Howdy Ranchers! 👋
I’ve gathered up the questions and answers Aimee was able to answer last week following our Paleo Pines Needs Your Help announcement. These questions were primarily answered live on Discord so I’ve tweaked some of them slightly to make more sense read after the fact!
Aimee: Hello… THANK YOU so much for all of your support yesterday after we made our announcement. The outpouring of lovely messages just blew us away and had the entire team feeling equal parts proud and weepy. For those who don’t know me, I’m Aimee and I’m the Marketing Director of Paleo Pines 👋 I’m here tonight to give everyone a chance to ask any questions we may not have had the chance to answer yesterday.
I’m going to start by answering a few of the most common questions from yesterday so that we are all on the same page then I’m happy to take more starting at 8pm. 🥰
Shouldn’t you continue to add to the core game instead of focusing on a sequel?
Our main commitment for this first year since launch has been on supporting the core game. We’ve done this with patches, several free updates, a new dino and now our DLCs. At the moment, we have to overcome the financial challenges that are standing in our way of delivering further updates and any plans for a sequel. We are exploring Patreon and crowdfunding as a potential way to offer a more significant expansion to the core game, but it is very unlikely that we can get external funding for this. As for how we pack more regions or dinos into the space we have on the Switch, this will be down to the ingenuity of our team to see just what this expansion offering may look like. We will bring all options back to the community to get your input before even attempting to crowdfund. At the same time, we will continue to look for larger investment for a sequel that will allow us to continue to support Paleo Pines and have a new game for players to enjoy a couple of years from now.
The mechanics and features that we want to introduce in a sequel really do require us rebuilding from the ground up - the core game would be a multiplayer open world experience and that alone means our level design needs to be redesigned. In addition to these fundamental requirements, our suggestion box is chock full of ideas that everyone wants to see implemented in Paleo Pines and many of these are ambitious enough to warrant a new game. I think we can all see the potential for how much the entire world of Paleo Pines can grow.
Are you abandoning Paleo Pines in order to make a sequel?
Not at all! At the moment, we do not have the financial capabilities to neither maintain Paleo Pines nor begin production on a sequel, which is why we have started reaching out to our community for assistance. We will be looking for financial solutions for every possible avenue to expand the world of Paleo Pines - whether this is technically feasible expansions, DLCs, or a fully funded sequel that will also allow us to continue to support Paleo Pines.
Why didn’t you include all the ideas in Paleo Pines?
Game development is an ever-moving and evolving thing. The more we make, the more we know and the more we want. So during the production for Paleo Pines (a game that was planned out in excruciating detail) we began to develop a wish list of things that we knew we couldn't include but that we would want in the future. This applies to game mechanics as well as some of the dinos and regions originally concepted that didn’t fit into the final game design. Just like our players have so generously filled our suggestion box with requests, as devs we also had wishes. It wasn't a case of not being able to make the game we wanted - we made the game. And in making that game, we wanted more. The design of the current game just doesn’t allow for some of the key features we are planning to be bolted on, I’m particularly thinking of multiplayer and open world. There’s only so much we can add onto the current game from a technical standpoint.
Have you considered Crowdfunding?
A Kickstarter was part of our funding plan all along. Ultimately, the plan was to do a part-investment part-kickstarter funding for the next iteration of Paleo Pines. However, without the part-investment portion, it is too risky for us to attempt to fund the entire game through crowdfunding due to the high number of supporters we would need. That said, our team is eager to take one of the more manageable options for extending the world of Paleo Pines and bringing this to Kickstarter in the spring if we can’t find a larger investment sooner.
Have you considered a Patreon account?
We initially felt that a patreon account would not bring in enough funding for us to continue to support Paleo Pines, BUT after having so many people express their interest in contributing to the game’s future in this way, we are definitely exploring this possibility for DLC and expansion packs that might fit into the current framework of the game. We need to explore this further and we will bring ideas back to the community.
– Live AAA Begins Below –
Hello everyone!
I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the entire team and particularly on behalf of Kevin who has been contacted by many publishers since we've put our announcement out. He's being kept very busy and is actively following up all leads!
i have a question about the sequel game. Will the storyline be the same just changed a bit or will we get a new one where it starts after we bring the parasaurs back.
Our initial plans were that the sequel would begin several years after the first game but on the same island with new regions. HOWEVER, I say initial plans because I feel as though our discussions this week have shifted our thinking so we are going into next week with no expectations of what a sequel will look like until we discuss with our team.
That said, we are happy to have suggestions with the sequel in mind 🥰
Hello! Not sure if it would be directly related to the game storyline or so but would you consider in the near future to have volunteer work to help as well?
We've always shied away from volunteer work because we want to ensure that our team are paid for their talents. We do consider work experience placements so that may be a good option in the future?
We've worked with a lot of graduate students that have then stayed on and become treasured full time team members!
And we currently work with the CINE scheme in Northern Ireland
Once you've secured funding what comes next? Broad question i apologize, but will it go straight into full blown production or?
I like this optimism!! 💪 If we are lucky enough to secure funding it typically takes around 2-3 months to work out the legal details of such things. Then, we will enter pre-production - the time that we solidify all the up-in-the-air questions in our game design doc and figure out all the designs we need to work towards. Basically, setting the rules for the production. Then, it's production time and for a game of Paleo's size, that would be about 2 years.
I wanted to ask you guys a bit more about how things are looking now. I know you are working hard and are quite busy but if you guys find a publisher can we expect a update? like just a simple lucky in a party hat on steam xD as in a news update! I don't expect a celebration update xD just a news update ♡
Oh my goodness - if we secure a publisher I will be racing Yazz and Katy to get here to tell everyone first!
I expect we will know more in the next couple of weeks if the effort everyone has put in has resulted in a solid investment or not.
I heard you wanted to do nesting and baby dinos. Would that be planned for in the future of the sequel? And will we be getting planned dinos that never got added, added into the sequel like Argent and Spino?
And will we have a larger ranch by chance with the sequel? Im really curious to how the open world multiplayer will work
I don't want to go too deep tonight into what the plans for PaPi2 might entail because then I would get in trouble for giving away secrets and we all know I am HORRIBLE at keeping secrets. The team is probably biting their nails right now! What I can say is that Abigail has been hoping for baby dinos for YEARS and we know that everyone has wanted the Spino for YEARS and we do not plan to disappoint.
Everyone has loved their ranch and at the same time wanted more that they can do with it (and more dreamstones). I am confident that we will fulfil ranch-dreams.
If you guys get a publisher and they are on board with it, will you consider doing DLC for the OG game? Or will all the plans be going into 2?
The entire team would love to continue to release DLC or free updates whilst we move towards a sequel. To me, that just makes sense as a way to let all the players find new ways of enjoying the world.
You mentioned wanting to add multiplayer, has it been decided how exactly that'll work? I personally prefer a mostly singleplayer experience but being able to have the option to play with friends would be incredible. Online co-op or local only? I assume not an mmo 😭
Completely understand if this isn't a question you can answer right now
In a nutshell, the plan is currently online co-op with 1-4 players and open world. The key enjoyment of multiplayer is people playing in a shared space and we have put some initial design into mechanics in the game that require more than one person.
Follow-up Question: Require? Oh dear... so if you play solo would you be locked out of things?
I would hope not! If we are clever enough with our game design, there will always be a way of achieving whether you are a single or multiplayer.
If it hasn’t already been addressed, could something like transferring data or at least dinosaurs from the first game be in consideration? Thank you very much for your transparency in all of this!
We've been hearing this a lot and I'm hoping this can be done because I totally understand why you would want to keep the dinos you've bonded with. However, I haven't discussed this with the team so I can't give a definitive answer.
How much do you need for the investment? Is there a set price?
To give you a rough estimate, Paleo Pines would need around 20-24 developers for a 2 year period. I don't like to share full budgets but I will leave the math to you.
Now, I know everything is still up in the air rn but let's pretend that it isn't and that you get properly funded. Would PaPi 1 still receive new colour palettes, decor, trees, DLC events, dinos and whatnot, even after PaPi 2 and alongside with it?
It's our intention to continue to support Paleo Pines if we are funded for PaPi 2
You mentioned purely crowdfunding without a publisher investing wouldn't be feasible, can you elaborate on why?
Crowdfunding needs to be balanced very carefully between your ask, what you offer and the size of the audience that you believe will become supporters. I do not believe that we can fund the full amount that we need for PaPi2 solely through crowdfunding. I love to take risks, but that would be too risky even for me.