Hello,
As you know we were planning to give discounts for Mokoko X to the original Mokoko owners. I talked with Steam about this but they didn't allow it. These two were the alternative solutions we talked with Steam:
1) Direct approach: Giving discount coupons to the original Mokoko owners. So, they can use their coupons to buy Mokoko X in a discounted way. Steam said they wouldn't distribute coupons. They can do this easily, I remember a few games done that years ago, I think Steam no longer accepts this as a general policy.
2) Indirect approach: Bundling Mokoko with Mokoko X with the bundle type "complete the set". So, the Mokoko owners could have purchase Mokoko X with a discounted price for completing the set. But this is also not possible. Steam told us that retired games cannot participate in such bundles.
I thought of 2 other alternatives:
The first alternative is asking users to send me a screenshot that proves they had the original Mokoko and I will give them a private link to purchase from itch.io or some other platform. But this is also not possible because:
1) If I point you to another store, I would be violating the agreement I made with Steam.
2) It would be very hard for me to manage if I received 1000 mails with screenshots (I am a solo dev although I get help for graphics etc. I have no full time employees). It would be weeks of continuous work.
3) There would be many fraud requests (photoshopped screenshots, using the same screenshots etc. that I wouldn't remember who was who).
And the second alternative would be similar to the first alternative, but this time making a website just for this. 2 and 3 would be eliminated since the website would ask you to connect your Steam account and check if you own Mokoko. But in the end I would still have to distribute discounted keys from itch.io or something and it would again violate my agreement with Steam for pointing you out to other platform from Steam. Besides I know nothing about backend coding and website design. Even our website is made in notepad just by using HTML.
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I wanted to be clear with you about this. I am sorry, things didn't go the way I planned. I've really tried for this discount. I cannot think of any other alternative. I don't like to offer the game from the full price to the old users but that's how it is going to be.
All the money we've earned from Mokoko and more from our other games spent for Mokoko X. In some rough estimation, I can say we have spent and will spend around 15 times more money and definitely more time to this remake compared to Mokoko. Don't just think about the product, you should also consider other things such as marketing, console porting (Switch & Xbox One), etc. expanses/efforts.
As for the product, bigger portion of our budget has been spent to the product. I think we've made a good and complete/polished game. I hope and believe people who hasn't played Mokoko, will like Mokoko X more than they would like Mokoko.
That being said I want to write the differences/new features you will find in Mokoko X. Straight details without any marketing texts. Consider these before you buy the new game.
You can easily compare Mokoko and Mokoko X store pages to see the main differences. Even better if you play Mokoko X demo, it summarizes the new features pretty well. So, in general:
- All the girls were static images. Now they have different animation videos in each level, victory and for their portrait expressions. We added 115 videos in total.
- Japanese voice overs added for all the girls/bosses as an alternative to English.
- We've remade every enemy from the scratch. In Mokoko, most of them were static, now they all have animations. The most of them are rebalanced, some has totally new features and has no relation with their old versions.
- Mokoko main story is now fully animated and dubbed, it used to be just texts.
- 24 levels to 32 levels. The most of the levels revised a bit or a lot. There are now final stages for each girl where the map is bigger and you fight against all the 3 bosses and their minions.
- Stories and dialogues are the same, but it bothered me a lot in Mokoko that all the stories were squeezed inside a small window. They are now much better presented. Mokoko X has a new flow for that.
- The soundtrack DLC is almost the same with old Mokoko's soundtrack DLC. I don't recommend you to buy it.
- Adult patch will be again free.
These are the things you should be expecting in Mokoko X.
Göksan