If I may make a suggestion - fuck platformers, there's too many of them already. If you want to make a good game, take an old, simple but addictive game, and make a modernized clone of it, preferably on Kickstarter. I recommend this one :


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_the_Samurai_%28video_game%29

Yes, definitely. I'm much more on Twitter but will now focus on forums & reddit, maybe do some twitchs about our game, AMA etc... Any suggestions appreciated :)

Thanks for the suggestion! Indeed platformers are everywhere these days, but we do love them... And we don't feel right doing a modernized clone of an existing game, we'd rather try another platformer and feel happy about it, even if that means closing the studio after it.

Yes, that's why we went for the 19 different languages. We felt it was just not fair for some gamers to not have the game in their language, just like it was only english 20 years ago! Even if I did live in Finland and knew most under 40 years people speak very well english there, we wanted to put it in finnish for the ones who are not that confortable with english.

That said, as written in our post mortem, we haven't seen so far these languages really driving our sales. Our next game will most probably not have 19 different languages as a consequence... Still have to figure out exactly but so far it doesn't seem that putting the game into finnish or swedish was actually worth it.

And yep, we hope that discounts and bundles will help having extra sales! Usually gamers enjoy the game so sales with word of mouth will beat the saturated market, hopefully...

First of all, welcome to the GOG forums!

Secondly, even though I'm sorry for my somewhat harsh words, I still stand by everything I said before. Yesterday GOG released Teslagrad and I immediately thought "now, if only the guys at Seaven learnt something from this!" Well, obviously, only time will tell how Teslagrad does, sales-wise, but just by looking at it in motion, as an indie puzzle platformer fan, I *know* I will eventually buy it. It has a charm and particular aesthetic that Ethan: Meteor Hunter, simply put, lacks entirely.

To me, the major issue is the poor animation of the main character, like I said in my previous post, especially in-game. If you forgive the pun, Ethan severely lacks 'ethos', i.e., character. He's very poorly animated and doesn't feel fluid at all, from what I've seen in screenshots and gameplay videos. Even in the video you posted on your post-mortem, comparing the prototype with the final version of the game, to be honest, I didn't notice that much of a difference. Ethan may look 'cool' in whatever concept you had internally at Seaven, but that didn't transpire in the end.

I'm not saying you should quit puzzle platformers, but if you're entering that genre, you absolutely need to make sure what you're offering is unique and superbly made. Ethan is far from platforming perfection, from what I've seen. I mentioned Guacamelee! before and I'll do it once again: their "twist" is that 1) you turn into a chicken (that's right, a freaking CHICKEN!) to access small spaces you otherwise couldn't; 2) you manipulate dimension changing *at will* and this is seamlessly integrated into the gameplay, with no pause, no time freezing, no nothing. Ethan relies on that telekinetic twist that, in all honesty, feels gimmicky and game-pace breaking. Guacamelee! is hard but it never gets frustrating because it is lots of fun, has a great, unusual art style, superb soundtrack and charismatic characters, plus, it plays like a charm. Ethan doesn't seem to have any of those.

I wish you the best of luck in your future projects, and here's to hoping Ethan: Meteor Hunter does a bit better than what it's been doing, proving your post-mortem to be premature. Again, I'm sorry if I came off as harsh, but it's just my two cents as a puzzle platformer fan.

No problem, that's what we want to hear now! Funny story here: Teslagrad released their greenlight page... 1 hour after ours. So we basically started at the same point and it's easy for comparaison. Indeed Teslagrad looks awesome and, from what I've seen from the first reviews, plays awesome too. I met them at Eurogamer Expo and we had a good chat together. It is definitely where we need to go, better visuals and better soul in the game. We're working on something that will hopefully solve these two issues.

However, as you say, you know you will *eventually buy it*. And the reason for that, stop me if I'm wrong, is because you *know* it'll be on sale at some point and right now you already have too many games to play?

My point is: I agree Teslagrad looks better than Ethan, but I'm afraid it won't help them much on selling it right now. Of course on the long run they'll sale more than Ethan... But will it be enough? Saturated market is saturated :/ I'm very curious to see how many units they sale.

Thanks for the quick and courteous answer, and do know I'm just stopping you because you asked me to, yourself. :P

I plan on buying Teslagrad eventually and I'll gladly do so at full price, my only constraint, right now, is having no more money to spend on video games this month, due to all the Christmas shopping I have yet to make. I usually buy games on GOG at their regular price, though I do enjoy the occasional sale.

Of course, I can only speak for myself, and what you say applies to the vast majority of people that buy online these days, so I'm not arguing with you on this matter, and absolutely not trying to prove you wrong. Just saying I'm one of the few that buys games at full price because I actually enjoy them and want to play them, and not because "hey, it's on sale so I might as well give it a try!"

That's good to know, there's hope for this industry then :)

Strategy games, ugh, talk about oversaturated. We may not have as many as we do platformers, but there's still too many of those, especially "tower defense" titles. At least a platformer is easy to pick up and play, strategy games require learning new complicated rule sets with each and every one of them, and it's rare I see an indie strategy title that doesn't look either uninteresting or completely off-putting. And yes, platformers are easier to make, both easier to make one that is playable and even a mediocre one will usually move swiftly enough that I'll probably play it to the end if it's not too long. A botched strategy game is pretty much a death sentence for that game though, and it's best that most devs not touch it unless it's a relatively simple strategy game or they have Paradox-levels of expertise at these things.

Personally I don't mind platformers or puzzle/platformers unlike a lot of people here. Like I said if I had the option of playing a new puzzle-platformer or a new hex grid-based historical grand strategy that requires a guide roughly the same length as Atlas Shrugged to comprehend I'll take the platformer any day, thank you. Other things I'd rather see less of than indie platformers: indie rougelikes or "rogue-lites." So you were too lazy to design a level or provide legitimate challenge so you have the game randomly generate the levels for you and perma-kill you when you die. That at least would seem to be the reason for so many of these games most of which aren't worth spending any time whatsoever with (the only game recently that I had any interest at all in was Risk of Rain which actually does look like a fun game). Another one: "crafting" games, or any other games that look like pixelated Legos. We get it, Minecraft was a huge success and you want some of that. Here's the thing, I think crafting is boring, there is no satisfaction or entertainment gotten from grinding constantly for rocks and putting them together to make a bigger rock or a refrigerator or something stupid like that, nor is making a Lego house for the only reason that I have to sit there for however long until the monsters go away. And the aesthetic is appalling. When did "voxels" turn from the interesting kind used in games like Outcast and Robinson's Requiem to just piling a bunch of boxes on top of one another? Speaking of Robinson's Requiem, if someone creates a survival-type game where you can amputate all four of your limbs THEN you've got my interest. That's definitely more interesting to me than "pile blocks on top of other blocks endlessly."

As for these two games, I have Race the Sun on my wishlist, Ethan, I don't. I just really dig the aesthetic of Race the Sun (yes aesthetic is a pretty major factor in grabbing my interest in a game, which by the way isn't the same thing as "graphical fidelity" though not that they're always mutually exclusive) and seems like a nice to game to put on to chill out to, so to speak. Maybe not something I'd play on a constant basis but still. Ethan I just saw nothing about it that grabbed my interest. Graphically it looks very unattractive and the level designs look... OK I guess. If I had the game for whatever reason, be it a bundle or gift, I'd probably play it and get some mild enjoyment out of it but it doesn't look like something I'd go out of my way to purchase to play (note: that goes for roughly half of the GOG catalog in general, including games that I own only because of the bundles they came in; in that case I suppose it wouldn't hurt to at least try some of those eventually ;) Now if Ethan were, say, a claymated game with the exact same level designs intact I'd probably be all over that shit. We're starting to see a small resurgence in claymation in games (The Swapper, Dream Machine, and the upcoming Armikrog being the only three I can think of), but more of that, especially done well (think Skullmonkeys, a game I loved back when I had it) would not be unwelcome by me!

I wasn't very comfortable with English when I started gaming at 7 years old. : ) But I had a pocket dictionary.

For me as a Finn playing games in Finnish would actually be off-putting, believe it or not. It would just seem too weird. I don't know if I'm representative of an average Finnish gamer though. If I want to see Finnish in games, then it's really only in the form of culture or character naming or something like that.

I would imagine though that older gamers in Finland (50-60 years old maybe) appreciated the translation.

Oh, c'mon man, you're going overboard. There's no reason to go attacking people in other threads for no reason. And stop pulling a strawman all the time. I was on that thread as well and AMOK has never said that.

Seriously, you're derailing the thread just for the sake of picking a fight.

And how exactly is bringing up a discussion about 2 games that are on GOG trolling? Chill out.

Stop lying, yes he did. Read my reply to you in that thread, where I even quoted it for you again.

"Especially over something so silly as store loyalty."

So, when someone prefers GOG as a store and doesn't want some iconic games like the Fallout series to be pulled away from GOG, that according to amok is "silly store loyalty".

But when he prefers another store over GOG for whatever reason, that is not similarly silly, but somehow to be praised.

That's just amok for you.

Hi! Always nice to see devs here!
I have a better suggestion. Make it platform adventure, not a puzzle platform. You know, like the ones that France was famous for back in the days. Flashback. Another World. This kind of stuff. With plot, dialogs, simple quests (still remember 'Blade Runner' quest from Flashback). Make the difficulty come from things other than jumping and killing things.
And - personal preference, but I've heared it echoed by other - make it serious \ realistic. We have enough of cartoony platformers.
You have my vote on Greenlight. Will I get Ethan? It depends on how this sale hurts my wallet :)

Like i have already said in that thread (and you seem to have ignored) preference and loyalty are not synonyms for fuck's sake (look for definitions on google). So, no, he hasn't said that. And you really need to stop pulling a strawman all the time and picking up a fight against AMOK in every thread. Just let it go.

Seriously, this discussion is getting ridiculous. Let's not derail the thread any longer.

You may have a point. I would have definitely taken more notice of a game sporting a Blade Runner esque aesthetic with Flashback/AW style of gameplay.

Yeah... the only thing similar to this was Dark Matter... which would've been good if it was finished.
Other than that - we have indie platformers inspired by Mario and its clones rather than those inspired by FB\AW. Which is a shame.