Kickstarter update 5/19
Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 3:06 pm
I'm not sure if everyone here reads the kickstarter updates, but I wrote a long and hopefully interesting one mostly talking about game length, so I figured I'd post it here because the discussion is much more lively on the forums than on the kickstarter update comments. So here it is!
Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well. Things are going pretty well for us. We had a schedule to finish the last nightmare in a month, and we met it on time (more or less). Who hoo! I think that may be a first for this project. A few tasks weren’t finished because we don’t have all the pieces due to differing schedules of all of our remote workers, but we already made some progress into the final nightmare in the first playthrough. It is really exciting that soon you’ll be able to play the game from start to finish. Well, one branch of it anyway.
I suspect we’ll have a build with the full first playthrough ready towards the end of June or beginning of July. Around then, we’ll open the floodgates to beta backers. The game won’t be done though! We’ll still be working on polishing the experience as well as finishing the 3 nightmares that form the branches. Besides wanting to give backers something special, getting more players in will help us make the game better.
The survey has been very helpful, but in our next build we’ll have concrete data saying how many people died at a particular point and how long things are taking, which will help us fine tune the game and figure out any tough spots. We so excited about the data we can get that we are considering doing an update with no new nightmares but has the new logging stuff. That way we can make sure it is all working right before we put out new content. I’m not sure we will do that though. We’d include the extra polish we’ve done on the existing levels including more decoration of the asylum and all of our new staircases, so it wouldn’t be completely the same, but I’m not sure how excited alpha backers will be playing through what you already have but with a bit more polish. Adding that to the fact that doing builds take time, it might not be worth it, but my mind isn’t made up.
Now, while one would expect I’d be in a good mood since we are on track to make the game I want to make, I’ve actually been feeling pretty anxious about the game lately. A lot of times when you have an anxiety disorder, you just feel anxious, and you can’t quite put your finger on why. You have to try and think back to when it started and what could have triggered it. I think I was able to get to the root of it.
I was reading reviews for the Indonesian horror game DreadOut last week, and I noticed that one of the major criticisms was that it was too short at 4 hours long… Neverending Nightmares is probably going to be 1.5 to 2 hours long for the first playthrough (not counting any branches). If 4 hours is too short for reviewers, what does that mean for us? Granted, we probably have an additional 1-2 hours of content with the branches, but reviewers sometimes don’t take that into consideration. Retro/Grade had something like 13 hours of content if you played through every difficulty and all of challenge mode perfectly on your first try, which seems unlikely considering some of it is insanely hard. However, we got knocked pretty severely for only have “40 minutes” of content.
While I completely understand where they are coming from (we only have 40 minutes of backgrounds and 40 minutes of music), I felt like challenge mode was the real gem of the game, and that’s where 9 hours of the content was. I understand variety is good, but Rock Band didn’t have that many different backgrounds, and in each installment, there were less than 10 songs I liked, so I thought we were okay. Apparently not in the eyes of reviewers!
Game developers HATE to talk about game length because we feel that the quality of the experience matters more than the entire playtime. I’m sure some reviewers/gamers agree, but the issue of game length always pops up. I love the game Journey. A lot of people do! No one would argue that it is long game, but I think it’s the “right” length and well worth what I paid for it. Honestly, I think it’d be worth $60. I got an amazing 2 hours out of it. That’s what I’m trying to deliver with Neverending Nightmares.
I just posted a developer diary about tension. This keys in on one of the reasons why Neverending Nightmares was designed to be short. While we’ve had to cut branches, this length was always the plan. I said one playthrough would be 1-3 hours long on the kickstarter page, and I think we’ll be delivering on that. The plan was to create a game that doesn’t let up the tension and can be completed in one sitting. I want you glued to that monitor and completely engrossed in the world without looking at your watch wondering when the next save point is or thinking about how you are hungry and have to eat soon. I think that is much better for a horror experience.
As far as I know, there are no 3 hour long horror movies (or at least no good ones). “The Shining” is one of the longest I can think of at 2 hours and 24 minutes. If you look at longer horror games, they always have tension and then release and keep alternating that way. Solving puzzles isn’t usually scary, so usually they let up when you are in “puzzle solving mode” or perhaps when you are backtracking or just moving to your next destination. A good example of tension and release is Silent Hill. I love the foggy “normal” world, but the tension is the most intense when you are in “the otherworld”. To continue the analogy, our entire game takes place in “the otherworld”. While the start of every new nightmare is supposed to release some tension, it only lets a little tension out and only for a minute. This is a really different formula than most other horror games.
Perhaps people will still complain that Neverending Nightmares is too short. I guess when it comes down to it, I am willing to accept that. I feel that I am creating a really amazing experience that would be damaged by stretching it out further. If I stretched it out, I don’t think that would be respectful of your time. There’s no filler in Neverending Nightmares! If you enjoy the experience, I’d say play it again. There will be more you get out of it every time. There are so many great tiny details that you might not pick up on the first time through. The branches will be really interesting, and I truly hope that everyone who plays also experiences the branching content because they are really important to what I am trying to create.
You might be wondering if I am trying to convince myself or you. I know I am making the right decision for the game, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety! I’m not sure what can. Perhaps once we get people playing the beta and if it knocks everyone’s socks off, I’ll rest a little easier. I think we have some really special and interesting stuff in the last levels of the game that will really elevate our game from what it currently is to something extremely memorable. At least that’s my hope! Sometimes the way things play out in your mind isn’t the way they work in game, but I feel like I’ve always had a pretty good handle on the development of this game. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed until we are totally done though.
Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well. Things are going pretty well for us. We had a schedule to finish the last nightmare in a month, and we met it on time (more or less). Who hoo! I think that may be a first for this project. A few tasks weren’t finished because we don’t have all the pieces due to differing schedules of all of our remote workers, but we already made some progress into the final nightmare in the first playthrough. It is really exciting that soon you’ll be able to play the game from start to finish. Well, one branch of it anyway.
I suspect we’ll have a build with the full first playthrough ready towards the end of June or beginning of July. Around then, we’ll open the floodgates to beta backers. The game won’t be done though! We’ll still be working on polishing the experience as well as finishing the 3 nightmares that form the branches. Besides wanting to give backers something special, getting more players in will help us make the game better.
The survey has been very helpful, but in our next build we’ll have concrete data saying how many people died at a particular point and how long things are taking, which will help us fine tune the game and figure out any tough spots. We so excited about the data we can get that we are considering doing an update with no new nightmares but has the new logging stuff. That way we can make sure it is all working right before we put out new content. I’m not sure we will do that though. We’d include the extra polish we’ve done on the existing levels including more decoration of the asylum and all of our new staircases, so it wouldn’t be completely the same, but I’m not sure how excited alpha backers will be playing through what you already have but with a bit more polish. Adding that to the fact that doing builds take time, it might not be worth it, but my mind isn’t made up.
Now, while one would expect I’d be in a good mood since we are on track to make the game I want to make, I’ve actually been feeling pretty anxious about the game lately. A lot of times when you have an anxiety disorder, you just feel anxious, and you can’t quite put your finger on why. You have to try and think back to when it started and what could have triggered it. I think I was able to get to the root of it.
I was reading reviews for the Indonesian horror game DreadOut last week, and I noticed that one of the major criticisms was that it was too short at 4 hours long… Neverending Nightmares is probably going to be 1.5 to 2 hours long for the first playthrough (not counting any branches). If 4 hours is too short for reviewers, what does that mean for us? Granted, we probably have an additional 1-2 hours of content with the branches, but reviewers sometimes don’t take that into consideration. Retro/Grade had something like 13 hours of content if you played through every difficulty and all of challenge mode perfectly on your first try, which seems unlikely considering some of it is insanely hard. However, we got knocked pretty severely for only have “40 minutes” of content.
While I completely understand where they are coming from (we only have 40 minutes of backgrounds and 40 minutes of music), I felt like challenge mode was the real gem of the game, and that’s where 9 hours of the content was. I understand variety is good, but Rock Band didn’t have that many different backgrounds, and in each installment, there were less than 10 songs I liked, so I thought we were okay. Apparently not in the eyes of reviewers!
Game developers HATE to talk about game length because we feel that the quality of the experience matters more than the entire playtime. I’m sure some reviewers/gamers agree, but the issue of game length always pops up. I love the game Journey. A lot of people do! No one would argue that it is long game, but I think it’s the “right” length and well worth what I paid for it. Honestly, I think it’d be worth $60. I got an amazing 2 hours out of it. That’s what I’m trying to deliver with Neverending Nightmares.
I just posted a developer diary about tension. This keys in on one of the reasons why Neverending Nightmares was designed to be short. While we’ve had to cut branches, this length was always the plan. I said one playthrough would be 1-3 hours long on the kickstarter page, and I think we’ll be delivering on that. The plan was to create a game that doesn’t let up the tension and can be completed in one sitting. I want you glued to that monitor and completely engrossed in the world without looking at your watch wondering when the next save point is or thinking about how you are hungry and have to eat soon. I think that is much better for a horror experience.
As far as I know, there are no 3 hour long horror movies (or at least no good ones). “The Shining” is one of the longest I can think of at 2 hours and 24 minutes. If you look at longer horror games, they always have tension and then release and keep alternating that way. Solving puzzles isn’t usually scary, so usually they let up when you are in “puzzle solving mode” or perhaps when you are backtracking or just moving to your next destination. A good example of tension and release is Silent Hill. I love the foggy “normal” world, but the tension is the most intense when you are in “the otherworld”. To continue the analogy, our entire game takes place in “the otherworld”. While the start of every new nightmare is supposed to release some tension, it only lets a little tension out and only for a minute. This is a really different formula than most other horror games.
Perhaps people will still complain that Neverending Nightmares is too short. I guess when it comes down to it, I am willing to accept that. I feel that I am creating a really amazing experience that would be damaged by stretching it out further. If I stretched it out, I don’t think that would be respectful of your time. There’s no filler in Neverending Nightmares! If you enjoy the experience, I’d say play it again. There will be more you get out of it every time. There are so many great tiny details that you might not pick up on the first time through. The branches will be really interesting, and I truly hope that everyone who plays also experiences the branching content because they are really important to what I am trying to create.
You might be wondering if I am trying to convince myself or you. I know I am making the right decision for the game, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety! I’m not sure what can. Perhaps once we get people playing the beta and if it knocks everyone’s socks off, I’ll rest a little easier. I think we have some really special and interesting stuff in the last levels of the game that will really elevate our game from what it currently is to something extremely memorable. At least that’s my hope! Sometimes the way things play out in your mind isn’t the way they work in game, but I feel like I’ve always had a pretty good handle on the development of this game. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed until we are totally done though.
