Empires in Ruins

[H_R]

Hello guys,

we're a newborn Indie studio working on a strategy/TD game. This week we went public on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, but the response is so far far worse than we expected.

We are making a game, Empires in Ruins that merges strategy, management, tower defense and plot. Are those components not in the fashion flow anymore? Is the TD component "scaring" out people?

We are trying to figure out what we did right and what we did wrong, if not for the success of this campaign, at least to understand how future plan.
Take a look a the game on Steam (if you want you also find the KS link there we with many more info) and drop us some feedback!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=441297411

Cheers,
H from H&R

 

[CPA]

Gave it a thumbs up on Greenlight.

Problem with Greenlight is that there's so much (and much of it crap) that it's hard to get noticed.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Publicity and boasting unique selling points are the 2 things you need, tower defence games have flooded the market and so you need to try and stand out from the crowd, I think that'll be a hard sell given just how many indie games are on steam. Truth is very few kickstarter campaigns really explode big and they usually come from people who already have established a name for themselves.

Just for me personally if I see something like a tower defence game if there isn't some kind of USP instantly hitting me in the face as the first thing to hook me in, then i'll probably close the page quickly, you only have a few seconds to grab the attention of gamers who have 1000's of games to flick through.

 

[H_R]

Thanks CPA!

Yeah princess, I get your point and we are trying to do that. The fact that we have empire management, turn based strategy and plot in the main map, and the our TD engine is closer to a RTS than to a classic engine it's what we tried to show off.

But still maybe we did it in the wrong way, not sure

 

[zinfamous]

Is that knight dude smoking a cigarette?

lol--thumbsupped.

 

[H_R]

Ahah he's no knight but a grumpy infantry sarge and he's smoking a cigar.

The game setting it's fantasy, but edging on a more modern look (the whole setting and plot has been designed to mirror the worst sides of modern society) and with a touch of mild steampunk (specially the enemies).

thanks for the vote!

 

[JamesV]

I like tower defense games, with Defense Grid and Toy Soldiers being some of my favorites. I also really like Defender's Quest, which is pretty basic in the art department, but also very good.

Some constructive (?) criticism :

1. Get rid of the CG start to that first video and dive right in showing off things which make your game stand out. When I saw the campaign map later in the videos, I thought that was pretty cool; maybe start with that?

2. I couldn't really tell what was going on in those videos at certain points. One spot there was a single guy walking around that looked like a Peon while you where showing the menu of the towers? Was he building them, or was that an enemy, or what?

3. Less menu's, more action. You say many towers, well do a montage of a minute where you can see them all in action, perhaps in different configurations so the buyer can see how playing one way versus another can effect the outcome. It's nice to know you have options for the towers, but watching menus isn't very exciting.

Good luck.

 

[H_R]

Hi James,

your analysis makes indeed sense. The CG is in the trailer because a) the game is still under development and it has some placeholder art, so we wanted to show people the real skills of the team b) it is the same trailer used for kickstarter so it needed some additional "flair (even though we agree that it could have been better, but having only one member of our 2 men team that takes care of the 3d an animations, time spent on that one was time not spent on assets for the game)

2) That one is a WCII peon placeholder indeed. But right, watching the video again with your question in mind, i see what you mean

3) can't disagree with this

It seems indeed that we didn't give the best presentation to the game (I am still surprised by the very low amount of yes and high amount of no received so far), we are now going to try and remake it (even though we wasted our "just published" visibility chance in GL).

One thing that I noticed is that now that we are not anymore in the spotlight, we get many more yes than no as compared to before. As if the people that go searching for games in the queue have different evaluation parameters than those voting the main page ones.

Thanks again for the feedback, as usual there is much we still have to learn Cheers!

 

[drnickriviera]

It's going to sound silly, but I was turned off in the first few seconds because of the use of ain't. This is coming from a southern boy who uses that word from time to time. It didn't set the mood for me and just made me roll my eyes.

I also don't care for cursing. Just a personal preference. One screenshot the character says 'Take that fing bridge'

I agree that the video didn't show enough action. I couldn't tell what any of the towers actually did. I want to see them in action. Be kinda cool to have a barracks tower or for the castle so you can send out infantry to slow their advance, or deploy an officer to a tower to give it a boost.

I think it looks like a neat game. I'll give it a thumbs up

 

[H_R]

Hi Drnick,

yep, you're not the first to mention the ain't. not being english speakers ourselves, i guess the ain't has a completely different sound to us (it was meant to be the old disillusioned speech of a grizzly veteran). That will also have to be solved.

Cursing is a bit part of the game, as I said the plot and the characters of the game are low-moral rough people with no almost no positive sides. the main character himself (the guy with the cigar) is a disrespectful s
semi-alcoholic sergeant of the infantry. We are often trying to keep the cursing on the medieval side of it, but something "flaming" or "bloody" seemed to don't be enough (the main character is constantly mistreating his poor corporal). Anyway, we already got "flaming" into that specific text

We are now re-planning the action part of the trailer with my 3d guy, we will try to follow the advice we got here. (the barracks are also partly implemented, but not nicely enough to display in gameplay unfortunately, hey still use pixel sprites until we have time to make the proper models)

Thanks for the thumb up!

 

[Morbus]

Tower defense? I'm sorry man, I really wish you all the best, but that's just not my style. Unless there's a very distinct and interesting USP, or boobs, it's hard to grab the market by the throat :\

But greenlight is weird sometimes. Don't get discouraged, just keep at it!

 

[H_R]

Thanks Morbus, we won't give up for sure, they say you are not dead until after your last breath, and we still have plenty of will and faith to get all this done

 

[H_R]

Ok, listening to your feedbacks we are remaking the trailer, removing almost completely the whole CGI part (we will only leave the flaming flag thing) and we will chance the whole gameplay. If nothing goes wrong my graphics guy will finish today. In the while i pushed back the old trailer and got an alpha footage on the GL page, it is rough but might still be better than the "fancy" trailer. Will update you when the new one is up so you can tell me what you think. cheers and thanks again guys!

 

[H_R]

Ok, we got the new one. If you have time take a look, we followed all the feedback we got here, hope you'll like the results. Cheers

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=441297411