Taken - A Lovecraftian Roguelike by Old-Ones Studios

[nik0tine]

Taken

Taken is an H.P. Lovecraft-themed rogue-like. The game has black and white color pallet and an all piano soundtrack. Taken does not have any items or equipment. Combat is turn based, and driven by a unique cool-down based skill system powered by player health. There will be several environments, each containing multiple randomly generated levels. Taken's story is an original story that incorporates several H.P. Lovecraft stories into a larger fiction. (http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/taken-a-lovecraftian-roguelike-by-old-ones-studios/x/3047765)

[Shoeberto]

It's certainly a cool idea and not a huge amount being requested but I think it's inadvisable to put up a Kickstarter at all when you have nothing to show. A text description is good and all but anyone can make it sound like they're passionate developers with strong vision and blah blah blah. It takes a lot more to ship a game. I don't really see this campaign going terribly far unless they can show their potential fans that this isn't just a pipe dream.

(This goes for almost anyone trying to make a Kickstarter. I'm sure this group really does believe in their concept, but that's not enough to be successful.)

[nik0tine]

I agree with that 100%. It just makes us look like buffoons but I was being pressured by our team lead to spread the word. I sincerely doubt anyone is going to donate and I would seriously question the intelligence of anyone who did, given that presentation. I would prefer to keep things under wraps until we actually have something of substance to show, but a team is a team, and I was unanimously outvoted.

The team lead is unbanned now, though, and he can answer any questions you may have.

[Cruise Control]

So, hi. I'm Chris, I went by Cruise Control forever ago. I'm the owner of Old-Ones Studios, and the creative lead on Taken.


It's certainly a cool idea and not a huge amount being requested but I think it's inadvisable to put up a Kickstarter at all when you have nothing to show. A text description is good and all but anyone can make it sound like they're passionate developers with strong vision and blah blah blah. It takes a lot more to ship a game. I don't really see this campaign going terribly far unless they can show their potential fans that this isn't just a pipe dream.

(This goes for almost anyone trying to make a Kickstarter. I'm sure this group really does believe in their concept, but that's not enough to be successful.)This is absolutely true. As of right now, we have $125 in two days, and another $100 pending today already. To be completely honest, $500 was the minimum I could request, we only need $100 for our fee, as the majority of us are starving college students, and in my case I also have a family. As a team, we're unproven, but as individuals, I didn't involve anyone on the team who doesn't have a history of completing projects on time and to spec.
That said, we absolutely don't have nothing to show. The only thing we don't have is art assets, which is why it seems barebones. I'm expecting game and company logo within the next four days, we'll be purchasing our art tools within that window as well, and begin the production of art assets. Everything else is between 30-80% complete.
The purpose of the thread is to less ask you for money, and more just to talk about it, answer any questions, and perhaps find a spriter and a writer. Anyone interested?

[Dignified Pauper]

I have to agree with Nik. This was a silly time to start a kickstarter page. You start a kickstarter page when you have some substantial work done, screens, a trailer, and a great core concept. It's very poor planning, and it doesn't make me want to contribute. I've led a lot of projects, and the lack of unity isn't very a good thing either. Maybe Nik is being over-dramatic, but from what I saw, it seems like the Kickstarter page is a bit premature.

[black orb]

>>> Sound pretty cool, I love H.P. Lovecraft stuff.
Good luck with it..:luca:

[Prnkt]

Allow me to introduce myself. My name's Joe, and I'm working with Cruise Control and Nik0tine on Taken. I'm part of the design team and am also in charge of any community or public relations for the ongoing project. But enough about that.

Okay, so while essentially, we don't have anything tangible to show for the current project, we have made much progress on many of the things that can’t openly be shared, such as code, team growth and development, and actually founding the company. It isn’t as if we don’t have any material what so ever, we just lacked the art team to help us produce something to show off up until recently. Our art team is currently three strong and will grow with the scope of the game. As Chris said, we do still need a sprite artist or two and another writer.

Mainly, the reason we’ve turned to crowd-funding so early is just to get a general gauge of public interest. At this point, the money is a priority, but it isn’t at the top of the list of things to take care of, that’s why we are only asking the absolute minimum possible ($500) from our crowd-funding providers. We are more about building an early following. If we can get enough of our family, friends, and acquaintances interested in the project in the state that it’s in now, we should have no problem gaining momentum with the built-in fan-base that we’d have from those supporters when we do finally have stuff to show off such as concept art, gameplay footage, and the like. We may have jumped the gun a tad by starting off with crowd-funding so early, but we are only human. This is our first project as a team and we’re still working everything out. I know, it’s easy to be skeptical this early in the development stage, especially with “nothing” to show for it, but you do have to remember that Taken is still just that, in development. Some studios do things in a set way which may seem better or more logical, but we’re still adapting to the whole experience, we’re starting from scratch and things will be a little shaky at first. The point is, we will figure things out and this project will get off the ground. We aren’t looking to get rich off of our first game; we’re looking to create a game that we would not only just play, but also enjoy and be challenged by, both in development and when we finally sit down and play the final product. We’re looking to create something different, something better, and that’s why we’re just so damn excited to get word out.

As things are progressing now, we plan on having the game available on Steam early access on August 29, 2013. If you have any questions at all, feel free to ask and we will do our best to build your confidence in our abilities.

[Shoeberto]

I definitely understand the desire to generate buzz, but I don't think Kickstarter is a good venue for that. I think if nik had come here and posted a link to a dev blog and asked for feedback, it would have generated more of a positive response than a KS project. Even now, you can see how a thread that could've been discussing your game concept has been derailed into talking about the nature of Kickstarter.

That said, I think it is a cool idea. I see nothing wrong with your concept, and frankly it's something I would be interested in playing. Without seeing any gameplay, it's hard to give much more feedback than that, but I will say that I think Greenlight might be too ambitious right now until you can generate more buzz. It's kind of an unproven platform and so far officially greenlit games have only trickled out, and those are games with popularity that has spread like wildfire.

I think the best approach for indies to take when they're new to the industry is to do small, free releases and try to get coverage from outlets like Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The problem is that there's just SO many new projects coming out every day that it's really easy to get lost in the crowd, and I think doing (essentially) a cold call to the community to Greenlight your game is going to be a hard sell.

For now, I'd focus on getting something together to the point you can do a gameplay trailer for it, then throw it to places like Reddit or RPS and see what sticks. If you don't get a response, keep working on it, do another, rinse, repeat. Keep working until you hit release time, and even if it hasn't exploded in popularity, throw it out there.

There's a good chance you won't see the level of adoption you were looking for, but building and shipping your first product is the first step in growing to make the next one even better. Don't be discouraged. The only two consistent principles I've seen between all of the big indie breakthroughs in the past few years are 1) be passionate 2) be persistent. Those two will take you pretty far.

[Cruise Control]

That's helpful. I personally selected EoFF because I've had some experience with the community, and could potentially be our target audience, so we're also learning how to handle our messaging. I'm the only one the team with any public relations experience, but not representing software. So this was also a huge messaging test and its been valuable for shaping our tone and marketing strategy. We're targeting 10k sales. I'm aiming rather low.

[Shoeberto]

That's helpful. I personally selected EoFF because I've had some experience with the community, and could potentially be our target audience, so we're also learning how to handle our messaging. I'm the only one the team with any public relations experience, but not representing software. So this was also a huge messaging test and its been valuable for shaping our tone and marketing strategy. We're targeting 10k sales. I'm aiming rather low.
I would really recommend doing research on small indie titles and what they did or didn't do to be successful. I think it'll be risky to go into this attempt to do a formal marketing approach. The community has shown itself to be fairly unresponsive to typical marketing strategies unless you're a proven studio. Most of the successful titles I've seen in the past years have been very organic in the way they sold themselves, and with the market being as saturated as it is right now, it's going to be very hard to get visibility. It'd be better to just be open and transparent about your progress and passion and come across with a lot of humility (not to say you lack that) than to try and sell it with a particular "message." Sincerity works a lot better than shininess.

[Cruise Control]

Shouldn't be terribly difficult. I have a changelog doc that gets edited when anyone does any work, so PRNKT could easily blog it. Any recommendations on blog platforms? In terms of transparency, we're spread across the country and we use skydrive. All of our contributors who gave ten dollars or more get shared and can just view every single thing about the game. I just did it because I'm into design, so I figure someone else is.

[Shoeberto]

When I mentioned transparency, I just meant using a blog to push progress updates, screenshots, whatever. The service you use can be just about whatever you want. I think Notch mostly uses Tumblr for Minecraft updates, but Wordpress is a good option too. It doesn't have to necessarily be every single thing you produce, but communication with your potential fans is important.

[Dignified Pauper]

As someone who has helped with indie campaigns previously, I have to agree with basically everything Shoeberto is saying.

I'm not certain how you expect to generate a following or buzz when you don't have any content to show, but just a concept to share. Sure, it sounds like it could be a cool idea, but outside of an idea, no one really invests in an idea. People invest in what they are shown, and growth.

A dev blog would be really helpful, just to get a better understanding of concept AND a better idea of when you can post screens that things like that. Even little teaser pics of a title screen can go a long way.