The article citations：HEYBOX
The author：Gamer蔡
Endless Voyage, a Chinese strategic card game, developed by Dalaran Studio, released by Kuyou Games. In a mix of myth and reality, female captain, Qin will lead sailors to a megalithic palace. A one way trip without going back. Combine, upgrade card, equip unrestricted props and treasure. Encounter different mysterious events and NPC monsters in different routes.
I passed the first degree of difficulty at the stand of WePlay, it told us that the game play of Enless Voyage is fine. There is only one character in it, the picture needed to be polished. Endless Voyage earned “Excellence in Game Design” nomination of WePlay. I chatted with members of Dalaran Studio, here are their stories.
May you please give a brief of current situation of your team?
NPC:
We now have three members in our development team: one planner and two programmers, the average age is about 30, all of us are sophisticated, used to work in outstanding companies in pre-eminent cities. I am the planner, worked for two companies before. Qi Yang was a PC software engineer in DJI. We don’t have a designer in our team, we outsource it for a lower cost. You can tell that the image in the game was rather rough. We have worked at one programmer’s apartment for a long period.
What brought you together as a team? Are you friends from the first place? ？
NPC:
We felt like we should pursue the dream of youth. Hahaha, we are friends before we set up the studio. One is my classmate and friend for many years. We all love card games, TCG and DBG. We share the same commitment and passion, so we set up the team.
Did Qi Yang encounter any difficulties after quiting DJI and devoting in indie games?
Qi Yang:
I quit DJI and devote in indie games for personal interest. Besides, I see this as a challenge. I also want to develop an own game. Of course, making indie games has many uncertainties, relatives and friends show little approve of my decision, have seen many skeptical faces in last year. They think that working in big company is more prudent as I don’t have a regular paycheck and burden with a high risk. The closed development raise suspicion. I need to explain and communicate regularly. We are doing a great indie game with many supportive players, which means a lot.
What supported you, since your family showed little support?
Qi Yang:
For more than a year, I have encountered some difficulties, like: canceling the honeymoon trip, COVID-19 and family frustration. The driving force for me to keep going is the cohesion of our team, players’ support and ambition. We remain positive as we are striving for an excellent game.
We have gained great support from the palyers’ groups, they believe in us, and we won’t let them down. We now have three groups, add up to over two thousand players. The growth of supportive palyers and the care from palyers asking me not to ruin my health by staying up late, which is very moving and encouraging. Personally, I stick to the motto: start well and end well. I put elbow grease into Endless Voyage, my internal feelings for it and external factors help me persist.
Does developing indie games differ from working in DJI?
Qi Yang:
There is significant difference between developing indie games and working in DJI, as DJI does not involve indie games. The biggest difference is that I need to follow up the whole project: the product and the feedback from palyers, but I only mind technical problems back in my former job. This is wonderful.
Besides, I need to look after my family’s emotion. I am more responsible and mature. I learn to make closer communication with them.
You don’t have any fixed income during the procedure? How do you allocate funds?
NPC：
We don’t have any fixed income. We put our savings to set up the funds. We save money by working at one programmer’s living room. At the beginning, we didn’t foresee how long will we finish this project. We wanted to save as much money as possible, we cooked by ourselves, only to find out our incapable cooking skill. Hahaha, our original decision was saving as much as possible and see what could we yield.
Why did you make the indie game in this genre? How long did it take?
NPC：
It cost us about one year and a half. It is critical to choose a genre for every development team. We made our decision basing on our members and the market. We didn’t have any designer in our team, being confident in our project, sacrificing a bit picture quality for the gameplay. We goes for DBG, all of our team are great fans of DBG. And the market has nurtured a mass of DBG fans. It is the best moment to make DBG.
Did you decide to make strategic card game once you start the project? May you brief us on the procedure of turning idea into a concrete product?
NPC：
We chose strategic game once we started, so there was card combinations in the first version. Then we refined the battle performance, rhythm and the procedure. We tried to set up adventures with a trail of rooms(nods) like opening dungeon’s treasure boxes. We couldn’t fulfill its art work for now, as it was way more complex than the current version.
Then we tried the island mode, which was a bit like big escape. Players’ adventures begin at the edge of the island, heading for the center of the island. Choosing routes is the highlight of this mode, which is very playful. We project the vivid wave of the Ocean and son on. However we waived it again due to the high picture demands, which would prolong our development procedure.
Overall, it took us one year and a half to finish the product, including the time we used in upgrading versions.
Was there any interesting story in the process?
NPC：
Hahaha, as I mentioned before, we saved as much mony as possible in our diet. We tired to mix Laoganma chilli sauce with rice and noddles. We were fed up with it, and one of our programmers, Qi Yang cooked fried meat potatoes for us, we loved its taste at first, and we ate it for couples of consecutive months. There were an oversight with one potatoes, we almost had food poisoning. Finally, we resorted to takeaway service.
Qi Yang: I am the only man with cooking skill in our team, they asked me to cook potatoes for a long period as they gave high regard only to the fried potatoes. Well they started complaining about the potatoes after few months. It was outrageous. Without my potatoes, we couldn’t have saved enough money for 3-month takeaway fee.
How do you think of the “Excellence in Game Design” nomination of Indieplay?
NPC：
I didn’t expect it. I got friends in Indieplay, he released a video of some interesting games among entries in Wechat moments, our game was not included. I thought it was doomed in it, so I didn’t care for the follow up. Well, next morning, my friend sent me a screenshot that Endless Voyage had been nominated. It gave us great honor and we were not conceited as there were not much competitors in indie games section. No pains, no gains. We will keep up the good work.
The art performance is rough, may you brief us on it?
NPC：
We have no designer or sound effect producer in our team, outsourcing these work through friends. We were thrifty that we spent little in art, which led to players’ and our own discontentment. Hence, we started some crowdfunding activities for redesign, especially for the impotent heroine image, in Aifadian and others channels.
How does the crowdfunding go at Aifadian?
NPC：
We aimed to fund 30 thousand yuan, it was a lot. For now, we have received 6 thousand yuan from over 60 players, it is not even close to 30 thousand, yet we are very touched. Seeing palyers’ heartfelt supportive remarks, we are deeply grateful. We wanted to send them some game-related stuff as a gift, they refused. We would never cease updating our game in return.
Did you imploy any experience in DJI on developing indie games?
Qi Yang:
The basic technics are the same. I carried out work in DJI with its proceeding logic, basic skill and technical framework. The project in DJI is differ from indie games. In short, DJI use Unity for simulation in physics, paying little attention to amusement. From DJI, I improved my understanding and enhance my skills in Unity but it did not enlighten me of developing games. I learned many new stuff through developing indie games, like the card pattern, the releasing procedure on Steam. However the DJI spirit of pragmatism helps me overcoming difficulties in making indie games. Besides, It provided me with much experience and idea for the summoning and battle in the game through the multi-v-multi-robot competition. It is an ingenious combination differing from others DBG. Meanwhile, we also design an intelligent algorithm for recommendatory cards, which is challenging and better than players’expectation.
How many sales are you expecting?
NPC:
We are clear of the current situation of indie games, yet we are expecting for the beat-case scenario, like selling one hundred thousand copies. We are prepared for the worst: we might only sell it among our palyer groups. Well, in developers’ perspective, we should focus on upgrading our game rather than concerning about the sales, it is more effective to make improvements in our product.
What do you want to bring to your players?
NPC：
We expect players may experience 12 patterns in the game, using strategy to triumph over NPC levels. In planners’ perspective, I wish palyers could get planners thoughts and further discuss it. Besides, I would be delightful to see them getting sophisticated in the game, exploring new patterns on their own.
Finally, I viciously set up some powerful quirky NPC monsters in it, powerful enough to end palyers’life.
Are you planning for the second character? When would it release?
NPC：
We are still working on it, planning to release after the game come out. Providing players with new content in strategic card game is not an easy process, a new DLC is equivalent to making a new game, new patterns. We hope palyers could give us time for a rigorous and integrated work.
NPC & Qi Yang: Finally, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude for Xiaoheihe, much of our seed players are from Xiaoheihe. We hope there are more Xiaoheihe players in our game. Interested palyers may support us by adding it to the wish list.
