Before the game turned feminine...

...it used to be your conventional mecha game.  The original idea was to have a squadron of bipedal walking armored suits (piloted by girls of course!), and after spending time in the garage upgrading and customizing, you send them off to engage in turn-based battle.  Before I decided to up the ante with commercial-quality graphics, I was content with a top-down symbolic layout, as if the units were chess pieces.  So not surprisingly, the first version of the HUD I came up with was very chessboard-like:

An early HUD prototype from earlier this year.  The game couldn't have possibly been called 'Elspeth's Garden'... more like 'Mecha General'

It wasn't the first time that a game concept got totally overhauled.  The main reason it got changed so drastically to its current state was because of the real investment I decided to inject into the project.  Jake's Battle Engine was so flexible, it really encouraged you to go all-out with graphics and animation.  So instead of everything being represented by symbols on a chessboard, it would be much more exciting to actually get to see the units animated.  There was no way I would be hand-animating hundreds of frames by hand, thus a big portion of the budget was allocated for 3D models since it would be more efficient to animate them once then render out isometric camera angles.  I then thought I might as well spend money modelling my favorite things instead of ugly mecha -- and that included different girls in various costumes.  Thus, mecha were out;  gothloli girls were in.

Now, since mecha were out, I needed some machines to be their replacements... something which were simple enough to model myself so I won't have to inflate the budget.  And that is how airships came into being!

Airships! (Don't mind the broken moves)

Elspeth's Garden will be a Trilogy.

I think I've come up with an optimum way to distribute this project.  By breaking the project into 3 parts I will be able to truly maximize the limited resources that I have, not to mention that the feedback I get from the first segment can be used to greatly enhance the subsequent sections (rather than have the entire 15-hour or so experience suffering from a fundamental design flaw -- it's better to get feedback and catch things early).  Also, with the way consumers expect lower prices even with their RPGs (see Breath of Death vs Aphelion), you just have to design around the lower price point after all.

So the breakup will be the following:

1.)  Book I - free (covers about 5 hours).  This will serve as the shareware aspect and demo replacement.
2.)  Book II - covers the next 5 hours.  I'll probably sell it for 4.99 in the beginning.  I will have it ready to go when Book I is released, but I will tweak it first based on feedback from Book I to know what my audience wants.
3.)  Book III - covers the final 5 hours.  I will have a prototype when Book I is released, but will await feedback from Books I and II to make sure that the epitome of gameplay is reached.  Also probably will sell for 4.99.

I will have to split the levelling system so you play as different characters and in new environments for each Book.  That means they don't really get to level up much (probably max would be Level 5, seeing that even a full-length SRPG such as Valkyria Chronicles have your team at just Level 15 by the end game).  The upside is that there won't be much balance / grinding issues since I can really tweak the stats to the minutest number, since the difference between Level 1 and 5 is not as big as, say Level 10 and Level 40.

I will also have the opportunity to release each episode for a small price (~1.99-2.99) for the Android marketplace.  I sincerely hope this would be a wiser move than selling a full game for the 'expensive' price of 5.99.

Another upside is that I can really concentrate better on 5-hour playtesting sessions rather than 15-hour ones!  And most importantly, having a set of 3 self-contained games gives me 3 times the opportunity to market the franchise!

After Book III is released I can overhaul Books I and II and release an improved Special Edition complete package -- free for those who bought Books II and III of course!  If I can get additional help, I'd like the complete trilogy set to be in full HD 720p and using a full 3D engine, using the actual models instead of prerenders for smoother animations.

The single player narrative game is dying.

I am kind of saddened to see the epic single player experience fading away, as more companies... even independent developers, try to make it big in the social and online space.  I understand that they're reaching markets not traditionally attracted to core games, but these games are not for me.  I like to fully escape and be fully immersed in worlds only dreamed of by brilliant creators... and I want to enjoy them in solitude, not to be ruined by other players.  To me, social and online games are essentially the developers giving us a playground, and telling the children... now go play here, we don't care if there's bullying.  Single player games on the other hand are like novels which while you can share your experiences with other people, the actual experiences are treasured only by you and you alone.


The statistics show the decline of AAA action-adventures to be replaced by games that depend heavily on multiplayer online component.  Look at Enslaved -- this game was penned by a Hollywood writer and was originally meant to be a film.  Since Hollywood projects must be guaranteed to be hits before they are greenlighted, it was turned down.  So they made a game of it -- a AAA game.  And it tanked.  Boy, did it tank.  The reason was the the experience was not compelling enough to be worth more than a rental.  The fact that it was single-player only was its main curse.


The thing is that unlike games, movies can be shown in theaters, where people can pay for a single viewing session.  Games are not at that point yet (see OnLive).  Only diehards buy movie DVDs.  But game disks are usually bought.  If you have a single-player game that can be finished in an evening (and many commercial games fall into that category), if the experience isn't an absolute blast, then the player would want to recover some of that $60 spent.  Hence the booming used game sales.

I think therefore that the cost of experiencing single-player games should be closer to that of renting movies.  And since games provide more hours of entertainment and interactivity, then no one can argue the superior worth of games as an immersive entertainment medium.  But in order to do that, the costs of developing games must be cheaper.  That is why I am part of the movement in pioneering delivery of immersive experiences as efficiently as possible.  How am I doing that?  By presenting story in visual novel style.

You don't need the voices of Hollywood actors being lipsynced to 13,000-poly motion-captured models in a dynamically-lit scene with HDR bloom.

You just need pictures.  And text.

There... the perfect 'cutscene'.  All hail visual novels!

I am not an "indie dev"

Apparently there are people who complain that everyone who's trying to make a game calls themselves an independent developer, and that the label should only refer to people or small companies who actually manage to sustain a full-time living with games.

I actually agree.  Right now I am more of a hobbyist developer.  And until Elspeth's Garden becomes well-known enough to be monetized, it is more of a hobby game than an indie game.  What doesn't change is that a few people who are working on aspects of this game are professionals.  I can only hope that I am a good project leader so that all this effort will be worth it.

Talking about monetization, I am not sure yet.  I am still not confident enough to sell a game at "full price" (which these days for an indie game is $10 to $20).  I do still want to recover my development costs, however.  Back in the day, games released by garage coders were called Shareware.  I actually like the premise -- you don't just give away a demo, but a self-contained extended experience which could be anywhere from 1/3 of a game to the full game itself.  It was only when corporations latched on to the term to label their 'crippleware' (software that can only be fully useable when registered) as Shareware that the term lost favor then faded away.  Nowadays people just release demos and trials.  The problem is I don't know what to offer for a registered copy.  And the contents which I'm working with... overwhelming as they are already... are not really enough to provide for bonus materials.  I've already dropped event CGs, full multiple path plots, and romantic subplots -- preferring instead the simplicity of a straightforward story with win/lose scenarios.  I might as well pour all the assets to make a compelling first play-through for the user and hope that alone will make for good replayability.

What I am also sure is that I will keep on iterating and polishing the gameplay and story to be worthy of the graphics, and I won't release it until I am more than satisfied with its fun factor.