Want to tell you about my upcoming parody musical game "Isekaing: from zero to zero"

[ElvenNeko]

Hello. Few years ago i already posted here a thread with one of my games. But since probably nobody remembers me, i will introduce myself again.

I am Andrew, 35yo, from central Ukraine. I like to write for video games. Actually, it's the only thing that i can do well in life.

Some time ago i made this: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...o-play-my-free-indie-story-driven-rpg.145323/

And then few smaller games. I usually work alone because i am tired from people leaving without even announcing it. But sometimes i ask communities for specific help. Still, it's very hard to make games if you have no programming or visual skills. So i have to limit my game designs to fit the smaller scope.

Started my next project just to distract myself from the neverending war. Wanted to try entirely new genre that i never wrote for before - parody. And something that started as fun little distraction is now turned into a fun little game.

The game plays like a quest - a lot of dialogue, few puzzles, and about a dozen songs. Yep, the game is part musical as well, so expect the characters to suddenly start singing! It mostly parodies RPG tropes (both CRPG and JRPG, and even tabletop), but there are a lot of content from other genres as well as movies, books, and even real life. I tried to find the ballance between it being funny to regular player, and being extra funny for those who will rekognize the refferences.

This game will be both free and paid. Upon release, i will create an extra pirate edition (nothing bad, just an extra song) and upload it on torrents, so people will have the ability to try my game for free, and then, if they like it and decide to support me - buy it on Steam.

Today, i finished creating Steam Page - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3055370/Isekaing_from_zero_to_zero/
And and also made a teaser - https://youtu.be/suhLEe4Rsr0

Teaser was not well received, but it was expected. The idea for a teaser was the "joke within a joke within a joke". It's core concept is to be the opposite of standards: 6+ minutes long (when most teasers are really short), and instead of instantly showing gameplay as most of the guides suggest, it starts from remaking the "boardroom meeting" meme, and only after some time shows a bit of the game and presents the songs. Yeah, main goal from the trailer was to give a taste of the songs from the game.

But, since there are no specific community for parody genre, and most of the communication platforms today are vote-based, i new that i will be downvoted before the people who might be interested in this kind of game will see my post. Yet i still have to keep trying, and who knows, maybe i will find people interested on this forum? Anyway, i plan to make a trailer later that will showcase game in a bit more traditional way.

I planned to release the game at the start of this summer, but sudden kidney failure of two of my cats in a row made me push release back to this month.
And then, Steam decided to be an asshole and demand me to change passport from paper to digital one, a prodecure that will cost almost half of my month income (so my debt will increase dramaticly) and a month of waiting. So the release is shifted to the unknown date, but it will be during this year. At least i have time for some extra polishing, and figuring out what to do with some really bad VO lines that i can't fix now because the money went to get a new passport.

So this is the entire story. The goal of this post is to collect some feedback and impressions about my efforts so far. Does not matter if positive or negative, post any thoughts you have, i value honesty.

And if anyone here will be interested in this game - i might post a short clips later on. And if you have questions - i am here to answer them.

 

[Rean]

Hello.
Here's my question: are you writing the text for your game directly in English or are you translating it from your native language? Either way, you would benefit from someone proofreading what you've got in English. There are both spelling errors as well as odd sentence structuring throughout what you're showing on your Steam page.

Here are a couple of examples:

It's 'law-abiding.' Also, always capitalize the personal pronoun 'I', it's in lower case at various points.

'Listen to a shitton of dialogue that attempts to be funny'. Also, from a marketing standpoint, I'd recommend making a slight alteration to that sentence to read 'Engage with a shitton of dialogue that attempts to be funny'; this still reads a bit odd, though, so you could also change it altogether to something like 'Engage with a metric ton of dialogue that's trying... its best to be funny'.

Small quality improvements like those across the board would help you project a better image for the game, especially since it seems it contains quite a bit of text, yeah?

Good luck!

 

[ElvenNeko]

Hello.
Here's my question: are you writing the text for your game directly in English or are you translating it from your native language? Either way, you would benefit from someone proofreading what you've got in English. There are both spelling errors as well as odd sentence structuring throughout what you're showing on your Steam page.

Here are a couple of examples:

It's 'law-abiding.' Also, always capitalize the personal pronoun 'I', it's in lower case at various points.

'Listen to a shitton of dialogue that attempts to be funny'. Also, from a marketing standpoint, I'd recommend making a slight alteration to that sentence to read 'Engage with a shitton of dialogue that attempts to be funny'; this still reads a bit odd, though, so you could also change it altogether to something like 'Engage with a metric ton of dialogue that's trying... its best to be funny'.

Small quality improvements like those across the board would help you project a better image for the game, especially since it seems it contains quite a bit of text, yeah?

Good luck!

Thank you! I write text in English directly, but my knowledge of it is limited, so mistakes happen. Especially with I since it's a rather pointless rule, I know about it but constantly forget.

Fixed first two, will replace gif a bit later, but can you please elaborate about last one? From my understanding people listen to dialogues, engaging means participating, and while there are some choices and even different outcomes in game, most of the time it's about listening, not engaging. And I don't remember that sentence "metric ton" would be used anywhere, can you explain why it will be better?

 

[ElvenNeko]

Updated the page with fixed gif, thank you again, Rean!

Also here is the short clip for all the "Alien" fans:

And another one! Can you tell which reference it is?

 

[ElvenNeko]

Since i am unable to update my post itself (for some reason i can only edit the title), i will post new information here.

The game is released! Have a trailer:

And as i promised before - game can be played for free. You can find it not only on Steam, but also on my ITCH.IO (where payment is optional) page and various torrents.

Why I am doing this? I was pirating games since I were a kid due to my mother being poor. Now I am even more poor than she was, and rarely can afford to buy a game. But gaming always was one of the few good things in my life, and probably one of the reasons why I am still living. Also, I have a strong belief that every person on this planet should have access to art regardless of their financial situation.

This is why I made all my previous games completely free, and why I am pirating my first commercial game today. You have no money, or not sure if it’s worth it? Go ahead and try it for free, you can always buy it later in case if you like it. And if you will help spread it on other torrent sites (since I mostly use local ones and hardly know global ones) so more people will be able to try it out – I will be very grateful for that, since my main goal is not to earn, but to make people laugh and have a good time. And if some of them will decide to pay me back – they know where to look.

Now, about the game itself.

General information:

Isekaing is a parody musical adventure\vn mix, with some RPG elements. Project originally started as a bunch of comedic sketches within the game engine, and slowly evolved, gaining story, better visuals and original songs. But it's core remained the same - humor.

Unfortunately, this game is not for everyone. There are no combat except two scenes needed for the story. Most of the time you will listen to dialogues or songs, and sometimes – look for stuff or solve a few easy puzzles. So people who require a lot of action to enjoy the game should probably avoid it. It is not a traditional RPG and more of an adventure game, but it is primarily built around making jokes about all the stupid tropes RPG's have, so fans of the genre should probably enjoy it.

Good stuff:


So what makes this game special? Humor. I always liked parody or comedy games, and finally decided to make my own. Here, you can expect to find unrelentless satire similar to South Park, where everything and anything can and will be made fun of, mixed with absurd humor similar to Deponia, where no logic or reason will stand in the way of our heroes, and spiced up with a bit of dark humor on top. Majority of the jokes are aimed at RPG games (both pc and tabletop), but other genres present as well as movies, anime, books, and even some of the real-world events. I tried to keep the main story funny without any additional knowledge, but there are a TON of easter eggs for the keen eye to notice.

On top of that there will be music. There are 53 total tracks in game’s soundtrack, 18 of them have lyrics (others are BGM), and 11 of them are in the game (7 remaining ones are either bonus tracks or alternative versions). Funny, sad, epic, melancholic or lively – I did not focus on specific mood or genre and tried to give each character a unique song that would reflect the personality. Was I successful with that? It’s up for you to decide. Also you can use soundtrack for your projects without asking me, just don’t forget to credit.

It’s not all sunshine and giggles though. There are… moderately dark moments in the game. Nothing extreme or gory, but the "grimdark" tag are there for a reason. For me it just felt that I reached good level of contrast between game not taking itself seriously and suddenly adding the heat to the drama boiler. Overall, it kinda reflects my current realities, when I just wave my hand towards another shahed drone flying over my house, and resuming development process because game will not make itself.

Bad stuff:

The game is short, and, while I tried my best to avoid that – sometimes not very impressive visually. I am a writer, without ability to program or draw, so I focused my skills on parts where it made the biggest difference. It does not mean that I ignored the rest – I spent weeks on creating certain scenes, months to make songs sound perfectly, and once even entire day just to make elevator doors open, and close after character walks in. And with help of my friend I once again learned basic photoshopping to increase quality of the visuals. Also, I am really grateful for all people from official RM forum who helped me with code, resources and advise. This game would not be made without their help, and that’s why you can find them in titles.

VA in certain places is less than ideal and there might be typos (the ones that evaded many tests) and sometimes – unusual phrase structure due to my imperfect English skill.

Considering all that I decided to focus on quality instead of quantity, reducing game’s total length in order to make it look and sound better. Removing the combat was also a difficult decision, but default combat are probably bored everyone to death already, and since I could not make a better one – I decided that having no combat is better than bad combat.

Overall, it’s still an indie game with lots of stuff that could be better, but you can expect a certain level of quality that places it above majority of RM games. But quantity suffered because of that.

About development:

I started making those sketches years ago – mostly as an effort to force myself to do at least something positive and not give into depression deeper. When my country were attacked and everything became even more of a shitshow than it usually is, I felt bad and completely forgot about the project (well, only few scenes with mostly placeholder assets), as well as temporarily lost interest to creation. Then I was busy making deeply personal project that nobody would care about because I felt like I will not make another game anymore.

But nearly year ago, during the previous autumn I finally found antidepressants that had a bit of effect on me, and felt desire to create again. Even more – I dared to step into the parody genre that I have zero experience with, even despite the fact that my sense of humor was often considered weird by people I interacted with, and that games of this genre are considered as extreme niche.

Somewhere in the middle of the development I thought "hey, I like the musicals, and always wanted to make one… so why not do it now? ". And just like that I switched to writing and implementing songs – one of the cool aspects of solo dev is that you can dramatically alter your project because you want to. And that made my game even more niche because musicals are a genre that are as much rare as parody. People told me that I am crazy to even considering doing something like that. And I agreed with them, but it’s not the first time I swim against the current.

While i developed this game solo, i were not alone. With help of my friend I once again learned basic photoshopping to increase quality of the visuals. Then, kind person from reddit offered help with Steam publishing, and another person from steam forum helped solve technical problems i faced. Also, I am really grateful for all people from official RM forum who helped me with code, resources and advise. This game would not be made without help of all of those people.

This year were also crazy so far. At the start of it I had to give up on playing anything or development of this game would be very, very long, and considering what’s going on around me I wasn’t sure that I have a lot of time. Only once I made a day off for myself to visit the beach and swim for a while. I went through remaking some of the locations and songs from scratch because I was not satisfied with the output. Got new illnesses, lost some of my cats, faced lots of legal issues regarding Steam publishing, and failed even promotional attempt that I tried, yet here I am… releasing the game only a few months later than planned.

And I had a lot of fun bringing this world to life, once again seeing how scenes that previously existed only in my mind are taking shape, sometimes even exactly as I wanted them to be.

I think this is everything you should know about my game, but if you have any other questions – you can ask here. And if not, I hope that you will have as much fun as I had while making this game for you.

 

[Fedora Master]

Weebshit belongs in the Weebshit Containment Board.

 

[ElvenNeko]

This game has nothing to do with anime except for using cartoonish graphical style. Like, you know, most games out there that ain't photorealistic)

 

[Modron]

Isekai wasn't even invented by the Japanese they just gave a name to a theme that had been in Western literature for 200 (or 300 depending on interpretation) years.

 

[ElvenNeko]

Isekai wasn't even invented by the Japanese they just gave a name to a theme that had been in Western literature for 200 (or 300 depending on interpretation) years.

Yep, you are correct.

But the main point i was trying to make is that Isekai theme is only taken so i would have a protagonist who is aware that she is in the game world. This opens huge potential to make jokes about overused tropes, cliche, certain plot aspects, and even irl gamedev problems - crunch, dei ans sjw insertion, agressive monetisation, deceiving playerbase, etc. There are anime-related joke with the poster (that makes fun of long anime titles that describe product in unnessesary details), but that's it. Main goal for parody here is CRPG and TTRPG.