard case due to the art style and colour palette of mostly browns and such. See the picture of the Doomguy in the paper.

Looks fucking awful all of them.

Fuck hi res meme. Just make it run in modern computer without crash. (Not that primordia ever crashed on me)


The stuff PlanHex posted is nearly a decade old. There's been some decent strides made with ESRGAN recently which is a bit more promising, but it still has a way to go. Results can be very mixed depending on the game.

Some better comparison examples:

Full Throttle
17.jpg

5OlNB6O.png
FF9
3Qt5bf6.jpg

Gs7dJqS.jpg
Monkey Island
NWJx5GM.png

y4BM3x4.jpg

Compare that to the garbage official special edition:
rwtEva5.jpg
QndERa6.png

jcdugAQ.jpg
 
Last edited:

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,170
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
This old thing came to mind:
http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/index.html
Though I would assume that Primordia would be an especially hard case due to the art style and colour palette of mostly browns and such. See the picture of the Doomguy in the paper.

Looks fucking awful all of them.

Fuck hi res meme. Just make it run in modern computer without crash. (Not that primordia ever crashed on me)


The stuff PlanHex posted is nearly a decade old. There's been some decent strides made with ESRGAN recently which is a bit more promising, but it still has a way to go. Results can be very mixed depending on the game.

Some better comparison examples:

Full Throttle
17.jpg

5OlNB6O.png
FF9
3Qt5bf6.jpg

Gs7dJqS.jpg
Monkey Island
NWJx5GM.png

y4BM3x4.jpg

Compare that to the garbage official special edition:
rwtEva5.jpg
QndERa6.png

jcdugAQ.jpg
it's the same they use to make hi res morrowind right? that actually looks awesome on 2D sprites.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
5,703
Location
California
Hit 2,000 reviews* on Steam today. It's a nice feeling; still have a chip on my shoulder about the haters in the gaming press when the game launched. We're lucky Steam democratized reviews, that's for sure.

I believe the only AGS game with more is The Cat Lady (which has 2,750). The runner up among WEG's catalog is Gemini Rue with 871, though it'll be surpassed soon by Unavowed, which is at 820 and adding reviews at many times the rate of Gemini Rue.

(* Steam keeps narrowing the category of officially counted reviews; technically, we have like 2,350 reviews, but the official count is 2k.)
 

bertram_tung

Arcane
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Sunco Gasoline Facility
Insert Title Here
Hit 2,000 reviews* on Steam today. It's a nice feeling; still have a chip on my shoulder about the haters in the gaming press when the game launched. We're lucky Steam democratized reviews, that's for sure.

I believe the only AGS game with more is The Cat Lady (which has 2,750). The runner up among WEG's catalog is Gemini Rue with 871, though it'll be surpassed soon by Unavowed, which is at 820 and adding reviews at many times the rate of Gemini Rue.

(* Steam keeps narrowing the category of officially counted reviews; technically, we have like 2,350 reviews, but the official count is 2k.)


At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I still think you created one of the finest adventure games of all time. I sincerely hope you feel very proud of that.
 

ValeVelKal

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Aug 24, 2011
Messages
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Hit 2,000 reviews* on Steam today. It's a nice feeling; still have a chip on my shoulder about the haters in the gaming press when the game launched. We're lucky Steam democratized reviews, that's for sure.

I believe the only AGS game with more is The Cat Lady (which has 2,750). The runner up among WEG's catalog is Gemini Rue with 871, though it'll be surpassed soon by Unavowed, which is at 820 and adding reviews at many times the rate of Gemini Rue.

(* Steam keeps narrowing the category of officially counted reviews; technically, we have like 2,350 reviews, but the official count is 2k.)

Hey, by a lucky coincidence I finished Primordia the day before yesterday, and found it to be one of the 3 best of the Wadjet Eyes Games catalog (with "The Unavowed" and "A Golden Wake"). Too early for me to say whether it is first or not :).

Definitely top 5 for the Point-and-Click of the post LucasArt Era (Detective Gallo, tiny & Tall and Gibbeous are the other contenders).


I got introduced to the Wadjet Eyes catalog through "the Unavowed", then bought them all and went through them one at a time. Primordia and Gemini Rue were the two last ones ; I was playing them at the same time (I haven't finished Gemini Rue yet).

I even recommended it in my company video game channels :



Any other Primordia-style game in the works ?
 
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fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Bulgaria
Why steam and not gog ?

Anyway,people that like the game should buy it full price if they can,to support the devs.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
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It's a huge pain to run the giveaway even on Steam, and harder for me to confirm the reviews on GOG. But if you left a review on GOG, that's fine, too. My goal was to help promote indie adventures, so if you've supported them on GOG, huzzah.

(That said, I don't think GOG reviews help sales the same way Steam reviews do.)
 

fantadomat

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Oh yeah,review sale power is different. Most gog users know what they want and don't really care about the reviews. Steam fags are a lot easier to get duped by reviews. My question is more of a curiosity than condemnation :). I bought the game at full price because i enjoyed it and you were codexers.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I don't know about dupe-ability; it's more a matter of presentation. For a long time, new reviews were invisible on GOG, and as far as I know, you don't get, "Your friend liked this game..." kind of nudges. The result is that the first day or two of reviews defines what matters on GOG, while Steam it keeps mattering over time.

As a developer, I liked GOG more than Steam for a long time (I prefer no DRM, GOG de-emphasized achievements, and GOG did its own marketing of the game), but GOG's pool of players is shallower. Early on, GOG sales accounted for like 1/3 of our sales; nowadays it's more like 1/10 -- we just ran out of folks on GOG to sell to, I guess. There was also one highly suspicious quarter in which WEG reported essentially no GOG royalties; assuming WEG is on the up-and-up (no reason to doubt it), something suspicious happened there with GOG -- we basically never sold fewer than 1000 copies a quarter on GOG, and then suddenly one quarter, GOG reported 60 copies sold (the prior three quarters: 2231, 1848, 957; the subsequent three quarters: 794, 1046, 736). 60 copies. Less than 10% the second lowest quarter.

Never had any shenanigans like that with Steam. Sometimes the game sells better, sometimes it sells worse, but nothing anomalous like that.
 

fantadomat

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Yeah gog does have lower user base than steam,it is a niche seller.


assuming WEG is on the up-and-up (no reason to doubt it)
:hmmm:
When it comes to money you never have a reason to trust. People do stupid shit in the name money. Not saying that gog didn't duped you or that it wasn't just a weird month,just that you should take other peoples word for granted when it come down to money. If you have had doubts,you should have contacted GoG directly and cleared that shit.


As for review duping...we we all know that a decent amount of steamers are addict buyers that just buy shit with good reviews and never play it. It just make sense to care about such reviews since they push more copies :lol:. Also that "friend likes" is a nice sale tactic,good idea to use social circle pressure,the fat gabe is pretty good that shit :lol:.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
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One luxury of Primordia's doing well is that I don't have to look for spiders under every rock; Dave says those were the sales, and Dave's an honorable man. If it turns out that he's been skimming, I'd honestly rather not know, but I really would be very surprised if he were. And even if someone embezzled 800 sales, my take from that isn't really that high -- the average Primordia copy sells for like $3, I get 33% of 80% of 70% of that (or I think that's how it works out), so we're talking like $400 bucks spread over three months. I'd obviously rather not lose $400, but it's not enough money to demand to inspect a colleague's books over.

Steam definitely engages in all sorts of dodgy salesmanship tricks. I try to backstop against people buying Primordia unhappily by offering to give them a key to some other game if they don't like it, but there aren't many takers, hence my giving away the keys this way. My hope is always that people who buy Primordia play it, like it, and feel that they got more value out of it than they put money in. If that's not true, they should get their money back.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Yeah MRY is too good for his own good or a sociopathic serial killer. Ahh it is not about the 400 bucks lol,it is about having clarity on the matter. You can't have a good business relations when there are such muddy things. Also not talking about you as a person,but about the studio as a whole. In generally it it is not your job to go around and expect other peoples sale books (i assume). Also your studio and dave just letting it be seems weird,after all it is not just about your 400 bucks,but its like 10-20,000 bucks,not a small pouch of gold coins :).

Ahhh if steamtards spend money on my hobby,well i see nothing wrong with them not playing the game lol. Refunds should be issued only when the product is not fateful to the advertisement. People should be responsible for their actions,thus they should think before spending money. I do like the steam refund system,2 hours is enough to see if you like the game or not.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
5,703
Location
California
I asked Dave about it, and he said it's what GOG reported. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like I said, no reason to doubt him. But it made me a little concerned about GOG because even if it was just a sales dip, it shows an instability with GOG overall compared to Steam. And, even without that weird month, our GOG sales are way down. In year one, GOG sold ~20k copies, Steam sold ~43k copies. For this year, it'll be more like ~2k copies on GOG, ~17k copies on Steam.

Also, I wouldn't say I'm good, I've just been very fortunate with Primordia and the support it's gotten. In general, video game development was a fantasy of mine when I was a kid, it turned into a reality, something that I could do as a hobby while receiving very generous compliments from players, tens of thousands of dollars in what is basically "found money," and the opportunity to work with or at least meet various childhood heroes. As an eight-year-old kid I met Faran Brygo in Wasteland; as an adult, Brian Fargo and I have gotten a few lunches and dinners and chatted about game development. Got to have beers with Ziets, Saunders, McComb, Avellone, etc. and chat about MOTB and Fallout and PS:T. It's all like one of those stories where the hero wanders into a fairy land, visits the fairy king's court, receives treasures, goes on adventures... I keep waiting to wake up beside the cold hearth with nothing but a backache, but in the meanwhile, it's hard not to have a stupid grin on my face.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
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Messages
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Location
California
Negative reviews are often more helpful than positive ones, both to the dev and to possible customers. I’ve always thanked people for them.
 

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