itch.io

Thanks for your comment! We're umming and arring a bit about the prompts/ hotspots. The worry is, it might make it too easy if we show every interactable object, but this is certainly something we'll think about for the full game.

Heh, the game wasn't intended to be heavily British- maybe that's just how it came out XD

We wanted to go with keyboard/ controller character movement for this one from the start. Sure, some people will prefer using a mouse and cursor, but this is the road we've gone down, and there's no turning back now.

So, essentially, you've got a band together but don't know what sort of music to play.

You've also got issues with income but video games are unlikely to make money in the short term so, I'll just concentrate on the first issue.

First of all, you need a project you're all passionate about and think is worthwhile to ensure everyone has motivation. Maintaining a four-person team over the long term is very difficult, and you must be prepared for people to drop off, whatever you do.

It feels like you have good communication on your team, so that's an excellent start. You just need the much maligned 'ideas guy'. Maybe schedule a meeting on Zoom, or Discord, or however you do things, for a week's time, and ask people to write down ideas for that meeting (no matter how vague). These could be ideas in terms of theme/ genre/ story/ tone/ mechanics/ existing games to draw inspiration from/ art/ whatever. In the meeting, you could go through these and see what makes people enthusiastic.

Coincidentally, a lot of people have been writing on this forum lately struggling with ideas, and I wrote a thread here to try and help. Hopefully you'll find this useful. 

Wish you luck :)

Edit: At some point, you're also going to need a leader. Once all the ideas are on table, someone's got to be moving things forward. It might be that this is you.

Further Edit(!): As @Magicsofa says, do not worry at all about being nearly 30- that's a great age to start out!

Spitballing is good! Think I'm gonna take tonight off, and coder Mike and I can talk it over for the main demo build and see what we come up with. It might be that this would just be less frustrating if the character's movement was changed to come to a dead stop before the walk cycle was over. There'd be a trade off with the animation quality though. There always seems to be a trade off!

Thanks for your comments! Yeah, we'll certainly have a look at the movement. The 'interact' is a bit tricky. Part of the reason for having a controllable character was to try and avoid the pixel hunting you get in a lot of traditional point and clicks. Obviously stopping everywhere is similar but making it obvious what's interactable on a screen might make things too easy. We'll have to have a think about this, and your other comments. Glad you liked it :)

Hi All,

FIVE DAY DETECTIVE ALPHA

We have the first build of our upcoming game out, and would be grateful if anyone would like to check it out: see if there any bugs and tell us what you like and dislike about it.

The translations haven't been finalised yet and we'll put out a more polished demo in a couple of weeks based on feedback.

This has taken three years so far, and the full game is expected in 2025.

Cheers,

Dom

Co-operacats?

Kitty Conspiracy?

Since a young age of my life, everything go downfall. Right now, when I think it logically, I shouldn't be alive right now.  Maybe I will not longer be alive tomorrow or soon. I also want to live, I think living is beautiful.

First of all, that's a great sentiment to share, and I hope everything works out for you. It also points out something that I didn't which is how you want your players to feel. It might be that you can draw creativity from wanting to inspire your audience, or pass on a positive (or unique) world view to help people with their own challenges.

In both points I was talking about preferences, nobody is obligated to do x in a x way or something.  Just talking on what I want to do.

Absolutely, this is all just take-it-or-leave-it advice. We're not pointing a gun at anyone XD

There have been a few ‘I need ideas’ style topics lately, so I thought we should have a thread to share where we get our ideas from, and give any advice that might be helpful.

Here are mine: 

What game do you want to Play?

This should be your first question as, if the game doesn’t appeal to you, then what’s the point. I’ve seen horror stories on the itchio forum of people spending a year on a game and then deciding they’re not that bothered about it.  

What can you do that no-one else can?

Think about your own abilities and interests in and out of games. If you’re a ventriloquist rapper who’s into Pokemon, consider a game where you train talking dummies to rap battle against each other. If you’re an artist who works at McDonalds and hates one particular customer, how about a murder mystery game about a poisoned French fry set in an oil painted fast food restaurant?

Don’t put up walls or be afraid that your game doesn’t fit in- one of the best things about indie games is that they’re unique and often very personal.  

Play Bad Games

A good idea is to often play bad games, or just random stuff. This could well inspire you to think ‘Could I do this?’ or, preferably, ‘what could I do better?’  

Combine Elements from other Games

This might sound theft but- If you take elements from, say, three games and combine them- you’ve got a whole new game. Fortnite is basically just PUBG with Overwatch style graphics and tone, and that did alright.  

What If?

Similar to the above, but think about stuff in your day to day life, or things you see on TV or wherever and whether you could make anything of this. I had a job transporting medical casenotes round a hospital  and think a cool game would be ‘Casenote Chaos’- a parkour game where you have to navigate a hospital to save people’s lives, having to avoid obstacles like people throwing up, and patients speeding past in wheelchairs and hospital beds.

Sadly, this game remains beyond our technical abilities XD  

Collaborate

Game development can be loosely split between technical people and creative people. Creative people are good at coming up with ideas, technical people are good at implementing them. This is how Krunchy Fried Games works- there are only two of us, but we have both wickets covered. I was going to say ‘bases’, but there are more than two bases in baseball..

Aaaaanyway, finding people in game jams or on the itchio Help Wanted forum to bounce ideas off is a good way to spark creativity.   

Write Stuff Down

Keep a notebook on you at all times and write things down when inspiration strikes, or get some pens and highlighters and make a mindmap: write some headers anywhere on a page, and write down ideas stemming from these as they occur to you.

Good headers to start with include:

Theme,

Tone,

Graphics,

Music,

Mood,

Genre,

Characters,

Plot,

Story,

Goal,

Enemies,

Dangers,

Power Ups,

Clothes, 

Sound Effects   

Just clearing your mind and sitting down in a distraction free environment- or with music on- can be very helpful.   

Anyway, those are my tips. If anyone else has any, please share!

From my experience, you're best off contacting people directly. Try not to spam email but find streamers and indie-friendly Youtubers who enjoy similar games to yours. 

I'm going for a pint with Coder Mike today and will mention it to him then. I do have reservations about adding third party plugins in Unity though, so can't promise anything. 

Hi, would love to, but quality voice acting is currently beyond our capabilities (mainly for cost reasons). There are cheaper alternatives but these just sound awful.

Got to admit, I had no idea there were books on itchio until you pointed it out but, yeah, 9,310 of them in that section.

I suppose it just depends on whether you think maybe a couple of hours of your time to upload the pdf/ mobi/ thumbnail (or whatever) is worth it- and you've done most of this already.

As someone who's done both, I find promoting books even harder than video games, so I'd say it's worth doing anything you can- even if itchio is unlikely to be anyone's first choice as a book website.

It looks quite nicely presented and appealling. It might just be that very few people are seeing it in the first place. You might need to do publicity elsewhere- like the social media stuff that everyone hates. A browser build might help you get more plays. If you do this, consider releasing on Newgrounds too.

Sorry to hear this, was looking forward to it! Plus side, you've got the code and experience to do something similar, and lots more people waiting to see what you're doing next :)

I hope there's a part for Truffles...

Well done ;)

Most simple bit af advice I can give is: think about how you'd respond if the exact same game came out, but made by someone else. Would you be aware of it? If not, why not, and what can you do about this? Once you were aware of this, would you want to investigate it further? If not, why not, and what can you do about this? Once you investigated it further, would you want to buy it? If not... you get the idea ;)

Three chunks of advice:

1) Upload a demo so they can play it. If it's good enough, the publishers will often come to you.

2) Create a trailer so they can see it (downloading VSDC and OBS will help) and encourage people to play your demo.

3) Pick a better username than "f4cksh7t"

And then you get paranoid in case the collection's called "Absolute Garbage" or something XD

Cool game. I liked the way you introduced the new abilties and the palettes made for a good reward. Nice touch of humour too!

There are endless articles on marketing advice you can google, but your game is unique to you, and that should be your starting point.

My best tip would be to ask yourself: if the game came out tomorrow put out by somebody else, would you know about it, and would you buy it? If not, why not, and what can you do about that? If so, great, expand on that.

Get a demo out, and then the full game. It's taken us three years so far and I feel like I'm going more insane every day we don't do this!

Game broke when I tried to mix crazy lady her third drink (it stayed on the mixing screen). Enjoyed the game though, sounds like a good course!

Happy Christmas all! And any other celebrations you might have.

This was recommended by someone on RPG Codex. Not quite sure what I just played, but I really enjoyed it XD

I'm struggling to think of many games that switch genres at all, tbh. I applaud any devs who make the effort though.

Great concept- very different to other itchio horror games. Looking forward to the full game, and finding out where I can use the screwdriver! I got all 3 endings without needing it.

That's probably right. We could do with a more exciting word though!

I also like "whatchamacallits"!

haha, I like the idea of loot- certainly more than a shitstorm!

If writers get royalties, and actors get residuals, what do game devs get?

Is there even a word for is and- if not- can someone make one up?

I always think sites like itchio are missing a trick when they don't do more to accommodate streamers and Youtubers who enjoy indie games.

Granted, it's hard to know the best way of doing this (maybe they could put this question out on the forum?), but, as you say, small streamers do a lot to help indie devs and we should really all be helping each other.

Sure, it's redrum110 at gmail dot com

Probably the second one- or maybe some streamer drew attention to it.

I've definitely seen some games get a big boost long after they were released. Could be they're boosted after a period of interest.

Ah, go on then. 2 down, 8 to go...

Hi, if you still want to help on a project, please  let me know how I can contact you.

"I was not expecting some crazy random storylines."

What's that, you want more crazy, random storylines ;)

Well, of course, Greggg's nemesis is her detective husband Bacon who's investigating her alleged death. Naturally, his police superiors will not allow an investigation without evidence, so he has to investigate in his own time. As his wife's debts have been passed on to him- and his remaining money goes on McDonald's breakfasts- his car's been taken away by the bailiffs.*

*Do other countries have bailiffs? In Britain they're legal debt enforcers. For that matter, what country are Bacon, Greggg and Cheese actually from?

Aaaanyway, Greggg has to continue his investigation on public transport and a child's pink scooter he stole. This is sure to culminate in an intense game of cat and mouse with his wife, who is currently blissfully unaware of the fact, and safe for now, as he has no means of getting across the water. ( and he obviously can't leave his kid alone in the house for too long- sure his parents will babysit now and again- but he doesn't want to stretch their goodwill).