Tokitowa - Failure?

NIS America recently announced that they would be localizing Time and Eternity (Toki-towa), the supposed world's first "HD Anime" game.

Well, I'm willing to try it out, but the reviews generally pan the game.  I'm afraid this game might suffer the same fate as Last Rebellion, another low budget game published by NIS America that even they were quite ashamed of it and swept it under a rug (BTW, I thoroughly enjoyed Last Rebellion, since I didn't expect much going into it, though yes it's not what you would expect in terms of quality from a PS3 HD JRPG.).

You know what's the best "HD Anime" JRPG?  Ni No Kuni, and I am not alone in praising it -- it has been the best JRPG on the PS3 since... since there have been JRPGs on the PS3. (Of course there was Valkyria Chronicles and Resonance of Fate but they're more like tactical games.  RoF technically was a JRPG but its limited commercial success showed that few people appreciated its ultra-hard default setting that required you be a masochist to play it.  I myself had to grind for 115 hours up to level 115 just to beat the thing.)

So Ni No Kuni is successful because it had the budget and foresight to push through with its vision.  Tokitowa (in Japan at least) -- not so, because as the reviewer said, it felt like an Alpha.

Anyway, the reason I like to keep tabs on third party Japanese games on the lower end of the budget spectrum is because if you cut their development budget any further, they would be making visual novels.  In my opinion, VNs are the lowest budget rung Japanese developers typically inhabit, and the more successful they are (if they aren't VN specialists), the more they branch out into more gameplay such as RPGs.

The way Tokitowa was made reminded me of how I was a game-maker in the past... full of "innovative" ideas but without enough budget (nor effort) to fully flush them out.

I should also mention, the Nintendo 3DS with all its eshop releases sure is positioning itself as the haven for small cheap quirky third party Japanese games.  I've been diligently studying the game offerings trying to find out how these games... made on a shoestring budget... still are engaging enough to be able to command higher price tags compared to free-to-play celphone offerings.  By all intents and purposes they are cheap to make, and yet they seem to provide value.

Providing that perceived value is the only way I'd survive as a game maker if I seriously pursue continuing to make games past completing the current projects.  There is no way I'd want to design microtransaction or gambling mechanics.  The only thing I can provide... coming from a VN background... are interesting characters, stories, explorable gameworld.

I have to post this because otherwise people will think this blog is dead.

Therefore, by posting this, I have resurrected this blog, much to the delight of the very few people who are still following it.

Sorry, I do not have nice screenshots to show off.  Art is precious, and they're in severely limited quantities, especially for a low budget hobbyist game.

I think I'm done moping and it's time to get to work.  (Well, I've been saying that since September last year then got swamped with so much RL work)

Honto ni?

Yup.

Unfortunately, the Unity project (you can still see the vid in earlier post) is in indefinite hiatus.  The programmer is busy, and if I touch something in Unity I tend to break it.  3D games just aren't my thing.

I cannot release it either since the current gameplay is different from what I want the final outcome should play like. It isn't like a linear story game where you can take a full production slice and you end up with a demo.  Here,  you just end up with an unplayable game that's not representative of the full product but by the time you fix it the damaged impression has already been wrought.

Here's what's still ongoing:

Idoling Alice.(waiting on art, some programming)  Yeah, ongoing since 2010 or so even before I was brought on board, and there are many music games e.g. DJ Max Technica Tune and Project Diva F that are going to put it to shame.  Heck, we're not even bothering with a real rhythm game, although it does sound tempting to put up a real-time HTML5 gameplay demo.

The final product will still be in Ren'Py, it's too late to port it.  I just hope the original artist has time to finish taking the old sketches and turning them into event CGs.

Original Sin (waiting on lots of art, lots of programming).  The old build with the portions of the story that have been illustrated were impressive enough.  But after playing a couple of 3DS games, they're outdated in presentation.  The presentation needs a major overhaul, I want it to feel more like a console game, even though unlike a console game it doesn't have battles and what it does have are ero CG in spades.

Elspeth's Garden (waiting on extreme amounts of programming)  I'm going to play with html5 real-time gameplay and see whether the combat is more fast pace and interesting while at the same time continuing on with the main game.

What will be easier in HTML5:
-managing animated filmstrips for battle gameplay
-webGL effects (omg proper explosions!)
-action!

What will be easier in Ren'Py:
-managing non-animated illustrations for cutscenes
-GUI easier to set up and keep consistent
-dialogue!

I'm also going for a more console game like experience.  I've been "studying" Fire Emblem and realized that, take away all its fancy 3D animations and you get the same core experience as Tristan & Iseult.  Expect this to be delayed yet again until 2014.

You know, I'm itching to release something since it's been so long since the last adrenaline rush (which was Christmas of 2011).  I just might join Nanoreno with something short and fun -- I'm thinking combining Jake's Battle Engine with Nyaatraps' dungeon engine and play a one-person RPG -- Whu-what?  How can you survive a dungeon with only one person in your party?  (Unchained Blades says hello.)  The trick is familiars (i.e. pokemon style gameplay.)  What an innovative concept -- just take any inventory, make the inventory items into monsters, and whola, you have extra characters without spending the effort to develop those extra characters story, since they're just the same random monsters that are reused in the dungeon itself!