Just in short, a longer report will follow, soon. But you can now kickstart TRI together with 8 other indie games.
Tag «Tri»
The pros and cons of making a game alpha
Although games, websites or software in beta state always have the touch of banana software ("ripens at the customer's"), testing and using a feature-complete, but buggy version is popular these days. You don't even recognize the "beta"-button anymore.
In contrast to the beta, the alpha version of a game lacks the implementation of most features, levels or functions. The game is just a skeleton that needs to be fleshed out and wrapped into a nice skin, before anyone can estimate where this new thing will walk to. Some developers go even so far to present just a grid you can walk on as a first gameplay demo.
How did game development come this far, to sell even the slightest appearance of gameplay? Are we that desperate? And why do so many of these pre-pre-alphas pop-up these days?
Coincidentally I'm one of them, selling my game in an early development phase. Although we fuel a culture of incompleteness with this approach, that - above all when it comes to indie games - creates a certain reputation, I try to give you some insights on my opinion about alphas.
The customer
First of all - why should a player be bothered with this early versions? This is a question you should ask yourself when you sell an unfinished product. Your argumentation should be clear, more so if you want money for your game-to-be-made. If you have fans that really wait for your game, this will make some things easier:
- Discount
- Have a clear vision what your game will be worth when it's finished, to give a visible discount (e.g. 50% off). Players love discounts and get a price deduction for their patience and trust in your upcoming game project.
- "Try it before it's finished!"
- Only those players who fund you will be able to try your gameplay in this early state. This is convincing if you have gameplay that is unique and fans that are eager to try it. Why should players wait a year, when they can have a piece of this tasty cake now? Just make clear what features the current version contains and which one will be added with future updates.
- "Fund your developer <3"
- An appreciating fanbase and people loving to support your kind of games is awesome! If you already have fans, you should communicate why you need the money and what you need it for.
- Many developers therefore use different alpha packages in regular priced and higher priced versions with more extras like soundtrack, artworks, etc. For example, Tale of Tales are quite successful with the "extravagant" version of their upcoming Bientôt l'été, which costs $32 instead of the regular $8.
- "Participate in game our development!"
- How much you want your players to be part of the development process is your decision, but don't use this argument only because it sounds good. People love to bring in themselves with opinions and solutions. If you ask them to take part, you must not ignore that in updates.
- We did a survey about the good, the bad and the ugly right in the beginning.
- "Watch the evolution of a game!"
- Regularly updated alphas are a playable time-lapse. With every update the vision gets clearer, more beautiful and filled with textures, characters and decoration (well, at least that's our plan). Many people love to take a look behind the scenes. Combined with blogging and video documentation it is interesting how a game evolves.
Although I am a game designer, I am a player myself, too. I have stabs at many alphas and love to play upcoming and promising games in this early state. Playing games before even the press got an eye on these games!
One argument that really kills all the above enumerated pros is one contra though: Players will never have the certainty that a game they bought will get finished! The more alphas are out there, the more developers will occur that abort their projects or never show up again.
We hope to eliminate this impression by updates and postings. Even if there will be a bigger pause of development because of different engagements or other circumstances, you should communicate this to your players.
The developer
But to be honest: The one that benefits most from an alpha is the developer, of course. There are many arguments to sell your game before it's finished:
- Fund your game!
- Naturally, there won't be that much coverage about an alpha than a finished game. It's hard to really get recognized, taken seriously and funded in this state! We would need to sell 800 copies a month to really be independent from doing contract work (with the current price of $5 for TRI and extremely economized lifestyle).
- But it is possible and we try to achieve that with the next updates, hopefully.
- Marketing is easier step-by-step
- When it comes to marketing, I make tons of mistakes. Writing press releases too late, forgetting that things need to be tested or news need to be approved by certain sites. Timing is something I'll never learn!
- In my opinion marketing an alpha game is easier. You failed to write about your last update? There will be another one soon that makes everything better, with cool character art and exclusive environmental decoration updates.
- Selling a game in the moment it comes out proves to be extremely difficult. Everything has to fit in this certain time frame. With the alpha you are able to try out different approaches in marketing and failures are not that much punished with ignorance.
- Feedback and play-test
- An immense advantage of our alpha version is the survey we are doing. Many people participated by answering what they liked, hated and where they got stuck. Of cause we did do play-tests at our headquarter with friends. But having more than 10 people testing it by their own desire (instead of being forced by friendship) is priceless!
- Aside from that you can check if your game really interests anybody or if you better cut development for your own good.
- Get rid of mistakes in an early phase of development!
- You are not sure if people might like certain features or you recognize that 'some' people stumble upon certain obstacles? With every update your game will get better. There is no need of perfection in the first place. But the game should, of course, be playable and deliver an impression of what lies beyond this first version!
Why you should not publish your game at (pre-)alpha state:
This arguments sound like alpha release is totally convenient for everybody. We all should push our games on the market unfinished!? Needless to say, there are many reasons to NOT do so.
- Losing your reputation.
- If you don't have one - don't worry, I guess the alpha release will serve you well. But if you are famous for highly polished, good-looking games you should consider to not make a pre-alpha for your customers.
- Another example of losing a good reputation is getting bad reviews after a long delay, which happened to "Survivors of Ragnarök", a cute pixel-graphics sand-box city-building-management-survival game. The developers are selling their game in alpha state, but couldn't afford to do updates and bug-fixes all the time, which annoyed many fans and ended up in unnecessarily bad reviews on Desura!
- Haters gonny hate, always, even with well-managed communication and updates. If you can't stand this kind of critics or criticism - don't do an alpha release!
- "This game is finished?"
- ... is something you might hear when your communication fails that this game is alpha state. Many people judge your game - even knowing that this is not the final version - by what they see now. Some players could be alienated by buggy versions, sluggish controls, destroyed savegames or crappy textures.
- "Can you change this now?"
- The more players your game has, the more requests of changing certain issues you might get. If you sell your game that early means permanently updating your game for public testers and players.
- If you think writing blog posts and delivering playable builds is annoying while developing a game, selling an alpha version is definitely not what you want to do!
Platforms
Although we recommend using your own website for alpha sale, we also use Desura to sell our unfinished game. Indievania allows alpha and beta release (and even prototypes), too, but be aware: the more platforms you choose to publish, the bigger the hassle is to make sure every player is up to date.
- Desura
- - update info through client service
- - own category for alphas
- - different alpha editions permitted
- - fees: 15-30%
- Indievania
- - update info through client service
- - games can be marked with "prototype", "alpha", "beta"
- - no fees for normal price
While 15-30% of your price stays at Desura, you might gain more attention thanks to them, especially because they got a useful direct connection to IndieDB.
Conclusion
Alpha funding doesn't work for us at the moment, even though we try achieve this with future updates. But our game highly benefits from the feedback we gained in the first weeks, especially after evaluating the survey. Through web analysis and conversion rates we know that the game itself works fine, but we need to have better graphics and gameplay videos. The current ones look a bit underwhelming or don't show enough gameplay features for most people.
Without the closed alpha and its demo we wouldn't get that many honest criticism and attention. Like I mentioned above, all these alpha versions floating around might create a certain reputation of incompleteness for indies, but on the other hand it's our independence to use everything to make OUR game if it wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Hopefully I introduced alphas to you well, or changed your mind about them (in which way whatsoever).
TRI will cost around $10 and is available 50% off at the moment on our website
tri-game.com and on Desura.
More alphas I recommend
- Against the Wall (3D Platformer)
- Under the Ocean (Sand-box-survival-building game)
- Survivors of Ragnarök (Sand-box-survival-building game)
- Gnomoria (Dwarf-Fortress inspired)
- Towns (Real-Time Strategy)
- Gnoblins (RPG)
- Lemma (Action-Adventure, Mirror's Edge inspired)
- Kairo (Adventure, Exploration)
- Bientôt l'été (Tale of Tales game)
TRI now!
TRI in a week!
Yes, that's right - TRI will be available on July the 4th, everywhere on the world known as the Indie Day, where Indie Developers come out of their caves and show around what they're working on. (Well, at least that's a nice fantasy.) In our case, that's TRI!
The game is still in the making (pre-alpha state), but we're going to release a tech demo and open up pre-orders at July 4th: the price will be $5 for the beginning, which is 50% off the planned price of $10 for the full game - moreover, you'll get access to the pre-alpha builds!
More information about the game and the pre-order can be found on the official site: www.tri-game.com
#04 – TRI – Play-testing and a dogma
Just 1.5 weeks and the TRI pre-alpha plus demo will be out! This means testing, testing, testing. This article is about what makes TRI so special and which problems it breeds, too.
Typical pre-alpha problems
We decided to make TRI as early available as possible. Not only to fund our development, but also to get feedback for game design decisions we made. To provide a smooth pre-alpha experience in this early state of development, we tested as much as possible.
Here are some thoughts I had on game design elements and a certain dogma we developed over the time.
1. "What is the goal of this game?"
The biggest problem we faced in our pre-alpha was motivation and a clear main goal, which is mostly the same thing. The main goal is some kind of McGuffin which triggers the player, like “Rescue the princess!”. It is not really necessary, but with it you can build a chain of suspense – as soon as the player reaches one spot, lead him to the next one ("Your princess is in another castle!", haha). This could be the motivation.
But more important for me is the flow that happens when you fully become one with the gameplay. Which was enough for us playing around, as we knew what the game is about. We had a story in mind, but totally focused on gameplay. Because of that at some point the testers wondered what the game is about and what they're doing.
Our early testers started without knowing who they are in the game, where they were and what they should do. Amnesia? Shouldn't that be enough to just find out what's going on and explore? … no!
Although the starting area is linear and very streamlined, people need a certain motivation – where they are heading to and why. Some kind of progress bar with story.
Although gameplay alone should be enjoyable, you might give the players some starting mission/quest/task to let them know where they are heading to. This keeps up motivation and helps finding a way through dead ends (and even recognizing those dead ends).
2. Feedback and rewards
Implementing sounds is very often the most neglected thing about games. Just adding walk-sounds give the player the impression she really is 'in' the game, first of all in a game where you can't see the character you are playing.
But there are also feedback sounds that are really needed because of our puzzles. Switches, doors, laser beams and little ghosts (Kami) appear repeatedly. Without sounds people often don't recognize that there is something happening at all. Or that a certain element changes its status (from open to closed, activated to deactivated).
Even if the sounds you have at the beginning seem shitty, you should implement them to help your players.
Another feedback is light or markers. In our game we have special switches to open doors: you have to assemble crystal holders with a crystal to guide light rays through them. Which means they have three different phases of activation: 1. The crystal is just lying around (no light). 2 The crystal gets a bit illuminated after combining it with the holder. 3. After sending a ray through it, a sparkling particle effect appears.
In the early tests players put the crystals into the holders, expecting that this was enough. But we want more from them - activation through the light rays!
Those mechanics enable some fun puzzles, but also needed proper feedback in the game to tell the player that there still is something to do: there is an empty pedestal – find a crystal and put it on the pedestal – AND activate the crystal via a light beam by deflecting it – only then a door opens or so.
Give objects as much feedback effects as possible. Sounds don't just add atmosphere, they are often necessary to communicate progress. Of course, without stupid flying cameras showing the goal or pop ups informing you about your next target.
3. Design of game objects
As you might have read, our game is mainly inspired by games like Portal (puzzles, first-person mechanics), Thief (level design) and Zelda (puzzles). Although TRI uses typical game elements like levers, doors, switches – things to activate and deactivate, we have the entitlement to integrate these game elements as naturally as possible. Which means that they shouldn't blink spastically or permanently rotate around themselves, but players still should immediately recognize which elements are those to interact with.
This was and still is a great task for us. Portal, for example, used huge switches on the floor plus stripes that lead to the doors they activate. Those game helpers are extremely clever, but also very clumsy. (You can get away with it, though, when you call your levels “test chambers”.)
It is always a challenge for game designers to combine a reality the game tries to create with game objects that convey rules.
Modern games disappoint me, primarily the photo-realistic ones, which try to re-build reality with floating weapons waiting for you to grab them and huge arrows darting in the direction you have to take. Less seems to be never enough, sadly, but it is our duty to find out what is enough for players, before using clumsy out-of-the-world game objects like giant arrows.
4. Non-linear versus linear
Something that most of our games have in common is a certain non-linearity. This means that our level design or decisions a gamer is able to make will always be as free as possible. We hate invisible colliders, tube-like levels and decisions that unnecessarily limit your creativity. This sounds cool, but is also very ambitious and hard to convert into gameplay. Particularly when gamers these day start loving their tubes.
With TRI we try to master the balance act of free choice and leading level design. How accessible do we want the game to be? How many elements should get activated automatically?
We decided that creating your own platforms wherever and whenever you want should be enough non-linearity, at least at the beginning of the game. Because it is important to understand the game and its basic elements without too much distractions, the layout of the first few levels is still fairly linear.
The look of game objects and the decision whether a game is linear or not, is determined by your choice of target audience. Casual players with not too much time and experience – or people that love to dig deeper to explore a game? I would love to see the players start the game and explore on their own, find out what is possible and search around. But players today are spoiled; most games are extremely streamlined and guide you through some interactive scenes without the need to think. With TRI we hope to be able go into the opposite direction.
Any other difficulties?
Making a 3D game that uses physics leads to problems which you might consider before deciding whether to use a physics engine in your game or not: Often, physics are great. It always means lots of fun and more interaction possibilities. People love dragging crates and barrels around. It's a sandbox game of its own.
But physics always need more time and effort to implement: every physicalized object demands special adjustments, like mass and drag, or the rock over there doesn't feel heavy enough to be really a rock. Yet there might be collision and performance issues. In our case, the combination of physics with the triangle creating feature (the 'TRIs') multiplied these problems.
Static objects are always easier to handle. You should ask yourself if sophisticated physics are really necessary for your game. Integrating a physics engine not only as a mere decoration, but as an important part of your gameplay leads to an even higher error rate. Especially when objects start to fall through floors instead of neatly landing on them. And you never know in which situation players leaves a room full of physical objects after toying around ...
For us, 3D is the most immersive form to play and build games. The third dimension opens tons of possibilities 2D will never have. (And doesn't want, of course.) But as always it also adds difficulties to the game design.
While 2D games look timeless mostly (but often typical indie 8bit-like), you always see in which era a 3D game was made – often enough, which engine was used. I still love the look of Thief 2, but how many people out there still appreciate low poly and abstract graphics?
The art style, especially for small teams, is harder to create. Even though you are indie, players will always compare your game by AAA standards. Photo-realism is the most common way of designing games, although it's the most boring form of expression, too. Building abstract or fantastic looking worlds is more difficult in 3D than 2D.
TRI - Early Alpha Footage
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So many things to fix and prepare before you can take a look at it and TRI the game! Meanwhile you can read more about the game now!
#01 - First look on TRI
#02 - Creating the look of TRI
#03 – TRI – Doing the big Reset