As an independent developer touched the legend. Part one

one

In the new office of former colleagues, I came to the accompaniment of rain. May is about to begin, it's time to get used to this. I shake off the moisture, shake hands with the former leader, go upstairs to the second floor through the spacious hall, down the corridor, then to the right or left — I don’t remember, and here it is, the citadel of gamedev. Familiar faces, familiar handshakes, all as in the good old days. For three months of indie swimming, I had already forgotten what office chairs, a coffee machine, and a frituple is.

And now, sitting on a familiar orange couch from Ikea, I listen to everything the guys think about the game, which I gave them for the assessment the day before, and for which, to a greater degree, I decided to take the risk. Of course, the decision was balanced, matured, but still not to occupy this venture with adventurism. The opinions of the guys immediately divided. For example, the head of the studio honestly tried to pretend to be the target audience of the game and play thoughtfully. It turned out, but he doubts the financial prospects. A senior programmer, an amateur of PC games and cats, immediately admitted that he was already a fan, although he was not familiar with the book on which the game was made, which means that the nostalgia factor can be ruled out. With all his loyalty, he prepared a whole leaflet with a thousand items, which does not suit him in the current implementation, for which a special thank you to him. The junior programmer spoke with restraint about bugs, his opinion remained a mystery to me. A pretty artist, who hardly knows Steam and hardly heard of Fallout, on the question of buying such a game, she immediately cut off a definitive “no” because “you need to horror how much to read”. Ironically, this is the expected typical reaction of most people who are not familiar with the game books and have never heard of Dmitry Braslavsky or the Black Castle Dungeons. And this is neither bad nor good, it's just a fact.


Yes, it was the second edition that was my first.

2

The road to the current state of affairs was quite standard. In the early nineties, my father, being an engineer and amateur radio operator, was very keenly interested in the nascent computer wave, this is how I learned quite early on what a cassette with games, the ZX Spectrum and a homemade joystick are. Well, the content of all this “strapping” became the games that I still have to play every two years: strange “Dizzy”, insanely complex “Saboteur”, textual game of the president, where at the end I often escaped from an angry crowd by helicopter. Naturally, after all this, the little man no longer had a chance to think about something else. Who sailed, he knows.
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Now it seems simple, but in childhood this game was impassable.

Next was the school, the first Pentiums with the mysterious “Turbo” button, the school being strolled for games, and constant hanging with friends in front of the Fifteen, and who were lucky, even in front of the Seminas. In the stuffy dormitory rooms, where even thick curtains did not save from the omnipresent sun, we squinted at the monitors, sorting out the intricacies of King's Bounty (there were still a few years before the first Heroes), after a sleepless night before the school they were praised who had passed faster ” Comix Zone ”, and carefully exchanged pirated discs with printed black and white covers. It is now collections of 25 games on the CD seem to be something as far as the history of Mesopotamia, and then it was all very much quoted, the disks were kept safe and gently rubbed with a soft cloth before use and after. The chronology of events is pretty crumpled, but all the bright frames are kept very securely by consciousness.

In the same sunny youthful period, I became acquainted with Dmitry Yuryevich Braslavsky's domestic game books. It was very fresh and for some reason fascinated, despite the format they were just books, and for the game you had to draw something on paper, throw cubes, constantly fix a lot of circumstances like the characteristics of the character and the contents of the shoulder bag. Wildly, not like a computer game, but for some reason no less fascinating. I met, played, bought four books from the “Hero's Way” series, and I forgot. Well, why should we remember them? Youth is so transient.

3

And now, after ten or fifteen years, I myself have been engaged in the professional creation of games, giving up a career in science and a painful Ph.D. thesis. I work in companies, I program what they say, and, of course, slowly I begin to dream about something of my own. Sometimes these are simply abstract urges, sometimes quite concrete and meaningful sketches. It is logical that when you directly make games yourself, a lot of things are even more seductive and supposedly motivating: a colleague shows a prototype of his platformer, a university colleague takes a prize at the next game jam, and they all quit and make their own game. Directly real your game! On the one hand, it is very inspiring, but on the other hand, this is all akin to the inspiration from the first drunk glass of a teenager: it is fresh, invigorating, everyone is drinking, but the next day you have to answer for your actions yesterday and live on. Of course, drinking as a teenager is right and necessary, but we all know perfectly well that there are those who continue to exist in this mode, and now this is not so encouraging. This “game devotion to alcoholism” is a dangerous phenomenon, destructive for those who have a predisposition to do it or not to finish it. The number of startups is growing, but the percentage of sensible releases is falling. Technology is more accessible, but the number of clones is growing like a snowball. And yes, everything is a natural and natural process and should be treated accordingly.

That is why I, as a person who prefers to attack in attack strategies, waited. He collected ideas, did not rush to assemble a team at the slightest change in trends, and watched his own capabilities slowly approaching his own desires. And then one day I felt that the moment had come. Most likely, it was when he first took his daughter in his arms: once he had survived it, then for sure the game would be enough for me. A month after I became a dad, in the most difficult and sleepless period of my life, the first upload to the repository took place. That project is dedicated to Vadim Bashurov almost entirely, but this is a separate story.


Most of his life represented Vadim as a fictional arrogant character in the bottom row of the second from the left.

After some time, it became clear that one game is not enough for production, that by stealing time from a family at night and on weekends, I can pull more. As it turned out, I really can, since the main problem was not my labor resource, but search and cooperation with artists. Whether this is so unlucky for me, or if this is the objective reality, but for all the time I have been sane, I have seen five percent of the total number of contacts. What miracles just did not happen, scary to remember.

Of all the ideas collected at that time for the second project, the majority turned out to be unsuitable, and here all of a sudden (or not?) Those same game-books from sunny youth were remembered. Of course, it is worth starting with something more or less well-known, take the finished product and transfer it to a digital format, since “the Chukchi is not a writer”, and professionals in their field should deal with such things first of all. And since I only knew Dmitry Braslavsky's game books, I began to decide with them. He studied the current state, discovered a forthcoming paper reprint and an amateur version of the very first book in the Appstore. That is, the matter is alive, there are interested people, and the quality of the iOS version implementation leaves room for maneuver.

Having dispelled the trembling in his hands, he wrote to Dmitry Braslavsky himself, and received a reply-redirection to the independent publisher Sergei Selivanov representing him. We discussed some of the details with the latter, chose the Black Castle Dungeons from the entire series of books as the first and at the same time the most well-known and given the green light to prepare a design document, based on which we would have already fully discussed cooperation. Well, an unexpectedly great start: they didn’t ignore me, but answered, and a person who, in his craft, became a cult person, answered, and he didn’t refuse to cooperate, but was glad to try and see what happened. It was a very exciting and crucial moment, because Dmitry Yuryevich for me is a semi-mythical character in a good sense of the word, and now I have a real chance to invest something of my own in the genre, which I was very fond of as a child. Of course, as an adult, I understand that not the gods burn pots, but it's still nice.

So, roll up the sleeves, a touch to the legend took place!

four

It was decided to make the game on the mobile market, as it most of all corresponds to the format of the book-game; Still, for a PC or console, playing a text game seemed too cunning to me. Having more experience in mobile games than on other platforms. Next, I want to reveal the maps and tell about the main theses on which the choice of this particular genre and of this particular game book as a project for implementation rests. Of course, these are theses from the point of view of business, and their fairness will be subject to verification by release. My personal reverent attitude to the object, I think, is quite obvious.

A) The game mechanics "Dungeons" is 100% ready, it does not need to be tested, balanced, iterated and customized. Moreover, it is already interesting to play, in any case, it concerns the target audience. This is a huge plus for the project, since I saw a considerable number of beautiful games that are not interesting to play because of unsuccessful gameplay or the lack of an intriguing plot, that is, everything that I personally see as the core of games. And the mechanics, gameplay, balancing are an art, and the developer, in my humble opinion, should first think about this. In practice, attention to the gameplay often results in huge expenses; of course, if suddenly a revolutionary idea does not come to the bright mind of a brilliant designer, that there is a luck, and not a development strategy.

B) The Undergrounds of the Black Castle are already a recognizable piece in themselves, which has its own loyal audience with some corrections (the total circulation of Dmitry Braslavsky’s game books in the nineties was over a million mark). It remains to implement everything qualitatively and reach out to this very audience.

C) As an artist, I engaged my friend in the game (I knew what I was going for, I had experience of such cooperation), an excellent professional in my field. It is a pity, his work was easel painting, portraits and other manifestations of classical applied art. He had nothing to do with gamedev. I did not hold a graphic tablet in my hands. And in this regard, the game book, where it was decided to focus on classic book illustrations, seemed to be an excellent option for the skills of this artist. At first, we actually almost thought of painting on canvas and then doing high-quality scans, but later, for several reasons, this idea evaporated. However, even in the final version of the game, you can find arts that migrated there through the camera straight from the canvas.

D) The game book seemed to be quite a simple project, and a tiny team would be suitable for its implementation. And all the technologies were simple and I know. Of course, I had more than once, in my own skin, managed to feel all the deceptiveness and illusiveness of the scales, having seen how the projects perished in more comfortable conditions than bare indie. By the way, these were almost the most valuable lessons in my career. It was even curious whether these lessons benefited me.

D) The project is well scaled. Once you have debugged all the stages of production, having written and refined all the code, you can continue to deal with similar and related projects, in particular the other books of the Hero's Way series, without any serious consequences. Naturally, with much more modest costs.

E) Globally, the niche of gamebooks is very narrow, so there are no major players here, and in the CIS market this is generally a clean field with two dozen amateur projects (this equally applies to both main mobile platforms). And for an independent developer with a minimum of resources, this is almost the only chance along with the creation of something extremely ingenious. Due to the small niche, the number of fans is small, but they are very loyal and, I suppose, are ready to spend money on their hobby. An example of this is the only company that has put the transfer of books-games into digital space on a stream, Tin Man Games, which “digitizes” a very popular series of analog books-games and sells at a rather high price.


Games from “Tin Man games” became a benchmark for me.

To me personally, these arguments seemed convincing enough to look to the future with optimism. To summarize, it turns out the classic scheme of independent development: to get the most out of the situation where you are, with the help of those resources that are available. And everything went well.

five

No, in this chapter there will be no “but”, everything really went well and moved along the rails that were chosen initially. Deviation happened except in time, but I was morally ready for this.

After two months of work on art and sound, as well as a general concept, I presented Sergey and Dmitry with a design document, which was warmly accepted and we, having entered into an agreement, began to work on the game in full force. Of course, it is hardly possible to call the ongoing work at night and weekends full, but this was enough.

Lacked exactly until it became clear that this is not enough. Maybe someone gets to combine the main work, family cares over the newborn and resource-intensive hobby, but not me. I am convinced that creating something full-fledged takes 24 hours a day, especially given the wide range of responsibilities of a typical independent developer. Awareness of this was smooth and natural, and after a while organically resulted in a firm decision to quit and take risks. I am very grateful to my wife, who supported me, despite the lack of clear financial prospects. I think I was just very lucky that her level of adventurism is not inferior to mine.


It was not me, but that was how it was. Priceless experiences.

The dismissal happened painlessly. It should be noted that the former head already reacted very adequately both to the dismissal and, in general, to the fact that I was parallel to the main work involved in my project. As far as I know, this is an extremely rare case of such an attitude. Maybe it’s a good personal relationship, maybe just a smart and successful person is always open and shares knowledge and experience. Stealth and mistrust are usually the companions of various bastards.

Since then, in full force, the project has been moving for the fourth month, and only thanks to strong-willed efforts, cutting off all the excess, can it be kept within the framework. Although it would seem, how many there are of this book with the already ready gameplay. And now it is time to build new hypotheses and make decisions regarding platforms, launch, marketing, on which the success of the previous year will ultimately depend. Of course, there are enough materials on the topic, but each specific case is unique and blindly focusing on the history of other titles, believing that the same patterns will work here, too, naively.

For more than a year of development and related gestures, doubts have surfaced more than once. Is anyone really interested in a text adventure in the era of mobile 3D and cross-platform Unity? But there are plenty of text games on the market, and people still know how to and love to read. And will old fans of the book series take the mobile reprint well, or throw tomatoes with it? It seems that they should not, if it is a quality game. And if the product does not burn in the upper layers of the financial atmosphere? Maybe, but I, as a person who prefers to attack in defense strategies, have calculated all the risks and are already mentally ready to jump again into the open space, wool bug tracker and chew buns during five-minute morning standing rallies. And even dozens of "how", "why" and "and suddenly". But, anyway, it is better to act than to swim in doubt and the search for truth, because there are no other options to prove or disprove the hypotheses put forward.

In any case, the touch to the legend took place, and there is no painful feeling of shame that another year was spent on creating some kind of mobile clone. But the feeling of shame and wasted time is the last thing I would like to experience. Let and sitting on a bag of money.

PS In the second part you will find a story about the launch, mistakes in marketing without money, shooting a video and the results of the whole adventure. That is, about whether it makes sense for an independent developer to take on a strange and niche vintage project, the implementation of which has already taken place.