1) Small talk:
Hi, everyone.
I’d like to start this by introducing you to our team.
I’m the leader of our small developer team. My first game was Twists of my life and I first started working on it in TyranoBuilder engine. Shortly afterwards I’ve found a coder, and he helped me build it with Ren’Py.
Our coder’s been a big influence on how we approach the question of making games. He was the one to suggest making ToML’s story less linear and adding elements of open world. Sadly, at that time, I didn’t have enough experience, and it all resulted in an infamous line about «beacon and eggs» which is well-known in small circles. However, what I value the most about that game is that it’s given me that priceless experience which I was able to use when working on VC’s first episode.
The biggest issue with our coder is the fact that he’s working on two projects. That means we can’t give him new tasks all the time. That in turns slows the whole process of resolving some questions. Sometimes we need him to do something urgent for us, but at the same time he’s really busy with his other project. We’ve tried looking for coders who would help our main coder, but the end result was a failure. Coders (at least those who work with Ren’Py) have a hard time working with someone else’s code. Most of the time, they’d have to code everything from scratch, otherwise there’d be bugs and it’s not so easy to find a bug in a code that’s not yours.
By the time when we were almost done with ToML, our current main writer joined the team. With him we wrote the main concept of VC. By the way, what you can see in the first episode is drastically different from our initial view of the game. A lot of things that now stand out like a sore thumb are actually the remnants of that old view of the game. Even characters and their role in the game was changed during the course of the development. Nevertheless, the general plan for the game is written, and we know how we’re going to end this story and guide our main character to the finale of his journey.
Anyway, let’s get back to our team.
I’m responsible for graphics, game design and partly for the script.
Shortly after the release of VC’s first episode, a girl joined our team. She quickly realized what’s what and started actively working on the script. If our main writer’s a sucker for something grand and serious, she’s responsible for all the «crazy stuff» in the game. «Can we add a monster that would have an additional torso growing right from his own body…» Damn, if only my abilities could match her wishes… «The Void» would be truly horrifying then.
By the way, it was her idea to add interactive events. What’s funny is that I was a bit skeptical about this whole idea at first. I was worried about how troublesome it’d be to add this to the game. In order to add renders to all the written text, I’m left with no choice but to simplify and automate as many processes as possible. However, in case of QTE you need to carefully position everything, which means doing most of the work manually.
That scene with Fuhrim that you can pass in approximately 30 seconds, well, I’ve spent a week and a half working on it. In the end, I gave this idea a try, and I liked what I saw when testing the game. It adds immersion to the game.
We also have a translator, an editor (who also happens to be our all-time moderator), an animator (who joined us just recently), and a girl for post editing.
2) Devlog:
After the release, we basically didn’t write anything on Steam or Patreon. It was due to an extreme fatigue. Just so you understand, in order to release the game in early access we had to rebuild the whole game, and so those three months prior to release were a complete crunch.
However, it doesn’t mean we’ve been just slacking off. The anger that I got so saturated with actually gave me strength. I haven’t even realized how quickly I managed to render seven events. Most of them are about Ilga and some castle events; currently I’m rendering renders for alternative branches. Overall, the work’s progressing very nicely so far. I won’t announce any release dates though. Many players haven’t even read the post about «early access» because I’ve seen so many funny comments. The update will be released as one big patch and that will happen only when everything’s done and ready.
3) Q&A
1) Rough, rough estimate of EP.3 release? 6 months? 1 year? 2 years?
The episode 3 isn’t even in the works yet, so it’s too early to talk about that. Even the second episode is not fully finished yet, it’s still in early access. We hope to release it as a full game in about 6 months from now.
2) I hope that there will be more dialogues, more about history of the world, maybe some adventure quests where you can find legendary armour or sword or something like that.
Yes, all of that will be added to the game. The new core mechanics are there, now we just need to focus on the story.
3) Are you planning to make an option to skip the minigames?
We’ll give you more time to react to QTE on easy difficulty, so that people who have health problems can play the game. There’ll be no option to completely skip QTE.
4) How many seasons there will be?
We planned to make three episodes, but we haven’t been able to get to the crucial story point in time, and so there’ll be four of them. Our love for big events sometimes plays a dirty trick with us. I’m trying to make sure that writers focus on small events as much as possible. But we need big ones too, it’s just that we can’t allow ourselves to make a whole lot of them anymore.
5) Will there be any changes to the combat system in the future or is it done?
We don’t plan on making any changes to it, only expanding it further. We plan to add perks, amulets, maybe some expansion of the rune system for sword.
6) When is the next update?
The next update will be the full release of second episode. As for release dates, it’s approximately half a year from now, maybe more.
7) Will you add new characters in episode 2?
We don’t add new characters if there’s no need for them. We already have plenty of characters to work with.
8) Will you add an official guide?
There’s already a guide in the corresponding thread.
Since there weren’t that many questions, I’ll give some comments about the feedback we’ve received:
9) Who thought it was a good idea to add interactive elements to the game?
Try searching for what a hybrid game is. You might be surprised. Tell me, why aren’t you surprised to see animations in the game? They don’t fit the genre of “interactive book”. It’s a bit of double standard.
There are interactive books and interactive movies. Both these genres go hand in hand. As a big fan of Quantic Dream, I’ve always been interested in similar game mechanics, and so I’ll keep working with them. Maybe one day I’ll be able to leave the genre of interactive books, and this will be a useful experience for me.
10) We won’t buy your game. We’ll ruin your ratings, so you go broke.
Okay.
We’re actually quite pleased with the sales of early access. I live in a very humble way, I don’t spend that much money which means I have a pretty good safety cushion, which will allow my team to keep operating without any sales at all for a long time. But we do have sales even now, when the ratings have been «bombed». And I’m not talking about just the second episode, even ToML is still selling rather well.
Is it possible that we stop operating? Yes. What will we do if that happens?
I want to give you an example from my past.
Before we got on Steam, we only had Patreon. And we didn’t have that much success there. We had miserable income which wasn’t enough for anything. ToML was cheap in production. I was responsible for story and renders + I had a coder with a translator. And the game was a simple, linear VN. When we were making ToML, we often had messages coming from people saying something like “no incest – no money”. However, that didn’t affect us in anyway, and we just kept doing what we were doing, even though we knew we could get some easy money that way.
When we were done with ToML, it was time to move on to VC. That’s when I hired a new writer. It means that the production cost has risen, and the income sunk even lower. At some point I told my coder that I’m done. We make one last update and that’s it. I’ve been thinking for a long time to apply for Zbrush training courses and maybe land a job in some big project. Even now we discuss the prospects of releasing an isometric RPG or interactive movie, but of course, it’s all just dreams and fantasies at this point. We don’t have enough money nor experience for that now, but it’s not forbidden to have dreams. And it’s not because it’ll mean a bigger revenue for us, but because it’s interesting to work on something as big as that.
However, it was at that time when Steam allowed erotic content and we decided to release our finished game ToML on this platform. It was a big surprise for us when it started bringing us good money. So, we kept working.
And when people cite other games with clear focus on porn and compare us with them, they should realize that we have a bit different view on these things. We aren’t better than those who make interactive porn nor are we any morally higher than them; we just keep doing what we think is right for us. It’s not because it brings us more money, but because we’re just simply ashamed to do otherwise. A lot of people tell us that we position our games similarly to all the other adult games, where the game is just porn with some context.
Let me ask you, when’d we do that? I mean, the renders you see on screenshots are present in the game. It adds to the sales, but can it really be considered a misleading information about the game? The scene with vampires is an enormous scene with 12 big animations and a huge number of renders. Yes, we have that in our game. However, if you take a closer look, you’ll see that our game doesn’t have that many fetishes, there are a lot of dialogues and even more events whose whole purpose is to progress the story. All of this you can read in the description of the game; no one’s promised you a different game. Everything’s right there in the description.
For example, the writer sent me three events the other day. I tell him: «Listen, we could add one erotic event here where she’d show her breasts». He asks me: «Wouldn’t that be too much of erotic content?». After that, I tell him: «Four to one ratio sounds good to me». And it’s just breasts. The whole writing team has such vision of the game, not just me.
And with all that in mind, our vision of the game sometimes differs regarding different aspects, and we’re forced to look for compromises. The coder told me the other day: «I wouldn’t play a game with QTE in it». And to that I told him: «I can’t play your game without cheats because there’s too much grinding in it for my taste». It’s totally fine that someone doesn’t like our game, but many just started throwing insults. At some point, I was ready to find a compromise, but because of all this, I’ve now taken a position of principle and that’s it. I’m like a mountain now, nothing will change my mind.
Moreover, we can be very critical to each other in our team. It’s fine. We have a person in our team who thinks that games are bad in general. It doesn’t bother me, and I keep working and even talking to that person. We can take constructive criticism, but we won’t tolerate unconstructive and hateful messages.
That’s it, I guess. A lot of what I said is off topic, but I just love writing such news posts.
Thanks everyone and take care.