After seeing the demo, I felt like the Reddit commentator who wrote, "I've never gone so quickly from seeing something to buying it" [or wanting to!]. Unfortunately, the buy page is pretty complicated:
The page has a lot of graphics and characters using strikethrough which confused me and looks somewhat unprofessional. I suspect the author might be losing conversions due to the complexity of this page. I would prefer a simpler buy page that put the actionable content right at the top. (I'm just looking for a regular commercial-type purchase of an early access game, not being a backer per se.)
I'm sharing this as constructive feedback in the hope the author might see it. A customer like me will appreciate a simpler, direct buy page that doesn't require a lot of thought from "oooo this looks fun" to making the purchase. Capitalize on impulse buys coming out of your demo.
Anyway, very polished and fun from the few minutes I've had to play it so far. Nice work!
This game is easily as polished as, or more polished than plenty of games on Steam Greenlight. Steam was the first place I looked for it, actually, after reading the article. A game like this should attract huge interest among the right audience if it's replayable. You have flashy and normal enough graphics with an easy-to-understand interface that regular gamers can enjoy it, and it also seems like it will appeal to the hardcore roguelike gamers. I'd highly recommend you try to get it on Steam as soon as you think it's ready (speaking as a person who makes a lot of video game purchases on Steam and not many outside it).
As per my reply to another commenter, the buy page has been morphing constantly over the past several weeks, and has gotten increasingly messy (it already looks better than it did last week, so good thing you didn't see it then =p).
I'll swap it out with a simpler version soon, but the idea is that I want to make sure players know what they're getting into since this is alpha. (That and the page still contains old info I've left there for reference by the many current owners, but it no longer applies to new purchases...)
When the full 1.0 launch happens next year the page will be incredibly simple.
I just want to echo what OP said. I am a hardcore roguelike player, and I look forward to games like this more than any other type. I usually get my fix from dwarf fortress but this looks amazing. I am going to check how much it costs and then probably buy it anyway. If I hadn't refreshed HN just when I did, I might not have seen it, and that would have been unfortunate.
[strikethrough goes here ->] ~~Do you have any plans for marketing this game amongst people such as myself?~~
Edit: just read that you're not advertising the game yet. Fair play. Do you have any feature lists showing what is done and what isn't? Is it a 30 year plan like we have with our Fortress Simulation game?
Haha, not a virtually never-ending DF plan, no :).
I have a very specific goal, an epic story to fill out, and a path to reach it. Cogmind will be done next year, then if it's performed well enough that I can continue making games we'll probably get Cogmind 2.
For Cogmind's current state, see this old post linked from the buy page: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2015/03/alpha-release-stat...
(Since then the final release date is looking more like Q2 2016 due the unexpectedly early burst in popularity, which will slow things down.)
Thanks man. I have one remaining question before I buy it.
I noticed from reading the material provided that you've said we're in a complex from start to finish, and it looks quite story based. This is great, I love lore like in Uplink. But more than that I love replayability in games. I like procedural generation such as ADOMs Unremarkable Cave (http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Unremarkable_Dungeon), as this allows each game to be fresh.
So, how much of the game is procedurally generated? and how much replayability is there? I see that you can evolve and change your play type and that seems cool but what about the environment, is there some randomness there?
I'm home now, so just about to hit your inbox with an Order email and then begin playing it. I just wish it was 35 C here in the UK. This is not roguelike weather damnit!
Dev here. Yeah, that page turned into a mess compared to what it was originally designed to be, but at the current stage I'm actually trying to ward off impulse buyers. The game isn't even done yet!
I mentioned in the post-mortem that I only want quality players right now who are very familiar with what they're getting into, and I haven't even been advertising the game to a general audience, only the primary target audience.
The Steam/GOG launch next year will be cheaper, and for a different audience. "Problem" is, players are having so much fun with it that news about Cogmind continues to spread...
I'm both an impulse buy and also (I think) your primary audience, as someone who's played Nethack, Dungeons of Dredmor, DCSS, Darkest Dungeon, FTL, Dwarf Fortress, Project Zomboid, The Escapists, Atom Zombie Smasher, etc. (forgive me for assuming I know what your audience is - I'm guessing). What I mean by impulse purchase is that, having made the decision to purchase it, I want to go quickly from making that decision to having the game in my hands. This is one area of user experience where Steam really excels. This includes assessing the risk of making an alpha purchase. Once I figured out how to purchase, your system that emailed me a download link delivered. :-)
But yes, I understand what you mean about discouraging random people who stumble across it from not knowing what they're getting into. Early access games are a phenomenon these days from Steam however, so a lot of people are familiar with the idea and comfortable with the purchase being a gamble, especially when the developer is making an effort to engage with the community, and you have a sense that the game will continue to be improved over time. (I am really looking forward to Terraria 1.3 for example, and find it amazing and delightful that Re-Logic continues to add so much content. They've already secured my purchase of Terraria:OtherWorld.) I also understand that it wouldn't be fun to have a bunch of unsatisfied people harassing you and consuming your time with returns. Just sharing my thoughts as someone who saw the demo and thought "I want this NOW" :-)
The level of polish in the video, in overall slickness and animation and sound effects, gave me a good sense of what I was getting into, and I can say from the game's "loading" screen, first level, animation & sound effects, and interface polish (including item & effect descriptions) I am not at all disappointed. It's great!
I like the fact that you've put a lot of effort into making the game playable without a reference, with inline help. A lot of other games fall down there, including AAA titles.
I haven't played more than a few minutes, so I don't know if by unfinished you mean you need to add a lot of content, or you mean the game isn't playable from start to finish. If it's playable from start to finish then I'd say you're in good shape (if not, then that's understandable as an alpha, and I agree with keeping it away from the mainstream until then). If you mean you can finish the game, but there isn't as much content as you'd like, then I'm sure you will improve it! One thing I'll be interested to see is whether the item drops result in a character that plays in a way that "feels" different, e.g., legs vs. wheels. Movement taking different amounts of time is something that I can grasp as a roguelike player, but I think items will offer the most variety if they can "feel" different somehow (that's the best I can describe it). FTL teleporters and stealth are an example of items that drastically change the feel, leading to completely different gameplay. Project Zomboid melee weapons vs. firearms is another example. (With wheels, can I effectively roll up and melee things when I couldn't on legs? I would hope to find tactics like this.) It's the emergent gameplay that makes tactical games or games with sandbox elements so beautiful and interesting.
Yup, there's a full game in there. You can (if you're good enough =p) play all the way through to the end. We have only two known winners on record since the game's launch. It's hard.
What's missing is the mid/late-game optional branches that will add interactive story elements, multiple endings, and lots more robots and components (the latter objects are all complete, but you can't access them yet until the new maps are added).
And yeah you'd be the target audience; anyone who plays DCSS and DF would fall into that category :D.
There are absolutely the types of strategic differences you mention here, and wide spectrum of approaches. The good thing is it's not entirely based on luck--you can hunt down specific robots and take what you need; at the same time, if caught in the wrong place you could end up getting beat up and forced to switch strategies on the fly. This is a big part of the appeal I think. Comebacks from a partial defeat are commonplace, but not always in the way you intended.
Not native, no. Cogmind works nicely in Wine (better than many natively ported games due to the simple rendering engine), and we have plenty of Mac/Linux players in alpha.
What I hope to do instead is eventually provide a Mac version as a one-click wrapper, but for now there are instructions on the forums for getting up and running on your own.
Regrettably, this is one of those posts that are extremely hard to read because of the eye-unfriendly color scheme. Light content on dark background is obviously hard to do well, so _please_ stick with what you're good at?
This is meant as sincere constructive critique, so feel free to downvote ad libitum.
It's just that I haven't given up hope yet to make (at least some) authors of such blogs aware of this bar to reception. If the color scheme doesn't have a designed function to enhance the content, it's apt to become a liability.
Edit: I cheched it out now and must say, the Cogmind page is actually way better than the article in question. It makes less use of white and reduces contrast (mostly) to acceptable levels. As an aside, I like the game idea. My favourite roguelike still uses ascii graphics :)
Yep, sometimes that works. But I also want to give feedback to the authors of such posts, because I don't assume they consciously want to dispel recipients with suboptimal eyesight.
Did you even know it at the time and if so why did you decide not to use it? I always thought libtcod was THE way to go for fancy ascii games. I would be very interested in your opinion on this.
I actually contributed a bit to libtcod back when it was in active development :D
The roguelike I worked on before Cogmind was originally written to work with libtcod's frontend, but I wanted to do a few unorthodox things and rather than continually patch up libtcod decided to build my own frontend from scratch. that bit was all I was using from libtcod as I already had my own game library and roguelike engine at the time. My version supports mixed font sizes out of the box and is written in C++ rather than C.
That game looks really great. I've played so many roguelikes and was instantly interested. Reading a good post mortem was another plus to check it out.
Then I remembered the general problem with commercial games.. went straight to the FAQ and searched for "linux".. bummer.. I guess somehow I expected a roguelike to work on Linux :)
I will observe the game and hopefully someday a Linux version will emerge. Good luck to your quest as indie dev!
Yeah, I want to eventually have a wrapper to simplify installation for those players. For now there are step-by-step guides on the forums that keep the process pretty simple with regard to Cogmind.
I may one day write more about the engine. I've written small bits here and there in the past, though nothing comprehensive. Getting busier and busier after release, so less time to write and publish articles :(
By the time you are ready to release, you could probably compile to WebAssembly and ship with a bundled webkit/chrome app wrapper (like how Slack's native clients build on a bare bones browser that is bundled with it).
It's crazy how much JS is out-competing Java in some areas.
It's possible I'll be using a wrapper for the full version, yeah. I've got your info and I'll look you guys up when it comes to that!
As for fonts, there are 82 font bitmaps included with the game, so for those seeking more traditional options, we've got 'em: http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=165.0
(The game is highly customizable, with new optional features added every new version.)
The System Requirements section on the buy page addresses the cross-platform issue (as does the FAQ). I don't make a big point of it because while it works fine through Wine etc., it's not natively cross-platform.
As for your other question, I should really put a notice on the website that Cogmind is completely DRM free. That's not currently indicated anywhere... (I'll add it tomorrow, thanks!)
Edit: Just quickly added it to a header since the site's getting a lot of traffic right now.
Do you think you'll be joining GOG? They seem like a great company to me but I've only ever been on the consumer side of the equation. I greatly enjoyed my DRM free copy of The Witcher 3!
I assume I will, yeah, as they have a good, loyal customer base and are known for quality. Still in early talks, and it wouldn't happen until next year, I don't think, because we'd need to wait for a price drop, and I don't want to really push and advertise Cogmind until it's about done.
Been watching the development of this title for a while now - brilliant stuff. I'm so pleased the release has worked out well for you so far - even if only alpha.
When I have the spare funds I'll be sure to pick up a copy!
Many thanks! And feel free to wait until the price drops next year if you need to :). I've got enough funds to see it through to completion, though I'd like to use any surplus to hire a professional composer for the OST.
I too have been following the development of Cogmind since having a post of mine about dungeon generation using BSP trees being linked on your dev blog. The game looks impressive.
Thank you, and yeah for that first post in the mapgen series I linked to a bunch of good online examples for others to check out, so thanks for that :D
Your game dev blog is worth alone a good read. Specially the 5 part series on map generation. Most sources online are pretty obscure, being either just a brief on what algorithms steps involve or a crude demo attached on a forum.
If anyone is interested, these are the series I am talking about:
Thankyou for the link, great timing for me as im releasing my first soon, and i was really beginning to feel overwhelmed at the non-code side of things. Heck it even effected my code i was so concerned, i kept being distracted.
This helps a lot though, so i think ill be back on after work tonight to put some more polish on!
http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/buy.html
The page has a lot of graphics and characters using strikethrough which confused me and looks somewhat unprofessional. I suspect the author might be losing conversions due to the complexity of this page. I would prefer a simpler buy page that put the actionable content right at the top. (I'm just looking for a regular commercial-type purchase of an early access game, not being a backer per se.)
I'm sharing this as constructive feedback in the hope the author might see it. A customer like me will appreciate a simpler, direct buy page that doesn't require a lot of thought from "oooo this looks fun" to making the purchase. Capitalize on impulse buys coming out of your demo.
Anyway, very polished and fun from the few minutes I've had to play it so far. Nice work!
This game is easily as polished as, or more polished than plenty of games on Steam Greenlight. Steam was the first place I looked for it, actually, after reading the article. A game like this should attract huge interest among the right audience if it's replayable. You have flashy and normal enough graphics with an easy-to-understand interface that regular gamers can enjoy it, and it also seems like it will appeal to the hardcore roguelike gamers. I'd highly recommend you try to get it on Steam as soon as you think it's ready (speaking as a person who makes a lot of video game purchases on Steam and not many outside it).