Alora Fane

Almost exactly a year ago (wow, feels like way longer), I wrote ∞ a post ∞ about re-releasing a bunch of my old games. I managed to get ∞ MARDEK on Steam ∞ a few months ago, though I've been so focused on making my newest game that I forgot all about re-releasing the old ones. It's on my mind again, though...

I occasionally get emails or Twitter messages from people asking me either to continue games like Deliverance or Beast Signer, or in some cases whether they can access them at all. Usually they talk about how they were a huge part of their childhood and they just want a chance to relive some nostalgia.

It's always genuinely moving - and surreal! - when people tell me how significant a part of their childhood my old games were, but I feel like only people who encountered them at a particularly impressionable time during their young life would care about them. And I'm unsure how large this number of people is. MARDEK reached a much larger audience than anything else I ever made, and that's currently at... 1,876 sales after 4 months. The other games never saw that kind of wide release and were only (officially) hosted on my own website.

So I'm uncertain whether devoting a lot of time and effort to porting old games would be worth it if only a handful of people would be interested. Most people wouldn't work for a week or a month or however long it'll take for a potential amount of money that could well be under $100! My time would be better spent working away at Atonal Dreams.

If I were to do this, though, now seems a good time for it. Apparently Flash is stopping entirely at the end of this year... though I've been hearing "Flash is finally dead now!" for ages so who knows what that even means.

It seems that a lot of devs who used to make Flash games release a compilation of those games as a single item on Steam, as we've talked about on this blog before. I think Matt Roszak of Epic Battle Fantasy fame is/was doing something like that, based on recent tweets? (Though I'm terrible at keeping up with what others are doing!) So I'd probably do the same, but I'm unsure what games I could include in it.

I mean I could just include everything I've ever made in Flash (other than MARDEK)... but I don't think that'd be a good way to go about it. I could also fill it just with RPGs I've made - since those seem to be the most interesting to me and others - but some of the less-old ones like Taming Dreams and Alora Fane: Creation feel like they're too good to be clumped in with the likes of Deliverance and Beast Signer...

Looking through the list of games in last November's post, these ones could maybe qualify for some kind of Unfinished RPGs Compilation or something... though in my mind they could be divided into two distinct groups.

The first group are games I consider old and crudely-made, from when I was still figuring things out. I also released versions of a couple of them on Fig Hunter, which at least some people might have nostalgia for.

Fig Hunter

This one's the crudest-made game I could potentially include, but it might be too crudely-made to be worth it? I also think its battle music is stolen from another game, which would be an issue. There are a few hours of gameplay in it though, I think. Maybe it's too old and embarrassing to do anything with!

Deliverance

This is one I would include for sure, since while it's also old and embarrassing to me, occasionally people mention it to me. There are a bunch of different versions of it, though, which complicates things a bit.

Beast Signer

People sometimes mention this one to me, too.

The second group are games I'm still quite fond of, despite their flaws. They're all unfinished, but they also feel more refined and thought-out than the others. I'd get something out of playing them if I were to do so now, but I don't think there would be as many - any? - people with nostalgic fondness for them? I don't really get random emails on Twitter messages about any of them.

Miasmon

Miasmon's far from perfect, and far from finished, but there's a lot of content to it, probably hours of gameplay. It's 'voice' probably isn't that far off what I'm making now. I put it on Fig Hunter, I think, but nobody ever mentions it to me.

Alora Fane: Creation

This is a tool for users to create their own adventures which would have much more potential than anything else I'm including here, to the point where it's almost worth a release of its own... I'll get back to this later in this post.

Taming Dreams

This is a reimagining of MARDEK that I've recently been reimagining as Divine Dreams... then Atonal Dreams. It's complicated. I like it and want to release it again in some form, but dumping it in a compilation feels so unpleasant to me... It's unfinished and never will be finished though, so maybe that's the only thing I ever could do with it? (Maybe I could bundle it with Atonal Dreams...)

I'm not sure what (literal, financial) value re-releasing any of these old things would have for me. It might not be worth the time and effort. It looks like porting MARDEK was, though that was way more successful in its wide Flash release than any of these. None of these are finished, but I suppose you could say the same about MARDEK when looked at as a whole series... Hmm.

I figured out how to port old Flash stuff in a technical sense when I did that with MARDEK, so I think I should be able to use a similar technique to port these. All the first group were coded (poorly) in ActionScript 2, so they'd have the same problems as MARDEK, but I managed to get around them for that. The others were made in AS3 and might be easier to work with.

It's interesting how much - and how little - has changed for me since the last post almost exactly a year ago. I'm less naive now, and more concerned with the financial feasibility of decisions that I make. It'd be a different story if I were financially secure, but I'm not, so I have to think about how best to monetise things and to try not to waste opportunities for that, which it might be if I were to compile all these games together and release them for a pittance when I might have made more money had I released them in smaller packs or even individually.

There's no real way to gauge how many people might be interested, but I'd like to hear your thoughts about this if you're here on this blog!

I wrote this yesterday and I'm returning to it today after thinking about it a bit.

I didn't include games like Raider and Clarence's Big Chance here, even though the latter was actually finished and released, since I feel they're too different to the others to include in a compilation. I wonder whether I could get away with releasing CBC by itself for some tiny price like $3, but is it something I want associated with me these days?

In the post last year, I mentioned I'd add them to this site for individual pay-what-you-like prices, but I can't imagine that'd earn me any money at all... but would a Steam release, which would require much more time and effort? Hmm...

What do you think? I'm indecisive! If you're interested in any of these games, what - if anything - would you be willing to pay for versions of them similar to the MARDEK Steam release?

I've also been thinking quite a bit about Alora Fane: Creation, and how it might be interesting to make something like that again. Not exactly a direct remake, but something in a similar vein, probably in 3D, essentially carrying over a lot of things I've coded for Divine/Atonal Dreams.

Like in the Flash AFC, you'd be able to build rooms in a small grid, though the rooms would be 3D, probably like ∞ the floating dioramas idea I had for Divine Dreams at the start of the year ∞ (though probably without variable elevation since the aim will be to make it as simple as possible to use). You'd be able to create player and NPC characters that could be either customisable humanoid Alora Fane species, or monsters with variant skins. It'd use the dialogue system I've got in Atonal Dreams, or a similar one, allowing for a wide variety of emotes.

Atonal Dreams is taking a long time at the moment because I'm having to script a fulfilling story. I like the idea and I'll like the result, but the process requires patience! Also, once it's released, that'll be it; there's little I could add to it as the story would be complete.

With something like this, though, it'd be more of a tool for creativity than a linear experience. You'd be able to make your own quests and play other people's; there'd surely be some way to easily share and find them. I'd be able to add new content updates like new monsters, tilesets, items, music, etc, which wouldn't take too long on my part and would give people something to play with. The game's lifetime would potentially be bigger than Atonal Dreams'... for people interested in creating stuff with it, anyway. Maybe that's too small of an audience though.

It's just an idea that's been on my mind for a few hours, but would anyone be interested in such a thing, I wonder? Or are there way better alternatives out there if you want to make your own stories so nobody would bother with this?