And now for something completely different. On the 23rd of may, we'll be at Indievelopment to show off Powargrid. We rented enough booth space (2x2 meter) to set up two PCs to demo our game. Initially, we planned on simply renting one or two tables, so people could sit sown and play Powargrid. But (of course) we realized that we'd have a much cooler demo stand if we had two demo cabinets instead. Black ones preferably. So, ignoring the fact that we already have too much to do, we decided to go and build us those cabinets. Michiel drew a couple of designs in Sketchup, and this is the one we decided to (try to) build: One of the things we've noticed the couple of times we've demoed Powargrid is that the screen really is only visible to a handful of people. Which is a shame, since we want to show our game to as many people as possible :). And, looking at it from the perspective of the conference visitor, you don't want to decide whether or not you think a game is interesting by seeing only a small part of the screen. So we decided to add a second monitor on top of the cabinet. That way, it should be easy enough for everyone to have a look at the game (and decide whether to play it yourself). We're curious to see how well this will work. Another thing is that we want to make sure the demo cabinets can be taken apart and re-assembled. First because we want to be able to transport them more easily, but also because we want to minimize the space it takes to store the cabinets. This is typically something that works fine in theory, but presents some problems in practice. In this case, the question is whether we can build a cabinet that is sturdy enough to actually game on. We think we've managed to do so, but we won't know for sure until we've had people play on them. By now, we're busy building the cabinets. Michiel has a workshop together with a couple of friends of ours. So we have a place where we can build, with all the power tools we need. Big tip 'o the hat to Freek, Marnix and Otto :D. Here are some picture of the cabinets-in-the-making: And of course a picture of the nearly finished cabinets: We've built and painted both cabinets. We've used cloth for the backs (Michiel's old curtains actually). Along the way, we decided that we needed an extra surface for the monitor, else you'll be looking down at it, which is uncomfortable. Fun thing to notice is how much faster we were able to build the second one. Mainly because we already did most of the thinking that was needed. What we still need to do is decide how we want to secure the monitors to the top of the cabinet and see what the best way is to transport them. We're quite optimistic that we can build the cabinets in time for Indievelopment. In a future post we'll show you the nitty gritty of building the cabinets. And of course we'll also report our impressions and what we learned at Indievelopment after the 23rd.
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This week I reached a nice milestone: all the dialogues in the Powargrid campaign have a blobbie picture now. So no more need for placeholder pictures like this one: Now to be fair, the dialogue pictures are not finished. The backgrounds for the final mission still need work and many blobbies, especially those I drew long ago, need a critical look and often an upgrade. Apparently there is some skill involved even in drawing blobbies ;). But at least every dialogue in the game now has a more or less acceptable picture to show. This also got me wondering about what the best way to work is. Since Michiel and I are building Powargrid next to our day jobs, we only rarely work for a full day straight. Usually it's three to four hours during an evening (at least twice a week) plus bits of time here and there. We have a list of things to do and we also have a priority in our heads, but we don't really have a plan for what to do when. So we usually end up doing whatever we feel like doing at that moment, or whatever is most urgent. And I'm wondering whether this is the best way for us to work. My first guess is yes, since we like to work this way and it works for us (har har) and there is this feeling that having all kinds of schedules and targets may drain some of the fun. Also, there is a lot of work that simply has to be done in building a game and it doesn't really matter when it's done, as long as it does get done. So why not work this way? Well, there are reasons. And that's why I'm wondering if in the future, we'll have to change the way we work. Most importantly, we'll go from building a game to actually releasing it. This means that we'll have to do much more things that can't wait, like responding to customers, doing marketing related stuff (about which we'll write something in the near future, so stay tuned :) and making sure the game is ready on time. On top of that, some work simply has to wait for other things to get done. So eventually we may want to plan things out a bit more. In all, I'm not sure how we'll end up working in the future, but my guess is that we'll have to move to something with a bit more structure to keep track of which things can't wait. But it's also possible that we'll end up alternating between ways of working; more structured around releases and less so when we're (early) in the process of building a game. Time will tell what way we'll end up working and whether this will happen naturally or whether it will require a concious change. I'm curious about where we'll be in a year's time. One thing I do know: I'm having a great time creating our game :D
Hi everyone! I just discovered Open Broadcasting Software and I wanted to try recording a gameplay video with it. I figured I'd show off on a skirmish map against the AI, give it a bit of a head start, and proceed to kick its ass. Well... Something about no plan surviving contact with the enemy? Still, the recording came out OK, so sit back and enjoy! So yeah, I was pretty sure I was going turn it around. Spoiler: 12:33 is the point where realization finally begins to dawn that I'm royally screwed... and then it's over in seconds.
This week, we started something new: The Daily Blobbie. Turns out that Commander Grak and his colourful pals have more 'wisdom' to dispense than we could fit into our campaign. So we decided to give them some more airtime :). Here's yesterday's #TheDailyBlobbie: We also made a separate page on our site for the pictures, so they're easily searchable. We made it into a blog page, so each image has a title and the options to tweet, like and add comments. We hope you'll like this introduction into the minds of our blobbies. Let us know what you think of them! And an update: we have an actual banner now. And of course, Commander Grak gives you The Angry Eye!
We've just uploaded a new build of the Powargrid demo to the website. We cleaned up the Quod dialogues and made sure all his dialogue pictures are in place (see our previous blog post for more on Quod). And the perk system for multiplayer is now fully operational (read more here). We've also done lots of small stuff like fixing spelling errors, squashing small bugs and planting the seeds for world domination. In may, we'll demo Powargrid at the Indievelopment conference. We have plans to build two demo cabinets (more on those in a future blog post), but we wanted something more for the demo booth. We've settled on getting one of those fancy roll-up banners. Those look good and are very easy to transport. This is the design Michiel came up with: Cool eh? :D And that's that for now. This weekend we'll have a LAN with a bunch of friends at Michiel's house. So we'll be playing other people's games again for a change :).
When we decided to build a campaign for Powargrid instead of keeping it as a purely abstract tactical game, I designed a backstory for Globkar, the world where our blobbies live. The main driver behind that backstory was to have an explanation for the most obvious of our gameplay features; the lack of moving units. This turned out to be very fertile ground for world building, so during the campaign you can learn the backstory about our blobbies' strange way of waging war. Since looking for internally consistent reasons for game play features gets the creative juices flowing, I looked for more of these features to incorporate into the story. And instead of looking at our most distinctive feature, I picked one of the most common things in games: restarting a mission. So, without further ado, meet Quod, the tech blobbie who will send you back in time if you are defeated in a mission. He's even nicer than is fellow blue blobbie Grak but has a more sciency and experimental bend. As in that he likes to run experiments. On unfortunate recruits. Like you. Did we really need extra this content? No, not really. There are hardly any games that give you any sort of explanation about why you can retry after you lose; it's just part of games, or at least the games that don't have permadeath. But I really like the completeness this brings to the Powargrid campaign (also, in breaking news, there is a slight chance I'm weird :). Also, the downside for people who aren't interested in reading Quod's dialogues is minimal, since all dialogues can be quickly clicked away. For the visuals we (of course) added a recruit-grinding time machine in the background and Michiel added some nice special effects to your travels in time. In all, I'm very happy with how Quod turned out. Especially since creating Quod also ended up influencing some of our campaing design, making this a nice recursive process. If you're curious, you can give our Powargrid demo a try at www.powargrid.com/play. You'll just have to lose a mission to meet Quod :).
During the past week, we've been doing a lot of work on Powargrid. We didn't get round to writing a blog post though, so here is a quick look at some of the things that have been going on: We've been discussing one final change to the game play for a while. The trouble was that building as much power plants as possible while keeping your opponent at bay was an overpowered strategy. Especially against an AI; a human opponent is much less likely to let you get away with building up a power plant advantage. I'll write more about this in an upcoming blog post, but we've decided that we'll make power plants progressively more expensive. Every power plant beyond the third will be more expensive to build than the previous one. We're still testing how quickly the power cost should rise. At the moment, we're looking at base costs of 90 power for your 1st through 3rd power plant, 100 for your 4th, 120 for your 5th, and then on to 150, 190 , 240, etc. We've also submitted Powargrid to the Indiecade festival for the 2016 edition. We were in doubt whether we should submit again, but since we found receiving professional feedback from the jurors very useful and can now present a much more finished game, we resubmitted. And we did so just before the early submission deadline :). In other marketing stuff, we've been working on what we call #TheDailyBlobbie. Stay tuned to our Twitter account (@weefreestudio) if you're curious. We think we'll start #TheDailyBlobbie somewhere in the first half of april. And finally, I have a visual for you: That's the concept-background for Gruntland, the final mission of the campaign. We've been tweaking it for a while, and we're finally satisfied with it :). As you can see, a lot will be going on in Gruntland! That's all for now. We'll be back later with some more in-depth posts about Powargrid.
--Willem-- In 1v1 playtesting, we found that the first player has a small, but definite advantage. We wanted to give the second player a small benefit to offset this. However, we weren't sure what an appropriate compensation should be. So, we're leaving it up to the players! We've defined a couple of second player "perks". For example, you could start with a substation already built. Now, when starting a multiplayer game, you roll the dice to see which player gets to pick the perk. Then, the other player gets to choose if they want to go first, or if they want to take the perk (and go second). We're hoping this will let people balance out the perceived strength of the different options, according to their taste. The current perks are just a first attempt, so don't expect these to be final!
New achievements! Fancy graphics settings! Three campaign difficulty settings! A peek at all the campaign levels even though you won't be able to play them in the demo! Gratuitous exclamation marks!! So yeah... try the new version now! We've also released a new Linux version, although we're unable to test it ourselves at this time. If you want to give it a spin and let us know how it goes, that'd be great!
And so much is happening that we almost forgot to write it down in a blog post :). So a bit late, but without further ado: Last Wednesday, we took a day off from our day jobs and went to Utrecht to showcase our game at the Dutch Game Garden network lunch. And it was great to be there again! Like the last time we were there, the atmosphere was great. Lots of people played Powargrid and they genuinely enjoyed it. What's more, we got lots of feedback from people who think about games and game development every day. Useful stuff. People also liked our new flyer and we handed out quite a bunch of them. Aside from showcasing our game, we went to the Dutch Game Garden to ask people about marketing. By now, we know our way around the actual game building part of having a game studio, but not so much for marketing. We got a lot of good tips, like getting the word out there as often as possible (which we kind of already knew but find difficult to do, so it's good to get a push in that direction again). New for us was creating a marketing timeline with all the dates on which marketing stuff should happen that starts at least three months before release. We also got confirmation that it's a good idea to not try doing everything ourselves when it comes to marketing and PR, even though we're not looking for a publisher (hence the Free in Wee Free Studio). And we got names of people and companies who can take some of the marketing stuff off our hands and have a good reputation. So we'll definitely be contacting some of them. After the network lunch, we went to the Kamer van Koophandel, which is the Dutch chamber of commerce, to formally start our business. So since last Wednesday we're officially a game studio :D. It's both cool and a bit scary to have finally taken that step. The main thing is that we can now move on with getting Powargrid on to Steam. You (logically) have to be a registered company for that. So, to sum up, stuff is happening and things are getting real. We're looking forward to releasing Powargrid and we're edging ever closer to that moment.
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AuthorWe're Michiel and Willem. Hi! Archives
June 2017
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