Mael’s Crew – announcing new project

Mael’s Crew is a game that we’re currently developing and we plan to release it on a number of platforms: browser, iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. The team working on this project currently consists of only 2 people; ANtY, graphic designer, and peous, Unity programmer.

The player assumes the role of Mael, the son of a mighty Evil Lord, who, on his 18th birthday was cast out of his home. He needs now to establish his own dungeon and defend the treasures within from the greedy knights, priests, and paladins who wish to take them from him.

Fortunately, he has a lot of influence amongst creatures both grim and vile thanks to his  father, the mightiest of Evil Lords. He’ll be able to convince (err… to hire) all kinds of monsters to help him defend his dungeon.

The Mael’s crew rises!

Gameplay in Mael’s Crew is quite similar to Tower Defence games, but with some notable differences:

•     You’re the bad guy, and you fight the Heroes. (reverted Diablo )
•     There are no towers, only monsters.
•     You can move your units after you have placed them on the map.
•     Your units fight the enemy and can be killed

there is more, but not everything is discussed yet and we want to draw the curtain on at least to some point.

What is indie and what is not

What is indie, this question was asked many times in multiple places by multiple people over the Internet. But there were no clear answer to this that everyone could agree with. There are as many definitions of indie as many people trying to define it. Everyone’s also trying to stretch this definition to fit their needs, as we can see in the example where Epic Games says that they’re indie, the same goes with CD Projekt (The Witcher and The Witcher 2, they’re also the biggest games publisher in Poland).

Is it only me that can’t stand seeing an article about workplaces of indie developers with CD Projekt’s office just after the Supergiant’s (Bastion) one?

 

Some people think that definition of indie is just as simple as the word’s that it comes from – independent. Sadly it ain’t that easy, or maybe not sadly because then we’d have to search for a new word to call that certain group of developers. If it’d be that simple then EA would also be an indie, why not? They are not dependent on anyone, they’re at the top of the ladder. Of course most of indie developers are independent at the same time but not all of them, not all independent developers are indie at the same time too. In the second category I’d put CD Projekt and Epic Games, maybe they’re on the top of the ladder and they develop games by themselves (wouldn’t be so sure about CD Projekt, it’s game developing studio is called CD Projekt RED so they’re still below the main CD Projekt company, right?) but does it mean that they’re indie? Nope, at least not for me.  Did you ever see one of those guys on TIGSource?* Maybe on IndieDB? Can you name a person that made The Witcher? Are they small? Are they easily accessible? Does each employee in those companies have anything to say about the game’s final outcome? Would an indie developer call his teammates employees? No, by any means.

Let’s get back to the first category now, there are games like Bastion, Super Meat Boy or FEZ. All of them were published by Microsoft in the first place. Does having a publisher over them make them faceless companies that develop AAAgames? I don’t think so. Funding or publishing doesn’t change anything in my way of thinking and judging. If it’d be like this games funded by Indie Fund would have to move out from indie category. Crazy, isn’t it? So, assuming that we agree on this we can easily see that publisher doesn’t matter when deciding who’s indie. Following this we can see that the fact that CD Projekt published The Witcher 2 by themselves has no meaning.

 

With all this knowledge we can sort developers without any problem. I’m not giving you a simple one-line definition of indie because it wouldn’t have any sense, instead I’m trying to show you the whole way of thinking about what is indie and what isn’t. The simplest guide to follow in sorting these developers would be some kind of table with some already labeled amount of companies and you could compare the one you aren’t sure about to the ones in the table. Is Epic Games indie? Let’s see… Blizzard isn’t and Epic is more similar to it than to Oxeye Games, right? Seems simple to me (not that it’s because I came up with this imaginary table ).

The only think I’m still wondering about is Notch, is Mojang still indie? When they act like a publisher for other indie company? Not sure about it but I don’t feel like deciding atm.

I feel like I’m done with this matter for now, cheers.

 

 __________

Relevant quote from TeeGee – MoaCube (MAGI, Co-op, Cinders)

Rune Masters’ development anniversary!

Hey guys, I just wanted to say that yesterday was the game’s development’s anniversary! So it’s already a year since I started developing it, so nostalgic ^^

Not much changed but here we go with a new screenie:

New, fresh look

Hey guys, sorry for the long absence!

A lot of people were telling us that the game is too hard, we also noticed that it’d fit well iPad and iPhone. We worked a lot to make the game more  appealing for casual players. We also thought of a new business model suiting new platforms. Rune Masters will be free to play and there will be a donate button for all those players that liked our game. Coming to your iDevice soon!

 

New ultra-big update

We took under consideration every little piece of feedback that we’ve received from players and implemented it in the game (although there are still a few things that need to be changed immediately). We are very happy to bring this update to light and we assure you that next update will be even better as there are some big features waiting to get on board.

 

 

Anyway, the changelog:

 ———–0.4.0——————-
-New background: Mountains
-New enemy: Knight
-New enemy: Ape Warrior
-New enemy: Scare Guardian
-Remade graphic: Guard Captain
-Remade graphic: Scout
-Remade graphic: Trigoth Hunter
-Remade graphic: Priest
-Remade graphic: Master of Arms
-New cut-scene: after beating Priest
-Reworked Classic Mode
-Fixed Classic Mode bugs
-Three pot icons instead of first 3 scores in Classic Mode
-You can change profiles without restarting the game (right top corner in main menu)
-Fixed bug with 2 profiles with the same name
-Fixed bug with clicking 2 buttons at the same time (Close -> Pick)
-Not showing stars after beating the same enemy once again
-Changed the shape of Earth spell
-Changed the way you get mana, from smashing bottles you earn much less than before but you regenerate 1MP each turn
-Fixed jumping gems
-Lost battle gives you 20% EXP now
-You can’t fight with a enemy with a grey mark now
-Balanced Strength, now melee (not magic) attacks deal normal damage
-Fixed bug with Windows XP
-Mana bottles spawn more rarely
-Notifications of dealt melee damage, spell damage, spell heal and mana earned
-Balanced Fire spell
-Fixed bugs with saving and profiles
-A LOT OF BALANCE

 

This update is only available in the pre-order version (to update the game just launch it on via updater), you can still try the old demo though:

or pre-order the game on Desura:

Interview with CDS on TAKE initiative

Our interview with TAKE initiative just went online, you can read it under this link, here’s a little quote:

We caught up with Max ‘Waxx’ Strzelecki the lead programmer; Dushan ‘ANtY’ Chaciej the lead artist, lead designer and director; Tom ‘Regg’ Mirowski the artist/designer and Chris ‘JitterBones’ Sinnott the audio designer to discuss how they have handled being an indie developer and what their plans are for the future and their first release title Rune Masters.

Short summary with our pre-order experience

It hasn’t been long since we’ve released Rune Masters pre-orders but it was long enough to share our latest experiences with you, our dear readers

So, we’ve posted news with a pre-order link on 14th February. To make it happen I was sleeping 4 hours a day for a week and worked hard as hell, the second one goes with waxx (programmer guy) too.  The day after this we’ve also released a trailer which was made by my cousin in 4-6 hours, thanks god he’s so fast ^^

Next day passed and we’ve released our game on Desura and uploaded a demo of the game for everyone to test it (which was a great idea).

 

Classic mode GUI concept

Then we started gathering actual feedback from Polish people that played the demo, we’ve shared link to the demo version on English forums too but people didn’t seem interested much. Anyway we realized that most players really like the game after playing but they think that it sucks before. After only watching the trailer they say things like “Bad Puzzle Quest’s clone”, “I saw better flash games”, etc.

So we need to make people interested in the game by only watching trailer / reading it’s description, it’ll be a hard task though

Anyway, after releasing pre-orders on Desura we made some actual sales, overall not more than 10 but it’s always something, counting that it’s our first commercial game and we didn’t make any popular freeware game earlier, that we didn’t get covered on any English website and that those are pre-orders, not final release.

About press, we’ve sent email to many English websites covering indie games (RPS, DIYgamer, indiegames.com and some others) and to some Polish ones too. We didn’t get any response from English sites, they didn’t even read our emails… That’s kinda depressing, what can we do to get noticed on English forums/websites, we’ve got only 2 comments on the demo version on TIGSource forums, our thread on indiegamer.com with announcement of the game didn’t even get approved and our emails weren’t read, pff  >.<

While we got covered on Polish sites and many people saw our game and our trailer and some even played the demo and liked it, it didn’t make any sales for us. Looks like one can’t count on Polish countrymen to buy his game, obviously because indie games aren’t popular here and even buying AAA games isn’t popular in Poland. On the contrary some people from IndieDB/Desura bought it even if we had 0 (zero) coverage on international part of the Internet.

So there won’t be a translated to Polish version of the game for sure.

 

Cool special effect that's not gonna make it to the game

In the following week we’ve wasted a lot of time talking with publishers but I didn’t find any of their offers reasonable enough to make a deal with them, we’re gonna release this game by ourselves and thus our next games too. Everything went back to slow pace and so we used that time to rest and get ready to continue actual development. On the beginning of the next week there should be a new update for pre-order version, more info soon.

This should make a little buzz on IndieDB and hopefully make some sales

 

If you’d like to know some more details about anything just ask, we’re willing to share our thoughts and experiences, just dunno what could interest anybody yet, see you!

Rune Masters: DEMO version

Hi guys!

For all the people out there still not sure whether invest some money into pre-order we have a treat that should(!) please you. Demo version we offer includes beginning of story mode with 3 characters available as well as classic mode (although please note that UI will change). Hope you enjoy it! Feedback will be appreciated and don’t hesitate to buy the game now and receive all the updates leading to final release.

Visit Navaroth. Play Rune Masters.

Click here to download the demo (47 MB)

 

Rune Masters alpha on Desura!

Rune Masters Pre-order Trailer