Post by TORIN the Turtle in Do you need a following to create a successful Kickstarter?

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"If you work an a story, that might be interesting."

I have a story

I cannot code well, so I hire coders to make the game. I can compose music, model and animate 3D, and direct the art of the game, but that's about it. I would be willing to make the game open source if I could see more examples of successful open source games.

Torin the Turtle is the only turtle that can change his shell. The project is very ambitious, not a hobby but a hope to make it mainstream. But I think I should have scaled it down to a simpler game that I can complete, like I mentioned in another thread.

Money buys talent. That's why I believe it really fixes *most* things, if you know how to manage it.

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redonihunter14 days ago(+1)

Do not hire coders for custom software in the hopes that you can sell the software. That applies to games as well. Especially to games. This is high risk business. Professional game studios go out of business all the time and those people knew what they were doing. Even if you were to give a game studio a million bucks, they would not be able to guarantee you, that they could make a game that would break even. You can't buy success that easily. Sure, you could poor another million into advertisement. Maybe you even make a million back and only lose the other million.

Even if you would get a good game for an affordable sum, this would not guarantee that the game would sell. And even if it would have customers, there is no guarantee that it would pay for the investment. I have seen games published here that were also on Steam and had barely a single review. I doubt that they even made the 100 bucks that Steam asks upfront as a barrier fee.

Anyway, it sounds to me, like you have all the ingredients and a lot more than most devs have I can compose music, model and animate 3D, and direct the art of the game, but that's about it.

Coding is not that hard. It's easier to learn to code, than it is to learn the arts. You need talent for art. Coding is just following rules and rules about rules and writing rules down for a stupid machine to follow those rules. And a lot of redoing what other people already did. The hard part of making a game, apart from making the game, is designing it, so it is fun. Fun for other people to play.

Running around and eating fruits and changing your shell does not sound like fun. But running around and collecting coins and hopping on shells does not really sound like fun either. So your character has a gimmick. Most characters do. And your hero sets out to save the world. That story has been told countless times and in countless ways. You have neither novelty nor nostalgia to help here.

If you aim for a 2d game in the style your prototype was, you basically need only a cookie cutter template of such games. There ought to be tutorials that will end up in such a game. And you have all the important things like assets. I believe you use gamemaker. https://gamemaker.io/en/tutorials/how-to-make-an-rpg

Should coding really not be your thing, the idea with the comic is good. Publishing web comics is rather cheap and therefore low risk. Or you could animate shorts and release videos. Get a feel how to tell the story, so it is interesting. Because as I said, that story has been told so many times. People get bored easily. It should be entertaining in some way. And achieving that is very difficult.

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TORIN the Turtle11 days ago

Should coding really not be your thing, the idea with the comic is good. Publishing web comics is rather cheap and therefore low risk.

That's the direction I'm headed now. I bought a tablet, and I'm going to make a web comic. My dreams for a video game are far too great for my budget. And I really cannot code and fixing bugs drives me nuts. I just don't think that way, and it's so much faster to hire someone who does, and enjoys it.

Now I'm working hard on telling the story in an entertaining way. My drawing is so-so (very average) so I'm really going to have to nail the story and hopefully that will catch on and I can raise funds for the game.

Secret of Mana was an amazing game mainly because of the music, the battle mode and the animations. The story was ok, but not as memorable as the things I mentioned. It's a classic because of how it plays and sounds. I'll be writing music for the comic to help tell the story. Hopefully that will make it stand out.

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redonihunter11 days ago(+1)

My drawing is so-so

If you can do animations, you can use still images from those animations, or use those as reference images. I suggest you read a few webcomics if you not already have. The general tone of your setting makes me think that you also might want to consider if there is the possibility of writing a children's book.

Most have a recurring panel format resulting in some sort of punchline each strip. Can result in a continous story.

Some I can recommend:

https://www.sandraandwoo.com/2000/01/01/welcome-to-sandra-and-woo/

Intersting for you, because at some point that author had released a point&click adventure game with characters of the story. But the comic was running for over a decade and that game was not the goal of the comic but rather some extended merchandise.

Also interesting for you, because that writer commissioned the pages to be drawn by an artist. I would not recommend this to you at the moment. That guy did not start writing, with publishing that comic out of the blue.

https://xkcd.com/

About the opposite of a story comic

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html

An example how to make a comic if you can't draw.

https://superredundant.com/?comic=meet-the-gang

Classic punchline each page format. But there are also story arcs spanning hundreds of pages.

Having your own background music will certainly make a comic stand out. But the webcomic sector is as hard as the indie game sector. Very few comics are widely known. But it will train your story telling skills. Telling bits of story in a quest or in a few comic panels is both telling those story elements under a contraint.

And while I am not a fan of such "games", there are also Kinetic (Visual) Novels. Even with pixel art https://itch.io/games/tag-kinetic-novel/tag-pixel-art . That's bascically a comic on autoplay.

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