Indie Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of MoonFall - Isometric Cyberpunk Vampire RPG

[_V_]

The codex is a cesspool. The Stormfront of RPGs. Some frontpage coverage would at least give back some indy rep.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Are you absolutely sure that cynically putting gay twinks on the cover won’t get you better traction? We all know the demographic that buys BL games is mostly straight female humans. That’s almost half the human population of Earth! I know girl gamers like to say they love games for story, but when push comes to shove they’re just as thirsty as boy gamers. Just read the most recent Anita Blake novel to see what women find desirable: a harem of bi-curious dudes for the heroine.

 

[Tyranicon]

Are you absolutely sure that cynically putting gay twinks on the cover won’t get you better traction? We all know the demographic that buys BL games is mostly straight female humans. That’s almost half the human population of Earth! I know girl gamers like to say they love games for story, but when push comes to shove they’re just as thirsty as boy gamers. Just read the most recent Anita Blake novel to see what women find desirable: a harem of bi-curious dudes for the heroine.

Oh I'm actually sure that will increase traction from certain quarters. But I don't really want to.

There's actually a fair amount of women in my playerbase, but I think it's still the minority.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Are you absolutely sure that cynically putting gay twinks on the cover won’t get you better traction? We all know the demographic that buys BL games is mostly straight female humans. That’s almost half the human population of Earth! I know girl gamers like to say they love games for story, but when push comes to shove they’re just as thirsty as boy gamers. Just read the most recent Anita Blake novel to see what women find desirable: a harem of bi-curious dudes for the heroine.

Oh I'm actually sure that will increase traction from certain quarters. But I don't really want to.

There's actually a fair amount of women in my playerbase, but I think it's still the minority.

Do lesbians get signal boosted on kickstarter? You could always try that too. Advertise your game as having “sapphic” content.

 

[Ismaul]

Whoring yourself out, even for a porn game, still feels kinda wrong lol.

Also, if you do get that audience, you'll have to cater to their desires, or they'll feel baited and switched. So you can advertise in their lane to get their attention, but the proposition has to be clear afterwards; promising something that won't be in the game in a substantial amount is a bad idea IMO.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Letting a good campaign fail is a worse idea. I agree that lying is no good, but if there is any gay or lesbian content, you should absolutely highlight it Tyranicon

 

[Readher]

Like I said, there's a lot of core information about the game that has the potential to draw people that's simply missing from the page. Gender choice, lesbian/gay content, direct artystyle comparison, gifs that showcase mechanics and gameplay. As it is, the campaign feels more geared towards people who are already aware of you and your previous works. Most people looking at various campaigns aren't going to watch a 10-minute video or download a demo. Not right away, anyway. You need to grab their attention with core information text, gifs, and art first. Then, you can drive further engagement with frequent updates about various factions, further explanations of gameplay systems, character bio examples, lore, etc. Right now, the campaign is extremely stale. We're 1/3 into the campaign and there's been only one update that doesn't even give any additional info about the game. I don't see many people who weren't already interested in your works before pledging. The campaign simply doesn't make the game look all that appealing.

There are so many Kickstarter pages of very successful games, both big and small, and instead of looking at them and just copying all the cool stuff they do, you just kind of did your own (very basic at that) thing, completely ignoring all the available resources to draw inspiration from. This is like all those indie devs who instead of playing and analyzing other games and building upon what's proven to work, they insist on doing something their own way and, surprise surprise, it's shit and doesn't work.

As it is, it's really uncertain that the campaign will succeed unless some Saudi princes stumble upon it. The pessimistic projection puts the pledges at 20k, so you'd need a 15k surge at the end of the campaign to meet the goal. The optimistic one puts it at 25k, requiring 10k surge. It's not exactly impossible that the surges will happen, but it's not very likely either imo. You're getting lower daily pledges than on the successful Memoirs campaign right now, while the goal is much bigger. You say you can scale down the game and Kickstart for less money (aw shit, here we go again) if it fails, but I feel like if you did a proper banger of a campaign page and updates, you wouldn't need to do either of those things.

It's a shame to flunk on the campaign so hard when me and I bet others here as well know that the game would/will be good.

I feel kinda bad trashing "one of ours", but this is Codex after all. In the end, I only wish for your campaign (and game) to succeed.

 

[Tyranicon]

I think you guys are more worried than I am.

Failing, while not the best outcome, is part of the plan.

 

[Abu Antar]

There's always IndieGoGo. You have a choice to start campaigns that allow you to keep the money that the campaign earns.

 

[Elthosian]

I think you guys are more worried than I am.

Failing, while not the best outcome, is part of the plan.

Regardless, have you promoted this on the f99 forums or whatever they're called? Not sure if that crowd spends a single cent on games but might help get a few people on board.

 

[Elthosian]

Tyranicon do you have two or three interesting paragraphs that can be put together to share info on the Kickstarter? I am in some Spanish-speaking forums where people fondly remember Bloodlines. Might as well translate and post it there; even if the KS failing is of no concern, the extra attention never hurts.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

What Kickstarter? Is it up?

Spoiler

NVM…. I see it. HERE. I click this thread and it always takes me to last page.

 

[Tyranicon]

Tyranicon do you have two or three interesting paragraphs that can be put together to share info on the Kickstarter? I am in some Spanish-speaking forums where people fondly remember Bloodlines. Might as well translate and post it there; even if the KS failing is of no concern, the extra attention never hurts.

Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of MoonFall is an old-school cRPG set amidst the vampire-dominated gangs of a cyberpunk city. As a Familiar of one of the ancient vampire lineages, you have been tasked by your undead masters to expand their criminal empire.

The vampires of MoonFall are different from the ones we may be used to. While all vampires are undead, immortal and must drink blood, how vampirism is spread and the array of powers (and weaknesses) a new vampire gains will vary depending on the lineage. Each lineage is, in effect, a different “species” of vampire.

The major vampire lineages have been fighting over control of the Uzakh Drucah, or the True Underworld, for many centuries - even millennia in some cases. Since MoonFall is one of the world’s largest, most populated and wealthiest cities, it is of little surprise that the lineages now focus their battles here.

Players will encounter both vampire and non-vampire factions, each with their own motivations and rivals in MoonFall’s complicated web of alliances.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I bet there’s a huge section on Moonfall’s history including why named such. Either the actual moon or lots of people dropping their drawers on buildings mooning people then falling off. MOON FALL!

Officer 1 “Oh! Another ‘MOONFOOL’ I see.”

Officer 2
“That’s a ‘MOONFALL’ and you know it.”

Officer 1
“ :/ Either way, I’m ‘butting’ out of this until the CSI crew gets here.”

Officer 2
“Oh soooo cheeky tonight eh?”

 

[Modron]

Not something I expected to see today: https://www.pcgamer.com/play-the-demo-of-this-cyberpunk-vampire-rpg/

Play the demo of this cyberpunk vampire RPG​

Looking for another horny CRPG this week? Vampire Syndicate might be for you.

Vampire Syndicate: Gangs of MoonFall calls itself "An adult cyberpunk crime lord RPG". It casts you as the recently promoted familiar of a vampire, the Renfield to her Dracula, who leads a squad of cybernetically augmented mortals who do the dirty work the undead leave to others. Also, it's a top-down RPG with turn-based combat, and sex, which I guess is technically also turn-based.

The demo, which is currently available on Steam and on itch.io, presents an opening mission where you're one of several crews sent to perform a hit on an ancient vampire. The undead have laws, and one of them says they can't kill their own kind. It doesn't say anything about paying gangs of gun-toting leather fetishists to do the same. Loophole!

Your target is a teched-up nosferatu-looking gentleman who keeps a menagerie of Lovecraftian monsters in a puzzle dungeon. Vampire Syndicate warns players the demo's combat is rough, and in the story portion of the demo you're allowed to skip it. While it's the kind of tactical combat with movement allowances and action points, it's also the kind where the battlefield is mostly just a blank grid that exists to provide space between combatants rather than something interactive. If you choose to blast away with shotguns and pistols rather than get up close to do knife-work, you'll be doing so standing pole-straight out in the open, without cover, which always seems like an odd way to conduct a shootout.

Storywise, it's an interesting blend of Vampire: The Masquerade and Shadowrun, with a group called the Mandate who manage the city's supernatural creatures offering you the chance to narc for them and an opponent who is sick of blood-drinking immortality and has decided to upload himself and live forever in digital form. It's developed by the creator of Memoirs of a Battle Brothel and shares that game's rich setting, as well as a few of its characters.

It also shares the sex scenes, though in that part of the demo they're presented with posed 3D models and the kind of white-out protagonist stand-in you see in visual novels. Given how many of us have spent the last few days examining the underpants of our Baldur's Gate 3 characters, and getting to know the voice actor hired to make its sex sounds, I hope we can get past pretending this is a controversial inclusion. Yes, there are a lot of vampire ladies with their rude bits out, but it's nothing a baby hasn't seen up close.

Vampire Syndicate has a Steam page as well as an itch.io page, and is currently halfway through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

What's up with this not showing up in the frontpage?

Nsfw, nsjw etc.

Since when is ANY of the CODEX SFW?

Subverse…. I haven’t followed that at all. Is it still being developed?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Since when is ANY of the CODEX SFW?

Plenty of threads you haven't posted in yet, jack.

 

[Tyranicon]

You probably shouldn't be on this website at work tbh.

At least, not most work places.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You probably shouldn't be on this website at work tbh.

At least, not most work places.

Meh, no one's gonna understand a thing if they look anyway.

 

[Tyranicon]

Codex literally has a flashing hitler emoji.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Codex literally has a flashing hitler emoji.

And I tell the curious onlooker that it's Charlie Chaplin. Or Hitler, no one minds.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

It's too early to tell for sure, but I suspect the PC Gamer article exposure is making a difference. Check kicktraq: as of this writing, the number of new backers and pledge money is doubled compared to yesterday.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So much Hitler.

Or maybe so little as far as variety goes.

 

[Tyranicon]

Definitely seeing an uptick on the kickstarter. Might've timed it well, seeing how there's currently a mainstream turn-based cRPG, people might want a scifi vampire version.

Will have to see if it gets more traction.

 

[santino27]

Here's hoping!