Hey everybody

Hey everybody.

We’d prefer to introduce the sport we’re engaged on and likewise get your ideas.

This recreation is a visible novel / interactive story a couple of younger lady looking for her personal id and sense of self. The story offers together with her internal conflicts, pivotal moments in her life, and psychological depth. The participant confronts her previous and selections, shaping the story’s course by their choices. It has a darkish and melancholic ambiance, nevertheless it’s additionally very thought-provoking and emotional. Our essential aim is to create an expertise that encourages gamers to empathize with the character and replicate on related questions in their very own lives.

As you’ll be able to see within the 1-2nd picture, our recreation consists of scenes set in a post-apocalyptic world. The ambiance options ruined buildings, deserted areas, and a robust sense of loneliness.

The picture itself exhibits what you’ll be able to consider as a type of interlude mini-game. Right here, our little lady imagines herself as a princess from a fairy story she heard from her previous historical past instructor. She envisions herself occurring sure adventures on this section. Gamers can select to play this half or skip it—it affords about 10–quarter-hour of non-compulsory gameplay.

One other picture exhibits a tough draft of an underground bunker she encounters throughout her essential journey. The bunker continues to be in growth; doorways, interactive objects, decorations, and atmospheric components will probably be added later.

We need to be very clear about this:

Results, NPCs, animations, and interactable areas should not but full. They’re in a tough, placeholder state that we’ll proceed to refine.

Lighting and fog results will probably be added, and the backgrounds will probably be modified to replicate a extra sensible, dwelling world.

The elements you see within the screenshots are literally simply small sections of very massive maps.

Our recreation continues to be in growth and there’s much more we plan so as to add. Maps and animations will probably be way more polished and visually interesting. We’re aiming for a mean of two–3 hours of story that may be completed in a single sitting however will really feel wealthy and substantial. We’re additionally engaged on about 20 new maps. We would like gamers to consistently discover new areas with out having to see the identical location time and again.

However right here’s the place we’re struggling: Our recreation is definitely designed for cellular platforms. Nonetheless, nearly all of cellular gamers are inclined to want a lot of these video games:

Easy and fast-paced informal video games Aggressive and socially interactive video games Idle/auto-play mechanics with reward-heavy programs Battle Royale, MOBA, or different action-heavy, short-session video games

Our recreation is the exact opposite: story-driven, atmospheric, and designed to immerse the participant within the expertise. This mechanically guidelines out a lot of the cellular participant base and limits our potential downloads.

Promoting-based monetization can also be problematic for us as a result of we don’t need to wreck the story expertise. In narrative-heavy video games, in-app buy charges additionally are typically very low (often round 1–3%, which means only one–3 out of 100 gamers purchase one thing). We’re contemplating an non-compulsory donation system on the finish of the sport, however that often has an excellent decrease conversion fee (round 0.5% or much less). So even the gamers we do attain are prone to generate restricted income.

Additionally, visibility within the Play Retailer is fairly restricted organically. It doesn’t matter what we do with key phrases, we anticipate the natural obtain numbers to remain low.

That is the place we’re torn.

Making this recreation is extraordinarily demanding. Animations, maps, dialogue, results—all of it takes severe effort. However the income is nearly nonexistent.

On one hand, we actually need to make video games that provide significant, immersive experiences like this. However, there are less complicated, faster-to-make “informal” cellular recreation concepts that might attain much more folks and earn considerably extra.

We’re curious what you suppose. Do you suppose it is sensible to complete this venture with a lot effort? Or wouldn’t it be higher to shift towards less complicated however extra profitable recreation concepts?

Thanks prematurely to everybody who takes the time to learn and share their ideas. ❤️