Alora Fane

I played MARDEK recently, and it was much better than I expected! I'm now a fan of the series again! Here's how my new feelings about it have influenced what I want to do with a remake.

Sindrel Song's been out for just over a week now. In this time, it's got a whopping 5 reviews (all positive, thankfully), and 70 sales (including the soundtrack, I think). That's... not exactly worth the months of work involved, but the whole thing has been a big and valuable learning experience, so it wasn't all for naught. I'm just glad that anyone got something positive out of it.

I haven't promoted it at all, but I've got emails from a bunch of influencer types asking for free keys, claiming they'll make reviews to promote the game. I wrote ∞ the previous post about 'exposure' ∞ out of frustration with these, but my attitude's changed since then, and I've given out a few just to see what - if anything - might happen. Things can only get better, right? Obviously the sales haven't rocketed or anything, but maybe it takes time for these supposed reviews to manifest. If nothing else, it's got me used to talking to these strangers in emails, less anxious, which makes me feel more capable of the promotion side of things for future releases. I feel I've already made a couple of vague connections just by these people emailing me.

I haven't fixed any bugs or replied to several comments about it yet, sorry about that. I want to get around to that, but it's been difficult to think about Sindrel Song recently.

I've been playing through the old MARDEK chapters, partly as a form of avoidance behaviour so I didn't have to think about Sindrel Song, and partly because I want/need to do this anyway if I'm going to be re-releasing it. I suppose I'm motivated by the thought it might be more successful than Sindrel Song has been.

I finally got to the end a couple of days ago, after a week of hours-a-day playing, though I've not done a lot of optional stuff yet, like the character tournaments (which I'd forgotten all about) or the superbosses (I got to Karnos but couldn't even survive one attack).

I'm not sure if you know this because I've been so secretive and diplomatic about it for the past few years, but I didn't have the best opinion of MARDEK. I was highly resistant to the idea of a MARDEK IV and beyond, and I fully expected this playthrough to be a cringeworthy trudge full of frustration at things I feel I've long since moved beyond.

The result was quite different, though. Surprising. There are a lot of parts I'd completely forgotten about, and the writing for bits I did remember wasn't nearly as bad as I remember, at all. A lot of silly comments made me laugh - I liked going around talking to every NPC - and some of the heavier plot stuff really landed, even sending chills down my spine. The music, though not masterfully made, was varied and interesting, not as harsh as I expected it to be. I often paused to let tracks continue rather than being interrupted by battles.

The gameplay was also surprisingly solid. At first I was annoyed by the bittiness of it, the granularity, and the straightforward violence, but there's definitely appeal in that kind of combat system, and I found the grinding, arena challenges, etc fun rather than tedious. Some of the bigger boss battles required strategy and thought and sparked excitement about the outcome in a way I didn't expect. Each of the characters felt interestingly different in their abilities and value, too, and I enjoyed switching between them, and eventually settling on a team.

It's not without its faults, of course. The story was made up as I went along, and the early parts are definitely inferior to the later parts, so I'm concerned that people unfamiliar with the game might be put off by the beginning, assuming it's all like that. Some of the jokes - or just general comments or characters - seem inappropriate here in the future, which is embarrassing; I imagine this is true of a lot of stuff that was popular in the culture surrounding Flash games back then, focused as it was on grotesque violence and pimps and hos and all that lovely stuff. Most of the characters sound like me - or express my traits - and a lot of the wording is clunky, stumbling, or rambling, because I was inexperienced as a writer. There might be too much grinding in parts; the back-to-back dungeons at the start of chapter 3 are a chore. The non-linearity of chapter 3 is perhaps annoyingly obscure, as are many of the hidden things (I had to check my own walkthrough). And there are too many plot points, antagonists, etc all overlapping at once.

I'm surprised how much of the dialogue dealt with reproductive/relationship themes; I'd been thinking that was a relatively recent obsession, but apparently not. It's all quite naively explored though; clearly the work of a shy, inexperienced 'nice' guy who'd always resented the macho guys getting the girls. Though I had a girlfriend as I made this, who seemed to like my traits and not those traits, so a lot of it was brought out by exploring relationship things after a lifetime spent too bashful to even say the word 'sex'.

Overall, I definitely warmed up to the game while playing through it this time, going from having to force myself to play it at the beginning, to looking forward to having the chance to towards the end. It's a good game! I'd go so far as to say I'm now a MARDEK fan myself, hungry for a fourth chapter, ha.

Though that doesn't mean that I'll be making one. At least, not a direct continuation of this. As people have previously expressed, making the eight chapters as previously planned would just be overwhelming.

I've looked at the notes that I made for those later chapters, and it's probably a good idea that I didn't make them because they wouldn't have been very appealing. There's a whole lot of repetition, including directly traversing areas you already cleared in chapter 3 (eg the elemental temples), multiple times. A lot of it's clutter, rambling, filler. It'd be better to just compress it all into a single finale chapter.

But as I've said previously, I'm more interested in doing a remake, and continuing on with that rather than making a direct continuation in the ancient style, even though I'm fond of it now. I've been giving some thought about how best to do that.

Much of what I'm thinking was already laid out in ∞ this post ∞, and I might be repeating myself a lot here, though I suppose it'll stress what still appeals to me after thinking about it for a couple of weeks.

I've been building up this Alora Fane world for a while, so I definitely want to set a remake there. A big part of Alora Fane's lore is the Cataclysm that shattered one of its six 'petal' worlds, and severed the world's link to the gods. Before this, the gods - the Aolmna - walked among the people and interacted with them directly, teaching empathy-based spirituality ("Unisis"), but afterwards the world fell into decay without the gods maintaining it.

I'm aware of the resistance people have shown towards the nonviolent approach Taming Dreams - the previous MARDEK remake - took, and while I'm no longer opposed to doing a standard violent combat system, I'm still attached to that and want to make some finished game that uses it. Belief was meant as an attempt to do this, but I wrote in the previous post about how I'm not sure how to marry it together with a MARDEK remake, especially since Belief's cast and story were loosely inspired by MARDEK's anyway.

I've had an idea which I feel could work:

A big story told in six chapters, divided into two trilogies.

The first would be the Belief trilogy. This would be set in Alora Fane with its six petals intact and the gods present, and 'combat' would involve convincing other humans using social skills instead of violence; I've already made much of the first Belief game and talked about that extensively in previous posts.

Each of these three chapters would be fairly short, with just three acts. Not super short, but maybe around the length of MARDEK Chapter 2, something like that.

The trilogy would culminate in the Cataclysm.

This would be followed by another trilogy based on MARDEK (perhaps with a different title, to distinguish it and make it clear it's not an exact remake? Like the "ROHOPH" suggestion a while back), set over 600 years in the future, in an Alora Fane that's been without gods for a long time. With the gods gone, there's no longer any emphasis on nonviolence, and the Cataclysm stirred up the fundamental structure of the world, and brought into being miasma and the monsters that form from it.

People battle these monsters using weapons, and they use a kind of 'magic' - elemancy? - which involves manipulating the same fundamental structure of reality to conjure up flames, lightning, etc. This would utilise the six 'natural elements': Courage, Fear, Bliss, Destruction, Creation, Sorrow. Characters would also be attuned to one of these elements.

The elements aren't tied to emotional non-combat. Rather, the lore is that the universe is fundamentally made of consciousness, 'dreamed into being', and these are the 'fundamental particles' of that consciousness. It's just an idiosyncratic extension of what the elements were in MARDEK, as we've talked about previously.

So the combat system would be essentially the same as MARDEK's. It might have a few tweaks here and there, but in spirit it'd aim for the same kind of appeal, with snappy 4v4 encounters where you use attacks to deplete HP.

I'm not certain about this and still like giving the player the choice to charm or kill... but we'll see how it goes; it's something I'll need to experiment with.

The first episode of this second trilogy would be heavily based around the first couple of MARDEK episodes, with a lot drawn from the Taming Dreams take on them (including stuff I never got around to making but had planned in a lot of detail), and some new changes I feel make things more interesting. I've been planning its events in detail, and I like what I've got so far.

The second would be roughly based on the third MARDEK chapter and the Taming Dreams plans for those events.

The third would be a climax and conclusion to the previous two.

These would be about twice as long as the Belief chapters, with six acts each, where each episode roughly consists of a single dungeon and a bunch of plot events throughout or before/after it. I've been planning rough structures of each of the chapters, and this seems to work well for something that feels substantial but doesn't drag on (and wouldn't take too long to make).

Maybe this structure seems familiar? I should start thinking about what supposedly racist comic relief character I can include in the first episode if I want to win the audience over.

I'll be drawing heavily on all I've got for both MARDEK and Taming Dreams, but I don't want to be bound to bad decisions. I'm keeping most of the primary characters, but not all of them. Some of the characters that are kept have changes, like different names, since I want to make them all six characters long.

For example, Mardek uses his Taming Dreams look (rather than the extremely bland ""design"" from the original), and is possessed by a Lucen called Dharma rather than an Annunaki called Rohoph (who's essentially the same character otherwise, and who serves as the common thread through both trilogies, meddling with Lileah then Blight in the first, and possessing Mardek in the second). Deugan and "Emeela" are sort of combinations of their MARDEK and Taming Dreams versions. Meraeador uses the female Meraeadyth design - now called Meryth - and joins earlier, as in Taming Dreams. Steele takes the role of Mugbert in the early events, as in Taming Dreams, but now his relationships with other characters is deeper and interconnected, and his personality's less cartoonishly awful. And so on.

I've dropped some characters completely since they'd only pad out the development time and aren't very interesting (such a subjective statement!), while others that weren't present in MARDEK have been carried over from Taming Dreams (eg Collie replaces Jacques). As much as I like MARDEK's tons of characters, it makes storytelling too difficult and time-consuming, and I've regretted for years that the cast wasn't more streamlined. So that's definitely something I'm keeping in mind for this, even though I'm aware it might mean some people's favourites are cut (though I suspect the ones I've cut would be the least popular).

I've done some concept art of the characters already, but I'll write a post focused on that in the coming days.

I don't know how receptive people will be to a version of this game with major changes like this. I'd like to think that if I try to retain what made MARDEK mechanically fun, and thematically interesting, while using my years of planning and growth to write a better story rather than being bound to details I made up as I went along years ago, I can make something greater than the original, but... we'll see. I suppose we've already discussed it quite a bit, heard thoughts for and against, but we'll need to actually see a demo or something for people to really know how they feel about it.

I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend the next two or three years of my life working on just this. Not messing around with different projects, following my whims, but just really sticking with this one series and making it something great. It no longer feels like a 'creative trap'; I'm actually excited about it!

My hope is that the nostalgia from the re-release of the original MARDEK might give me a jump start, fuelling interest in a Kickstarter for the first of these remake chapters. Not Belief 1, necessarily; I might work on the first chapter of the MARDEK-inspired trilogy first, then Belief 1, then see which is the most popular and appealing to decide which sequel to do next. Perhaps alternating like that might reduce burnout for both me and players.

I used to resent being 'the MARDEK guy', and tried to distance myself from it, but that game series has definitely brought a lot of joy to a significant number of people, myself included. I suppose I just lost touch with that because of all the horrible stuff going on in my life outside of games development during my twenties, but now I feel I'm at a calmer place mentally that should allow me to focus on this without all that getting in the way.

It shouldn't even take that long to make the chapters. MARDEK 3 took so long, from what I recall, because of personal issues outside development, and jumping around between projects, following whims. Taming Dreams stopped because I went to university. The Taming Dreams episodes only took a month or two to make, and I remember MARDEK 1 and 2 taking a similar amount of time. If I really focus on this, I can imagine making six chapters in 2-4 years. I'm aware I once thought 8 MARDEK chapters was realistic, and this might seem like going down the same dead end yet again, but... well, all I can do is see how it goes.

I'll start by adding the MARDEK re-release to Steam early next year. In the meantime, I'll be working on planning all of the chapters as a whole, to make sure I can tie them together in a pleasing way with foreshadowing and without plot holes! Having everything planned in detail before I begin also means it should come along smoothly once the production work gets started.

(Also, I still have a post about Clarence's Big Chance ready for posting, so I'll add that soon.)

25 COMMENTS

Astreon152~5Y

"My hope is that the nostalgia from the re-release of the original MARDEK might give me a jump start, fuelling interest in a Kickstarter for the first of these remake chapters. Not Belief 1, necessarily; I might work on the first chapter of the MARDEK-inspired trilogy first, then Belief 1, then see which is the most popular and appealing to decide which sequel to do next. Perhaps alternating like that might reduce burnout for both me and players".

I was going to suggest working on Mardek first, but going full throttle on it.
Something Star Wars like: start with remaking Mardek since everyone knows it, and most of all since that would match with what people would expect from a RPG (turn based violent battles).
Then, when you have met an audience, release Belief as a prequel, which probably needs more openness from players.

That probably wouldn't be as interesting as alternating for you as a dev though. But i feel alternating would be putting one story aside to start another one. Could be good, could be bad, depending on players temperament: i personnally cannot read more than one book at the same time, but if there's a big gap between realeases of a trilogy of books, i can read others in between.

Anyway, hope some dissenting opinion will help fortify yours :)

I was going to suggest working on Mardek first, but going full throttle on it.
Something Star Wars like: start with remaking Mardek since everyone knows it, and most of all since that would match with what people would expect from a RPG (turn based violent battles). 
Then, when you have met an audience, release Belief as a prequel, which probably needs more openness from players.

That probably wouldn't be as interesting as alternating for you as a dev though. But i feel alternating would be putting one story aside to start another one. Could be good, could be bad, depending on players temperament: i personnally cannot read more than one book at the same time, but if there's a big gap between realeases of a trilogy of books, i can read others in between.

Anyway, hope some dissenting opinion will help fortify yours :)

Tobias 1115~5Y

The only reason I thought about alternating is because I've already done a lot of work on Belief, so it doesn't seem like it'd take that long to finish. But we'll see how it goes; if people do like the MARDEK remake (whatever I call it), I could just focus on the next one.

Lia2~5Y

So you finished Sindrel's song. Well done! That's a pretty rare achievement for youâ€”finishing something. I'm glad that Sindrel's song isn't the first installment of an eight chapter long series, because it that case we'd have never seen the rest of it. I'm glad you've learned a lot by making Sindrel's song!

...

> A big story told in six chapters, divided into two trilogies.

WAIT. REALLY?

You started the MARDEK series and never finished them. You started the Raider series and never finished them. You then started the MARDEK reboot "Taming Dreams" and promised that you'd *definitely* finish it this time. To nobody's surprise you didn't. In between you've had many other games that never got released at all.

How many times does this tale have to repeat itself until you finally spot a pattern? You are unable to keep your attention span on a project for any extended period of time. There's nothing to suggest that something has changed that will allow you to keep working for X years on the same thing *this* time. If anything, your attention span has only gotten worse since you worked on the original MARDEK. And yet here you are again. You had an idea, thought about it for a week, and are already determined to pin your next three years to it.

You know what they say to new writers who think they will write the next epic trilogy with books of over 500 pages? "Start by writing a short story."

Why does everything have to be a multi-part series spanning multiple works? What is wrong with a single game that has a begin, middle, and *end*? It seems like you feel some kind of obsessive compulsion to smear a single story over multiple games, as if stories that fit in a single game aren't "worthy" enough for you. Rest assured that the sheer majority of the RPGs praised for their story were single-work games; even the Final Fantasy series have independent stories that share little more than their name.

Stop making three-year plans and then changing them after a year. We both know that the "changing after a year" part isn't going to be fixed, so instead start making one-year plans that don't tie your future down. Start playing to your strengthens, not your weaknesses; we both know you've got the ability to make great games, you just need to design one that can be made within the attention span you've got available.

...

> A big story told in six chapters, divided into two trilogies.

WAIT. REALLY?

You started the MARDEK series and never finished them. You started the Raider series and never finished them. You then started the MARDEK reboot "Taming Dreams" and promised that you'd *definitely* finish it this time. To nobody's surprise you didn't. In between you've had many other games that never got released at all.

How many times does this tale have to repeat itself until you finally spot a pattern? You are unable to keep your attention span on a project for any extended period of time. There's nothing to suggest that something has changed that will allow you to keep working for X years on the same thing *this* time. If anything, your attention span has only gotten worse since you worked on the original MARDEK. And yet here you are again. You had an idea, thought about it for a week, and are already determined to pin your next three years to it.

You know what they say to new writers who think they will write the next epic trilogy with books of over 500 pages? "Start by writing a short story."

Why does everything have to be a multi-part series spanning multiple works? What is wrong with a single game that has a begin, middle, and *end*? It seems like you feel some kind of obsessive compulsion to smear a single story over multiple games, as if stories that fit in a single game aren't "worthy" enough for you. Rest assured that the sheer majority of the RPGs praised for their story were single-work games; even the Final Fantasy series have independent stories that share little more than their name.

Stop making three-year plans and then changing them after a year. We both know that the "changing after a year" part isn't going to be fixed, so instead start making one-year plans that don't tie your future down. Start playing to your strengthens, not your weaknesses; we both know you've got the ability to make great games, you just need to design one that can be made within the attention span you've got available.

Tobias 1115~5Y

I can understand where you're coming from, but all comments like this do is get me down and put me on the defensive.

I spent my twenties getting creatively distracted all the time because I suppose I delusionally thought everything was equally worthy, that anything could or would be a success. The years have beaten me down, however - especially considering the response to Sindrel Song, which was built as a standalone thing - and I'm returning to the one thing I made that people seemed to like the most in the hope that it could, well, earn some money. It feels like a period of experimentation to see what worked, and this is what emerged as the fittest thing.

If I make a MARDEK Remake, it might attract interest in a way a completely original RPG wouldn't. I also personally have a lot of history with it, and - importantly - a whole lot already planned that I can call upon to really speed up the process. It's less about coming up with a completely novel plot and hoping it'll work, and more like writing a second draft of something that was already proven to work in some form in the past.

There are also personal reasons why I didn't carry on with other things, like MARDEK, Taming Dreams, etc, such as obsessing constantly over failing to find a partner (an obsession I no longer have), and going to university. I'm in a different position now, mentally.

Oh, and MARDEK earning no money was a huuuuge thing, because Flash games generally didn't. The same was true of the other things I released. The difference would be like night and day if I could succeed on Kickstarter and get funding before I even begin. Can you imagine working on something for months, unpaid, in the hope it might eventually generate some money at the end?

Also, I've not been thinking about this for a week. I've been writing posts considering it for months now. The first was apparently from 3 months ago (12th of September): [LINK]

I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'd consider standalone stories 'not worthy' from. I see an episodic thing as having many kinds of appeal for both me as the developer and for players that a single game wouldn't. Consider two scenarios:

1. I make a 20-hour-long RPG with a novel cast of characters. It takes 12 months of focus for me to complete, and I earn money from it and get feedback once. The wait and work are long.

2. I make the same story, but split up as three 6-hour-long RPGs which share the same cast. Each part takes four months. I get feedback and money three times, and in between each chapter, people might develop curiosity about what's going to happen next, building hype for the next chapter. By the end, there'd likely be much more interest than the was at the beginning; this was the case for MARDEK, anyway.

I could cram the story I want to tell into a single game, or make a completely new story, but the work involved seems greater, and the benefits less, than making it in parts.

I suppose ultimately though whether I stick with it isn't due to any creative attention span, but whether I can secure funding for it before I begin.

I know it's silly to speak of these things as if anything I could make would remotely compare, but I wonder whether Star Wars and Harry Potter would have become the cultural juggernauts that they did if they were just standalone stories.

~

Also, since I'll probably be thinking about this all night now:

Apart from the money thing, the biggest issue with MARDEK was how it got really bloated; Chapter 3 is huge compared to Chapter 2. It's why I'm planning these ones really carefully, dividing each into a manageable number of 'acts' and making sure I know them all before I begin. That way, I'll just be following a plan instead of adding whatever my whims desire as I go along.

I can understand where you're coming from, but all comments like this do is get me down and put me on the defensive.

I spent my twenties getting creatively distracted all the time because I suppose I delusionally thought everything was equally worthy, that anything could or would be a success. The years have beaten me down, however - especially considering the response to Sindrel Song, which was built as a standalone thing - and I'm returning to the one thing I made that people seemed to like the most in the hope that it could, well, earn some money. It feels like a period of experimentation to see what worked, and this is what emerged as the fittest thing.

If I make a MARDEK Remake, it might attract interest in a way a completely original RPG wouldn't. I also personally have a lot of history with it, and - importantly - a whole lot /already planned/ that I can call upon to really speed up the process. It's less about coming up with a completely novel plot and hoping it'll work, and more like writing a second draft of something that was already proven to work in some form in the past.

There are also personal reasons why I didn't carry on with other things, like MARDEK, Taming Dreams, etc, such as obsessing constantly over failing to find a partner (an obsession I no longer have), and going to university. I'm in a different position now, mentally.

Oh, and MARDEK earning no money was a huuuuge thing, because Flash games generally didn't. The same was true of the other things I released. The difference would be like night and day if I could succeed on Kickstarter and get funding before I even begin. Can you imagine working on something for months, unpaid, in the hope it might eventually generate some money at the end?

Also, I've not been thinking about this for a week. I've been writing posts considering it for months now. The first was apparently from 3 months ago (12th of September): https://alorafane.com/blog/227

I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'd consider standalone stories 'not worthy' from. I see an episodic thing as having many kinds of appeal for both me as the developer and for players that a single game wouldn't. Consider two scenarios:

1. I make a 20-hour-long RPG with a novel cast of characters. It takes 12 months of focus for me to complete, and I earn money from it and get feedback once. The wait and work are long.

2. I make the same story, but split up as three 6-hour-long RPGs which share the same cast. Each part takes four months. I get feedback and money three times, and in between each chapter, people might develop curiosity about what's going to happen next, building hype for the next chapter. By the end, there'd likely be much more interest than the was at the beginning; this was the case for MARDEK, anyway.

I /could/ cram the story I want to tell into a single game, or make a completely new story, but the work involved seems greater, and the benefits less, than making it in parts.

I suppose ultimately though whether I stick with it isn't due to any creative attention span, but whether I can secure funding for it before I begin.

I know it's silly to speak of these things as if anything I could make would remotely compare, but I wonder whether Star Wars and Harry Potter would have become the cultural juggernauts that they did if they were just standalone stories.

Also, since I'll probably be thinking about this all night now:

Apart from the money thing, the biggest issue with MARDEK was how it got really bloated; Chapter 3 is huge compared to Chapter 2. It's why I'm planning these ones really carefully, dividing each into a manageable number of 'acts' and making sure I know them all before I begin. That way, I'll just be following a plan instead of adding whatever my whims desire as I go along.

Lia2~5Y

As for the monetary aspect, I think you're approaching it the wrong way. Money won't just come to you, you need to pursue it.

It seems that you think there is some kind of "monetary justice" in this world: that if you produce a game worth $X, then you'll earn $X. From everything I've seen on this subject, this is not the case anymore.

That may have been how things worked a decade ago in the Flash age. Back then things were simple. Money came from sponsorships; sponsors would give your game a fair look and offer an amount of money depending on how successful they predicted the game to be. Any good game would automatically become successful: all games were free to play; if a game has a good rating and is of a genre a player likes, they'll probably click on it.

But that time is over now. Nowadays you sell your game not to sponsors but to playersâ€”players who have to pay in full before they even get to play the game. Take a look at the analysis here: [LINK] You should read it and do your own research as well, but the tl;dr conclusion is: "A game's rating has little correlation with it's amount of sales, the thing that really matters is the pre-launch awareness."

I'm sure you can see this in Sindrel's song. The very few reviews it has are positive, but you did almost nothing to market the game; the amount of readers on your blog seems to be too small to be able to rely on. Games don't market themselves anymore and Steam isn't going to help you; they only promote games that are already selling well. If it doesn't sell well upon launch, the game will just fade into obscurity.

You're treating developing a good game as your primary priority and marketing it as an afterthought. Maybe that's how it'd work in an ideal world, but it's not the world we live in now. Nowadays, if you want money, then marketing is everything; developing an actually good game serves no purpose other than making your game and future games easier to market. I'm sure you don't like that it works this way, but ignoring reality isn't going to make you money.

If you want money, you need to actually think about how to make money. That means researching how the market works, and it probably means figuring out how to get players hyped up for your game before you launch it. Just developing a good game will most likely not be sufficient. Simple tricks like selling part of the game to get part of the money will not magically solve your monetary woes or absolve you of the need for marketing.

As for the monetary aspect, I think you're approaching it the wrong way. Money won't just come to you, you need to pursue it.

It seems that you think there is some kind of "monetary justice" in this world: that if you produce a game worth $X, then you'll earn $X. From everything I've seen on this subject, this is not the case anymore.

That may have been how things worked a decade ago in the Flash age. Back then things were simple. Money came from sponsorships; sponsors would give your game a fair look and offer an amount of money depending on how successful they predicted the game to be. Any good game would automatically become successful: all games were free to play; if a game has a good rating and is of a genre a player likes, they'll probably click on it.

But that time is over now. Nowadays you sell your game not to sponsors but to playersâ€”players who have to pay in full before they even get to play the game. Take a look at the analysis here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/buuire/what_factors_predict_the_success_of_a_steam_game/. You should read it and do your own research as well, but the tl;dr conclusion is: "A game's rating has little correlation with it's amount of sales, the thing that really matters is the pre-launch awareness."

I'm sure you can see this in Sindrel's song. The very few reviews it has are positive, but you did almost nothing to market the game; the amount of readers on your blog seems to be too small to be able to rely on. Games don't market themselves anymore and Steam isn't going to help you; they only promote games that are already selling well. If it doesn't sell well upon launch, the game will just fade into obscurity.

You're treating developing a good game as your primary priority and marketing it as an afterthought. Maybe that's how it'd work in an ideal world, but it's not the world we live in now. Nowadays, if you want money, then marketing is everything; developing an actually good game serves no purpose other than making your game and future games easier to market. I'm sure you don't like that it works this way, but ignoring reality isn't going to make you money.

If you want money, you need to actually think about how to make money. That means researching how the market works, and it probably means figuring out how to get players hyped up for your game before you launch it. Just developing a good game will most likely not be sufficient. Simple tricks like selling part of the game to get part of the money will not magically solve your monetary woes or absolve you of the need for marketing.

Tobias 1115~5Y

I'm very aware of this and have been thinking about - and researching - it constantly for the past few months; I just didn't talk about it in this post because I was talking about the game ideas instead.

It's why I'll be going down the crowdfunding route. With that, you pretty much have to actively run a marketing campaign for a whole month, and I'm intending to wholly focus on that as best I can to drum up interest from the start. It also means I can gauge interest - and get money - before pouring months of effort in.

With Sindrel Song, I got the impression it'd be challenging to market because it's so niche, and I'd essentially given up on the idea when it came to release time. Something like MARDEK, based on existing nostalgia, seems like it'd have a hook that'd allow it to gain interest and traction much easier. This is also why I'm doing a MARDEK Remake rather than a standalone original RPG.

Astreon152~5Y

"There's nothing to suggest that something has changed that will allow you to keep working for X years on the same thing *this* time"

I get where this might come from: at first, Tobias was dead set on NOT remaking Mardek. Then he played retro games, and thought "hey, i could reimagine Mardek". But he reaaaaally explained it badly at the time, so many people were like "dude, better not do anything than this shitty Mardek-but-not-Mardek you're describing to us".
Then were a few bouts of depression, then some IRL stuff, then the idea of Belief, then back to "hey, how about i reimagine Mardek". Then some miracle made it so that old files were stumbled upon, and BAM, it switched to "alright, i can give you almost-original-Mardek, then i'd make Belief". Etc.

BUT, you're forgetting that, though this might look like going circles, behind it is a definite goal: getting a life, as an artist (sorry if that sounds harsh Tobias, i'm summing up with an axe there). And Tobias has become much more mature than he was before the surgery. He's won a lot of battles against himself, even if the war is not over.

So yes, there is always the risk that he"ll fall back to his youth's flaws, and give up stuff halfway through. But this time, there clearly is a major chance this project will make it through, wich would be great for both him an us.

So please, give the man some credit, and don't give up on him when, suprisingly, he himself hasn't, although there has been very few encouragements in recent weeks.
And, perhaps, refrain from sharing negative opinions such as this one on this site: considering how sensitive Tobias is, all your message can contribute to, is put him down (well, lower then he already puts himself), and decrease the chances of the games ever being made.

I'm not asking to cheer, or to..believe, and again, i understand why you could be skeptical when you see him being enthusiastic and all. But your message is not really written in a "friendly advice" tone, more like a "condescending admonition" tone, and nothing positive comes out of it.

"There's nothing to suggest that something has changed that will allow you to keep working for X years on the same thing *this* time"

I get where this might come from: at first, Tobias was dead set on NOT remaking Mardek. Then he played retro games, and thought "hey, i could reimagine Mardek". But he reaaaaally explained it badly at the time, so many people were like "dude, better not do anything than this shitty Mardek-but-not-Mardek you're describing to us". 
Then were a few bouts of depression, then some IRL stuff, then the idea of Belief, then back to "hey, how about i reimagine Mardek". Then some miracle made it so that old files were stumbled upon, and BAM, it switched to "alright, i can give you almost-original-Mardek, then i'd make Belief". Etc.

BUT, you're forgetting that, though this might look like going circles, behind it is a definite goal: getting a life, as an artist (sorry if that sounds harsh Tobias, i'm summing up with an axe there). And Tobias has become much more mature than he was before the surgery. He's won a lot of battles against himself, even if the war is not over.

So yes, there is always the risk that he"ll fall back to his youth's flaws, and give up stuff halfway through. But this time, there clearly is a major chance this project will make it through, wich would be great for both him an us.

So please, give the man some credit, and don't give up on him when, suprisingly, he himself hasn't, although there has been very few encouragements in recent weeks. 
And, perhaps, refrain from sharing negative opinions such as this one on this site: considering how sensitive Tobias is, all your message can contribute to, is put him down (well, lower then he already puts himself), and decrease the chances of the games ever being made.

I'm not asking to cheer, or to..believe, and again, i understand why you could be skeptical when you see him being enthusiastic and all. But your message is not really written in a "friendly advice" tone, more like a "condescending admonition" tone, and nothing positive comes out of it.

Kiyasuriin4~5Y

Which I agree. Ideas start grand. and if you do not plan it correctly it can be bloated and messy. I would very much prefer to have my project DIVIDED onto a manage-able length. instead of having an un-even sized chapters.

Well said, Tobias. I fully support your reasoning.

DetroitLolcat7~5Y

*POST CONTAINS LOTS OF MARDEK 1-3 SPOILERS, IN CASE THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED IT*

I'm glad to see that you liked MARDEK after revisiting it. Going back and looking at your creations from 2007-2010 must have been difficult since you've grown so much since then. Most people I know who have done *creative* things as a hobby would be mortified to look back at the creations of their teenage/early-20s selves. It's nice to know that you're proud of MARDEK, because you really should be! MARDEK is a *really* good game; and a lot of it holds up ten years later. There are *very* few creators who can say that their work from so long ago holds up as well as MARDEK does.

The heavier plot stuff, particularly the character deaths at the end of Chapters 2 and 3, hit incredibly well. And the way Mardek and company grow as people over the course of Chapter 3 is very well written, especially if you read the P-Dialogue. Rohoph's character development and the enormous cliffhanger that ends the third chapter was something I would periodically think about for the last nine years. It's extremely understandable why you had the feelings about MARDEK you had for so long, since you toiled over the game for so long and it didn't earn the revenue it frankly deserved. Thanks a lot for giving MARDEK fans hope to see one of their favorite games redone.

While the comment section can nitpick the originals to eternity, I'd just like to say that the non-linearity of Chapter 3 was a huge feature in my opinion, not a bug. Yes, there could probably be a little more direction and less obscurity, but being told to just "explore the world" after the three-dungeon opening to MARDEK 3 was really nice. The game opened with a hyper-focused, three-dungeon mission that might have been a *little* bloated (I don't think MARDEK 3 was that bloated, and very little of it felt like filler), but made sense. But after that, the game gave the player a huge breather with the overarching mission of "find the Crystals, good luck!". It let players explore the realm without a huge sense of urgency, which worked very well IMO. Players found secrets, lore, and eventually information on the Crystals organically, all while traversing through a vast, open world. And once the plot started picking up and a few characters from Chapter 2 started reappearing, the urgency picked up and the game concluded on an extremely powerful moment.

But what really made me love MARDEK was the third chapter's tragic story. Though there's a lot of silliness and comic relief in the game, it's far more tragedy than comedy. It's heavily implied by the end that Rohoph is more of a villain than first imagined, and Qualna was truly looking out for everyone he cared about. Rohoph was driving Mardek away from his companions, and just about everything you did in all of MARDEK 3 was downright bad. Mystery Man got away with the Dark Crystal, Xantusia was ruled by a madman, you gave Evil Rock Thing to an evil priest, you stole 3 Elemental Crystals, and *killed your own king* just to be taught a lesson you refused to hear. And don't even get me started on the Dreamstones, which were an incredible look into the minds of important NPCs. At this point I'm just waxing poetic about the game, but the game deserves the praise!

And while MARDEK 3 took "3 years", it wasn't 3 years of development time, right? Like, M3 came out 2.5 years after M2, and you released two Raider games *plus* remakes of MARDEK 1 and 2 in that time. Not to mention all the webmastering you did back on Fig Hunter! And it seems like you're planning ahead to prevent "feature creep" like in M3 (although many of those features ended up working *really* well). MARDEK 3 may have been too titanic from a developer perspective, but I don't feel like it was that bloated from a player perspective. Maybe a few too many playable characters (I doubt anyone really explored all 11 characters in M3) and a couple dungeons (those darn Happy Johnnies in the Sandflow Caves) dragged on, but the overwhelming majority of M3's world felt like it belonged there. MARDEK 3 was a 40-hour epic, but it was 40 hours well-spent for a player. While I hope the next game you make isn't as draining or time-consuming as M3, the game you made did a great job of holding a player's attention for a long period of time.

Either way, I know you can take an already great game and turn it into something even better. Plus, given the comments you've made here already, it seems like we'll like it a lot more than what would have been MARDEK IV.

*POST CONTAINS LOTS OF MARDEK 1-3 SPOILERS, IN CASE THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED IT*

I'm glad to see that you liked MARDEK after revisiting it. Going back and looking at your creations from 2007-2010 must have been difficult since you've grown so much since then. Most people I know who have done *creative* things as a hobby would be mortified to look back at the creations of their teenage/early-20s selves. It's nice to know that you're proud of MARDEK, because you really should be! MARDEK is a *really* good game; and a lot of it holds up ten years later. There are *very* few creators who can say that their work from so long ago holds up as well as MARDEK does.

The heavier plot stuff, particularly the character deaths at the end of Chapters 2 and 3, hit incredibly well. And the way Mardek and company grow as people over the course of Chapter 3 is very well written, especially if you read the P-Dialogue. Rohoph's character development and the enormous cliffhanger that ends the third chapter was something I would periodically think about for the last nine years. It's extremely understandable why you had the feelings about MARDEK you had for so long, since you toiled over the game for so long and it didn't earn the revenue it frankly deserved. Thanks a lot for giving MARDEK fans hope to see one of their favorite games redone.

While the comment section can nitpick the originals to eternity, I'd just like to say that the non-linearity of Chapter 3 was a huge feature in my opinion, not a bug. Yes, there could probably be a little more direction and less obscurity, but being told to just "explore the world" after the three-dungeon opening to MARDEK 3 was really nice. The game opened with a hyper-focused, three-dungeon mission that might have been a *little* bloated (I don't think MARDEK 3 was that bloated, and very little of it felt like filler), but made sense. But after that, the game gave the player a huge breather with the overarching mission of "find the Crystals, good luck!". It let players explore the realm without a huge sense of urgency, which worked very well IMO. Players found secrets, lore, and eventually information on the Crystals organically, all while traversing through a vast, open world. And once the plot started picking up and a few characters from Chapter 2 started reappearing, the urgency picked up and the game concluded on an extremely powerful moment.

But what really made me love MARDEK was the third chapter's tragic story. Though there's a lot of silliness and comic relief in the game, it's far more tragedy than comedy. It's heavily implied by the end that Rohoph is more of a villain than first imagined, and Qualna was truly looking out for everyone he cared about. Rohoph was driving Mardek away from his companions, and just about everything you did in all of MARDEK 3 was downright bad. Mystery Man got away with the Dark Crystal, Xantusia was ruled by a madman, you gave Evil Rock Thing to an evil priest, you stole 3 Elemental Crystals, and *killed your own king* just to be taught a lesson you refused to hear. And don't even get me started on the Dreamstones, which were an incredible look into the minds of important NPCs. At this point I'm just waxing poetic about the game, but the game deserves the praise!

And while MARDEK 3 took "3 years", it wasn't 3 years of development time, right? Like, M3 came out 2.5 years after M2, and you released two Raider games *plus* remakes of MARDEK 1 and 2 in that time. Not to mention all the webmastering you did back on Fig Hunter! And it seems like you're planning ahead to prevent "feature creep" like in M3 (although many of those features ended up working *really* well). MARDEK 3 may have been too titanic from a developer perspective, but I don't feel like it was that bloated from a player perspective. Maybe a few too many playable characters (I doubt anyone really explored all 11 characters in M3) and a couple dungeons (those darn Happy Johnnies in the Sandflow Caves) dragged on, but the overwhelming majority of M3's world felt like it belonged there. MARDEK 3 was a 40-hour epic, but it was 40 hours well-spent for a player. While I hope the next game you make isn't as draining or time-consuming as M3, the game you made did a great job of holding a player's attention for a long period of time.

Either way, I know you can take an already great game and turn it into something even better. Plus, given the comments you've made here already, it seems like we'll like it a lot more than what would have been MARDEK IV.

Maniafig222~5Y

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed MARDEK chapter 3! I remember back when MARDEK 3 came out, you seemed really burned out from developing it, maybe that soured your perspective on the game until now? It seems like you never really replayed the third chapter and defined MARDEK mostly by its much more amateurish first and second chapters, which led to you having a much lower opinion of the series than others who mostly remember its third chapter. Hence the frustrating disconnect between fans and creator, I'm glad you're finally seeing what other people saw in MARDEK 3!

It is kinda striking how in many ways MARDEK 3 already started laying foundations for themes you'd explore in your later games. There's definitely a lot more introspection, overarching themes, morally complex antagonists and character arcs and whatnot going on in the third chapter than those preceding them! Qualna's arc especially is one that really feels like something you'd make these days, and also a part of the game most people find compelling.

Which makes it interesting to think you admitted Clavis was a rather late addition to the game! Ever since you told me that, it struck me how indeed Clavis feels like he was tacked on to the game in a sense, appearing in areas clearly not designated to be used for cutscenes. Figuratively but also quite literally an alien to the world, forcing himself into the plot to try in vain to make Rohoph see reason and dissuade him from fanaticism. Funny how it all works out to craft such a compelling narrative!

Having two trilogies is interesting, no doubt you already have much of the second trilogy planned out by re-purposing elements from taming Dreams. Exciting, that! I also am glad to see you're considering addressing the whole cataclysm thing as well as a pre-cataclysmic look at the setting! I've always wondered what the Elarna were like...

The concept of two trilogies is also really interesting in how they can cross-reference and further enhance each other. Events in one game can carry totally new implications if another game reveals more bits of underlying information about them. Perhaps the elemental magic of the ROHOPH trilogy really is just sentimancy as it existed during Belief, but following the 600 years that passed it stopped to be recognized and such and perhaps grew more violent due to the influence of Miasma and being used in a conflict-riddled society.

I've just finished playing the fourth and final campaign in the Shovel Knight series, which takes place before the other three, and it was full of references to the other three games in the series, and it was really satisfying to see how it fills in small lingering questions from the older campaigns, fleshes out their characters and motivations in interesting ways and has a lot of satisfying and interesting call-forwards. That's one of the big advantages of staggered releases instead of making one big release!

One thing you mention is the whole violence thing in the ROHOPH trilogy. While in MARDEK the combat was violent, most of the opponents were just mere Miasma, so you weren't exactly killing any sentient beings for most of the game. It's only really when fighting bandits, Droma and boss battles that the party's really inflicting violence on sentient beings, and the recurring bosses just get smacked around rather then being killed outright. (The game even jokes about this with Meraeador's Flamethrower, where he argues he's just torching Miasma even though you can also use it against random bandits and whatnot.)

I think you can avoid a lot of the moral quandaries by just making Miasma enemies dissipate when defeated but having human opponents surrender/get knocked out/flee. Games like Earthbound and Mother 3 are rather violent too, but common animals and people are just 'returned to their senses' rather than exploding or turning to ash like robots or zombies do. The games would be rather grim if they didn't have distinct defeat text for different sorts of enemies!

It is kinda striking how in many ways MARDEK 3 already started laying foundations for themes you'd explore in your later games. There's definitely a lot more introspection, overarching themes, morally complex antagonists and character arcs and whatnot going on in the third chapter than those preceding them! Qualna's arc especially is one that really feels like something you'd make these days, and also a part of the game most people find compelling.

Which makes it interesting to think you admitted Clavis was a rather late addition to the game! Ever since you told me that, it struck me how indeed Clavis feels like he was tacked on to the game in a sense, appearing in areas clearly not designated to be used for cutscenes. Figuratively but also quite literally an alien to the world, forcing himself into the plot to try in vain to make Rohoph see reason and dissuade him from fanaticism. Funny how it all works out to craft such a compelling narrative!

Having two trilogies is interesting, no doubt you already have much of the second trilogy planned out by re-purposing elements from taming Dreams. Exciting, that! I also am glad to see you're considering addressing the whole cataclysm thing as well as a pre-cataclysmic look at the setting! I've always wondered what the Elarna were like...

The concept of two trilogies is also really interesting in how they can cross-reference and further enhance each other. Events in one game can carry totally new implications if another game reveals more bits of underlying information about them. Perhaps the elemental magic of the ROHOPH trilogy really is just sentimancy as it existed during Belief, but following the 600 years that passed it stopped to be recognized and such and perhaps grew more violent due to the influence of Miasma and being used in a conflict-riddled society.

I've just finished playing the fourth and final campaign in the Shovel Knight series, which takes place before the other three, and it was full of references to the other three games in the series, and it was really satisfying to see how it fills in small lingering questions from the older campaigns, fleshes out their characters and motivations in interesting ways and has a lot of satisfying and interesting call-forwards. That's one of the big advantages of staggered releases instead of making one big release!

One thing you mention is the whole violence thing in the ROHOPH trilogy. While in MARDEK the combat was violent, most of the opponents were just mere Miasma, so you weren't exactly killing any sentient beings for most of the game. It's only really when fighting bandits, Droma and boss battles that the party's really inflicting violence on sentient beings, and the recurring bosses just get smacked around rather then being killed outright. (The game even jokes about this with Meraeador's Flamethrower, where he argues he's just torching Miasma even though you can also use it against random bandits and whatnot.)

I think you can avoid a lot of the moral quandaries by just making Miasma enemies dissipate when defeated but having human opponents surrender/get knocked out/flee. Games like Earthbound and Mother 3 are rather violent too, but common animals and people are just 'returned to their senses' rather than exploding or turning to ash like robots or zombies do. The games would be rather grim if they didn't have distinct defeat text for different sorts of enemies!

Tobias 1115~5Y

I think this is the first time that I'd really played Chapter 3. While developing it, I had to go over each bit so many times that I never really experienced it as a whole, and nothing was new or surprising to me as a result. It's strange then that considering how much time I did spend on it, I remembered it so poorly compared to the other two chapters, which did become what I based the series on in my mind.

I remember saying fairly recently that Taming Dreams' writing is something I'd be happy to show off even now, but I was embarrassed about MARDEK's. While playing through the end bits, especially the finale with Qualna, I thought "wow, I'd be happy to show THIS off now too!"

Maybe I've talked about this before, but from what I remember, the original ending to Chapter 3 had Sslen'ck get possessed by several elemental crystals and turn into some Super Saiyan-like POWERED UP form that you had to fight, for reasons I forget. It was stupid! And the game would have left far less of an impression had I stuck with that.

But it bothered me that you spend most of the chapters gathering these elemental crystals, but don't even use them for anything in the end. It's because of how it was constructed, adding the deeper stuff on at the end when most of it had already been made. So I'll be keeping that in mind for the remake, writing a story that doesn't feel quite so pointless.

I tried to (re-)design the Elarna the other day, but I'm still not sure what they look like! The plan so far is to set Belief 3 in their petal (since that's where the Cataclysm occurs), and I think I've come up with something that could work well. I wonder how many years it'd be before I can actually make that though!

Miasma's always been described as a sort of 'residue' left over from creation, so I'm wondering whether it's something that only comes into the world following the Cataclysm. Before that, the gods would be present to make sure everything's all working fine and everyone's safe, but the Cataclysm causes such a scar to the world that the miasma is sort of like 'blood' that flows from it. Or something. It's kind of like there's some spillage from the dreamrealm. The "elemancy" (or whatever I call it) would rely on this too, so that's not present in the time of the gods. I think the skills in Belief might just be called 'social skills' or something similar rather than sentimancy.

I've been giving a lot of thought to how the violence will be managed! I'm imagining the miasmal nature of miasmon becoming clearer by, for example, bleeding out black-purple 'blood' when struck, which floats up rather than spills on the floor, and they'd dissolve into black clouds when defeated rather than falling on the floor dead.

Were there any human enemies that you killed in MARDEK other than the bandits? In this (and in the plan for Taming Dreams), Muriance (called Murias in this, for this six letters) is a cult leader of the 'Mornlight Sect', which teaches that everyone's stuck in a miserable dream of pain and suffering, and that they need to 'wake up' to true reality, which is bliss. Death is a wake-up call, salvation from a nightmare, a key that unlocks the prison. So if you were to kill those, they might actually *thank* you for doing so. That's a more interesting idea than 'some bandits', I think, especially since it ties into the dream themes that would likely feature heavily, as they did towards the end of MARDEK with the dreamrealm etc.

I think this is the first time that I'd really /played/ Chapter 3. While developing it, I had to go over each bit so many times that I never really experienced it as a whole, and nothing was new or surprising to me as a result. It's strange then that considering how much time I did spend on it, I remembered it so poorly compared to the other two chapters, which did become what I based the series on in my mind.

I remember saying fairly recently that Taming Dreams' writing is something I'd be happy to show off even now, but I was embarrassed about MARDEK's. While playing through the end bits, especially the finale with Qualna, I thought "wow, I'd be happy to show THIS off now too!"

Maybe I've talked about this before, but from what I remember, the original ending to Chapter 3 had Sslen'ck get possessed by several elemental crystals and turn into some Super Saiyan-like POWERED UP form that you had to fight, for reasons I forget. It was stupid! And the game would have left far less of an impression had I stuck with that.

But it bothered me that you spend most of the chapters gathering these elemental crystals, but don't even use them for anything in the end. It's because of how it was constructed, adding the deeper stuff on at the end when most of it had already been made. So I'll be keeping that in mind for the remake, writing a story that doesn't feel quite so pointless.

I tried to (re-)design the Elarna the other day, but I'm still not sure what they look like! The plan so far is to set Belief 3 in their petal (since that's where the Cataclysm occurs), and I think I've come up with something that could work well. I wonder how many years it'd be before I can actually make that though!

Miasma's always been described as a sort of 'residue' left over from creation, so I'm wondering whether it's something that only comes into the world following the Cataclysm. Before that, the gods would be present to make sure everything's all working fine and everyone's safe, but the Cataclysm causes such a scar to the world that the miasma is sort of like 'blood' that flows from it. Or something. It's kind of like there's some spillage from the dreamrealm. The "elemancy" (or whatever I call it) would rely on this too, so that's not present in the time of the gods. I think the skills in Belief might just be called 'social skills' or something similar rather than sentimancy.

I've been giving a lot of thought to how the violence will be managed! I'm imagining the miasmal nature of miasmon becoming clearer by, for example, bleeding out black-purple 'blood' when struck, which floats up rather than spills on the floor, and they'd dissolve into black clouds when defeated rather than falling on the floor dead.

Were there any human enemies that you killed in MARDEK other than the bandits? In this (and in the plan for Taming Dreams), Muriance (called Murias in this, for this six letters) is a cult leader of the 'Mornlight Sect', which teaches that everyone's stuck in a miserable dream of pain and suffering, and that they need to 'wake up' to true reality, which is bliss. Death is a wake-up call, salvation from a nightmare, a key that unlocks the prison. So if you were to kill those, they might actually *thank* you for doing so. That's a more interesting idea than 'some bandits', I think, especially since it ties into the dream themes that would likely feature heavily, as they did towards the end of MARDEK with the dreamrealm etc.

MontyCallay101~5Y

It's certainly funny to see you talking so positively about MARDEK after all this time! As I said before, it's a shame that Sindrel Song didn't end up doing so well for now, but its understandable why it didn't. At any rate, I think that what you have here is promising! Having a project that is connected to your old games may have a greater appeal to a lot of people, especially considering that it's so clearly the story that you crafted that mattered to people. There's a certain satisfying aspect, as you saw, to having more granular gameplay, stats and skills and grinding and the like (as well as some of the challenges that there were - ooh, did you ever beat Karnos and Animus?), but I'm sure you'll find a way to make a compromise there.

It's great, the way you've been able to intertwine the old story with the new universe - there's some things I'll probably find a bit strange (like the dedication to sticking to six-letter character names) but that's a part of getting used to change, I suppose! Having deeper personalities is a good thing, of course - though I'm not sure I can ever get over the fact that Mugbert will not feature prominently in the remake, what a shame! Though, as you said, some of the appeal of the original games was having all of those fun side characters, but I'm sure you'll be able to work something out there too. I agree that especially the opening of MARDEK 3 felt quite bloated, but the game itself was, for a flash game, incredibly ambitious and deep, and that's what I think stuck with people more than anything.

Seeing the people who are doubting your ability to stick to projects like that is interesting... I think it only emphasises the importance of getting a playable demo (and a clear project outline) if you plan to go the Kickstarter route, since that may be an important factor in convincing folks in the first place. It's annoying, having to deal with doubters like that, but the way you've stuck with Sindrel Song in the last year, despite your predicament (and all of the doubters then!), surely shows that they aren't right. That's probably not much of a comfort when comments like that get to you so deeply, but maybe it helps.

But I think that crowdfunding would be a good route to go down! After all, a significant factor (IIRC) of you discontinuing Taming Dreams was the lack of interest and the lacklustre promotion - in contrast, having a Kickstarter campaign would necessitate to keep promoting your project right from the start, so you'd be able to gauge interest in the first place before you dedicated years to something that might not work out anyway. In that vain, the episodic approach may be a good fit as well. How exactly you will structure the episodes and what exact compromises you make in the combat, I think you can decide for yourself - it is, as I said, profoundly your own project - so I trust your judgement there, at least until I get to play it ;)

It's great, the way you've been able to intertwine the old story with the new universe - there's some things I'll probably find a bit strange (like the dedication to sticking to six-letter character names) but that's a part of getting used to change, I suppose! Having deeper personalities is a good thing, of course - though I'm not sure I can ever get over the fact that Mugbert will not feature prominently in the remake, what a shame! Though, as you said, some of the appeal of the original games was having all of those fun side characters, but I'm sure you'll be able to work something out there too. I agree that especially the opening of MARDEK 3 felt quite bloated, but the game itself was, for a flash game, incredibly ambitious and deep, and that's what I think stuck with people more than anything.

Seeing the people who are doubting your ability to stick to projects like that is interesting... I think it only emphasises the importance of getting a playable demo (and a clear project outline) if you plan to go the Kickstarter route, since that may be an important factor in convincing folks in the first place. It's annoying, having to deal with doubters like that, but the way you've stuck with Sindrel Song in the last year, despite your predicament (and all of the doubters then!), surely shows that they aren't right. That's probably not much of a comfort when comments like that get to you so deeply, but maybe it helps.

But I think that crowdfunding would be a good route to go down! After all, a significant factor (IIRC) of you discontinuing Taming Dreams was the lack of interest and the lacklustre promotion - in contrast, having a Kickstarter campaign would necessitate to keep promoting your project right from the start, so you'd be able to gauge interest in the first place before you dedicated years to something that might not work out anyway. In that vain, the episodic approach may be a good fit as well. How exactly you will structure the episodes and what exact compromises you make in the combat, I think you can decide for yourself - it is, as I said, profoundly your own project - so I trust your judgement there, at least until I get to play it ;)

MF11~5Y

WOW. I'm so glad you "reconciled" with MARDEK, that's really an amazing surprise, I can't stress that enough. I imagine that's really good for your mental health and also helps you to better "link" with your fans, who really love the game.

I don't really have an opinion about the whole Belief-timeline-remake thing. To be honest, I'm somewhat on the "don't change anything" bandwagon, so I would probably be too biased. But I'm going to say this: having chapters very carefully planned and more "equal" in content is really, really nice (and maybe the only thing MARDEK is actually poor at).

Also, what do you thing about, instead of calling it a remake, to call it something like "MARDEK: re-imagined"? I think it transmits the idea much better, and could maybe prevent some frustration among old fans who get into a remake thinking it is closer to the original.

On a side note, I remembered you recently when watching a video about violence in video games ([LINK] I think you could find it interesting, I certainly did.

Best regards.

I don't really have an opinion about the whole Belief-timeline-remake thing. To be honest, I'm somewhat on the "don't change anything" bandwagon, so I would probably be too biased. But I'm going to say this: having chapters very carefully planned and more "equal" in content is really, really nice (and maybe the only thing MARDEK is actually poor at).

Also, what do you thing about, instead of calling it a remake, to call it something like "MARDEK: re-imagined"? I think it transmits the idea much better, and could maybe prevent some frustration among old fans who get into a remake thinking it is closer to the original.

On a side note, I remembered you recently when watching a video about violence in video games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYnylXvk65s) I think you could find it interesting, I certainly did.

Best regards.

purplerabbits148~5Y

Sounds like you got a more solid idea on how to proceed with your ideas and how to carry on career wise.

I did have a slight worry about two trilogies, however I remembered that 6 is a running theme in your works. So 2 trilogies do make 6 works which would fit in the theme. With the amount of planning and fine details I think that a prequel and ROHOPH would be doable. I only worry about burnout because it will be down for the long run with dedication.

I saw someone asking why not just make everything into one game. I feel that depending on the creator things can work in multiples parts or a single work. The easiest example would be like youtube let's plays. Some games are short enough to put into one video, but others have multiple parts. With games, I see stuff like Death Stranding which is a 30 hour game , while Medieval Cop series has about 15 games that have about an hour of playtime for each installment. If we swap the two games with their installment format, things won't flow as well for either series.

So, I feel that it all depends on how the story will be told that should determine how many parts are required.

I'd say that the experiences that you gained from releasing Sindrel Song really has had a positive effect.

It's an interesting thing to see old work in the present. We get the benifit of applying the experience we gained and see how much we have improved , but also we can suprise ourselves about the things that were the base for future ideas.

Sounds like you got a more solid idea on how to proceed with your ideas and how to carry on career wise.

I did have a slight worry about two trilogies, however I remembered that 6 is a running theme in your works. So 2 trilogies do make 6 works which would fit in the theme. With the amount of planning and fine details I think that a prequel and ROHOPH would be doable. I only worry about burnout because it will be down for the long run with dedication.

I saw someone asking why not just make everything into one game. I feel that depending on the creator things can work in multiples parts or a single work. The easiest example would be like youtube let's plays. Some games are short enough to put into one video, but others have multiple parts. With games, I see stuff like Death Stranding which is a 30 hour game , while Medieval Cop series has about 15 games that have about an hour of playtime for each installment. If we swap the two games with their installment format, things won't flow as well for either series.

So, I feel that it all depends on how the story will be told that should determine how many parts are required.

I'd say that the experiences that you gained from releasing Sindrel Song really has had a positive effect.

It's an interesting thing to see old work in the present. We get the benifit of applying the experience we gained and see how much we have improved , but also we can suprise ourselves about the things that were the base for future ideas.

Astreon152~5Y

I've never finished Mardek 3, because things came up IRL and i didn't have the time needed to progress further (went up to some desert town in the southern continent, had beaten some optional boss border guard dude, kept being wrecked by some sort of optional boss in a cave ? my memories are really hazy...)

However, i remember it was very tedious to go from the northern continent to the south one, for some reason, and that put me off somehow. I can't remember why i wanted to do that often in my save, maybe it was needed to change members of my team ?

Anyhow, if what i remember is not too far from reality, than maybe traveling on the world map could be improved in the remake ?

ikiimoni5~5Y

This sounds really promising! It feels like a really big promise to deliver on, but it's clear how much your writing and development style has evolved over the years. I'm excited to see where this goes! All I ask is that you take care of yourself and don't get burnt out making something you don't like.

Reading that you went back and enjoyed the MARDEK trilogy was a happy thing to read. For a lot of us, we've always loved it, and it's satisfying to see you enjoy it like we have. I think if anyone deserves to enjoy MARDEK, it should be you. It came from a place of passion and experimentation, and serves as a brilliant snapshot of a different phase of your life as a creator.

Danik9~5Y

Hey Tobias, you probably heard that lots of times but im a huge fan of mardek i would even say that mardek is my childhood game and i replayed it 6 times now (now im replaying it again) and i would like to thank you because you are my idol. Im amazed to this day by that game and by that you made it just for fun and for free and yet made a very quality game. I would surely buy the game from steam (even several times). Also i would like to suggest a little thing for mardeks remake that might be quite interesting, eventhough i think that im late and you have already closed the development of it. So what i was thinking about is putting a code button to the extras in the main menu and hidding code in the entire belfan like putting NPC's that tell you riddles and for finding the answer the NPC would tell you a part of the code or something like that. SPOILER ALERT FOR MARDEK 3 ENDING also i hope in the trilogy of belief+mardek i hope that the 6th chapter would have deugans comeback as the lone wolf. and again i want to thank you alot!

JohnnyV1235~5Y

Would it hurt you to apologize to us since we were "right" about MARDEK? You have been passively aggressively telling us we are idiots living in our immature past for liking the series.

Tobias 1115~5Y

I feel bad about that and I'm sorry.

JohnnyV1235~5Y

Sincerely, thank you. I'm looking forward to what you have planned. Just maybe think about listening a bit more to us in the future even if it conflicts with what you believe?....wait did we just win Belief by converting you?! :)

Redking033~5Y

Heya, I'm new to this site so spare me if I say anything particularly clueless.
I'd like to know if there's anywhere where I can download/play this game again. I remember at least a good 9ish years ago I found this game on Kongregate and couldn't stop playing. This game lit up my 8 year old mind, and after so many years, I'd like to play it again! (Flash why have you abandon us)
I'm sorry again if you've linked it somewhere else and I just can't find it, or if it's still in a state where you don't wish others to download it or something of the sort.

Tobias 1115~5Y

I should make it clearer somewhere what I'm doing with that! Basically I've got an all-three-chapters-in-one version with some tweaks that I'm planning to release on Steam, though I don't have a release date other than "soon". Hopefully that 'soon' will be within the next few weeks (I know that's not as good as 'tomorrow' or something, but the process for submitting to Steam takes forever)!

Redking033~5Y

Oh thank you so much. I'll be sure to check the Steam Store often. Is there going to be any paid content like the Soundtrack or something?

Draconic1~4Y

Hi, it's Draconic. You might remember me as being one of your harsher critics back in the day. (⌒_⌒;)ゞ

I'll admit, I miss Mardek and this post felt like a bit of letdown, because I was vainly hoping that it might have meant a Mardek IV, but as long as you're doing okay, I'm happy, and from the looks of this post, you're doing a lot better than you were back in the Flash era.

It might be easier to wrap up the series overall by just continuing it in its original state, not that I'd know, being such a weak programmer. That said, if you ever wanted some help with the writing aspect, I'd be more than happy to help out if you wanted to have Mardek find his two 'missing' friends along with the rest of the gang for one last hurrah against the violet Annunaki (and possibly Roholf).

I'm sure it doesn't mean anything coming from a guy who's 5+ years your junior, but in a weird way, I'm happy to see that you seem to be doing okay since I last checked in on fighunter all those years ago. We weren't close by any stretch, but after reading so many of your blog posts, I considered you a friend. And I'm proud of that friend for toughing it out through so many challenges over the past decade. You've gone through some harrowing stuff that I can barely even fathom, and I'm extremely impressed.
Is that weird? Yeah, it's probably extremely weird. Sorry about that.

And yes, the grind to get skills from new weapons was one of the most compelling things you created in Mardek. It wasn't the grind itself, (and please forgive me if I get something wrong here since it's been years since I've played them) but if memory serves, it was how well you paced things, and that acquiring skills made regular attacks relevant where most turn-based RPGs did – and still do – the opposite.

Considering how prevalent grinding has gotten in games in recent years, that you managed to create a grind that rarely – if ever – felt like one, was an absolute triumph.

Hi, it's Draconic. You might remember me as being one of your harsher critics back in the day. (⌒_⌒;)ゞ

I'll admit, I miss Mardek and this post felt like a bit of letdown, because I was vainly hoping that it might have meant a Mardek IV, but as long as you're doing okay, I'm happy, and from the looks of this post, you're doing a lot better than you were back in the Flash era.

It might be easier to wrap up the series overall by just continuing it in its original state, not that I'd know, being such a weak programmer. That said, if you ever wanted some help with the writing aspect, I'd be more than happy to help out if you wanted to have Mardek find his two 'missing' friends along with the rest of the gang for one last hurrah against the violet Annunaki (and possibly Roholf).

I'm sure it doesn't mean anything coming from a guy who's 5+ years your junior, but in a weird way, I'm happy to see that you seem to be doing okay since I last checked in on fighunter all those years ago. We weren't close by any stretch, but after reading so many of your blog posts, I considered you a friend. And I'm proud of that friend for toughing it out through so many challenges over the past decade. You've gone through some harrowing stuff that I can barely even fathom, and I'm extremely impressed.
Is that weird? Yeah, it's probably extremely weird. Sorry about that.

And yes, the grind to get skills from new weapons was one of the most compelling things you created in Mardek. It wasn't the grind itself, (and please forgive me if I get something wrong here since it's been years since I've played them) but if memory serves, it was how well you paced things, and that acquiring skills made regular attacks relevant where most turn-based RPGs did – and still do – the opposite.

Considering how prevalent grinding has gotten in games in recent years, that you managed to create a grind that rarely – if ever – felt like one, was an absolute triumph.