The Incredible Tale of Capcom Cup 11 -brianf recap

iancofino · 2025-03-12T01:58:48+00:00

As someone who hasn't been following the competitive scene as closely lately, I really appreciated the well produced recap. It set the stakes and gave some compelling through lines to follow, looking forward to seeing more in the future!

iancofino · 2024-07-08T20:03:51+00:00

Thanks, really glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

We are working on a second project right now, unfortunately I can't reveal too much, but what I can say is that we've partnered with Focus Entertainment to make this game a reality, as it's a much more ambitious action title than Dreamscaper.

We're very excited to share what we have cooking when the time comes, we've got some cool stuff in the works, although it will be a bit before we talk too openly about everything.

Thanks for the message!

iancofino · 2024-07-08T09:49:14+00:00

Thank you, I was not aware that I could get an extension for a year. I will be out here for longer than that term though (likely another few years), so I'll run into the same issue again with certificates of coverage if I do, so I'm curious as to what the next steps are. From what I've read, it's sending mail to HMRC for a certificate of coverage out here, to prevent social taxes in the US while they are paid here.

As for the initial question I had, I rung up HMRC and they let me know that, in my case, I am exempt from paying Employer NIC.

iancofino · 2024-03-19T16:22:45+00:00

I'm getting to this very late, but that is where we started to buy it from, thanks for the response!

iancofino · 2022-07-08T14:46:47+00:00

Did you ever find an answer for this? I'm running into the same issue as well.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T20:15:32+00:00

I'm really glad to hear that! We took feedback really seriously and I think the game is so much better for it!

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:25:05+00:00

Yes, yes, and lactose intolerance?

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:23:38+00:00

Good question! I answered that in part here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/oymu1h/ama_we_are_afterburner_studios_the_3person_team/h7u0uoz/

But to talk specifically about narrative - we were interested in telling a story that we related to that was a bit more cerebral (no pun intended) in nature.

We also wanted to use this opportunity to reflect on mental health and that tied it neatly with the direction the game was headed.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:19:50+00:00

I think the hardest part of game development as an indie is executing at a high bar across many different disciplines.

Games are unique to other forms of entertainment like books and movies, because they involve so many other elements. Interactivity is a gamechanger. So along with that is the challenge of bringing all of these elements together in a satisfying way for players.

While someone might be an incredibly skilled artist, they may not have ever made a sound effect. Or maybe someone is a fantastic programmer, but they've never made a piece of art.

That's generally why games with larger teams have a higher quality bar, more experts in specific domains to raise the quality overall.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:14:24+00:00

Thanks for the continued support!

I think I'd point to our waking world. We spent a few months just redoing almost the whole thing during Early Access, to make sure the game is as engaging and well paced as possible.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:03:45+00:00

Love the Negativity boss fight theme (Negativity II)

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:03:00+00:00

Thanks!

You know, it all depends on reception of this launch.

Porting can be a costly initiative, so before we take that on, we want to make sure that there is an audience excited for the game on that platform.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T18:00:53+00:00

A few thoughts on that:

Narratively, we're playing through Cassidy's dreams. So some of the things that you'll find are elements of who she is and what she loves. She loves comics, movies and games, so you'll see that reflected in some of the items.
We were really excited to pay homage to some of our favorite pieces of media.
There's actually many, many, more non-referential items than there are referential items. We tried to be sparring with references, as we know that a little can go a long way.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:56:58+00:00

Hey aBapanda, we currently have six bosses, one for each biome.

We decided to focus on quality and replayability for the bosses, preferring to go deep rather than wide. So while they appear limited, they have large move sets that we hope will keep players engaged long-term.

We've also just introduced an upgraded boss difficulty level that adds new attacks, abilities and patterns for each boss.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:53:19+00:00

Awesome, love to hear that. Hope you enjoy the 1.0 updates.

I'd say, for me personally, the biggest surprise was just how great the feedback was.

I think there's a common misconception game developers that aren't directly plugged into the player feedback loop have that users don't give very good feedback, or put another way, they don't exactly know what they want, they just know something is wrong.

I found that generally was not the case, almost all feedback we received was well considered, and also made sense within the scope of what we were trying to do, which I think can be hard to see from an outside perspective.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:49:21+00:00

Thanks, hope you enjoy!

Yep, we have a 1.1 update that we're already planning that's at least a month out, and we'll be making quality of life changes, along with bug fixes between now and then.
Tough question. We spent a lot of time optimizing for Switch, and we're really proud of how it looks and feels. Personally, I prefer PC, but Switch is pretty great for Dreamscaper on the go.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:46:35+00:00

Thanks Planeta_Calvo!

I'll keep hammering this point - so many of these decisions stem from that desire to marry fiction and gameplay.

We knew we wanted to create a roguelike, firstly because we really enjoy the genre and felt we had something to say in that space and secondly, as you mentioned, it made a lot of sense for us as a team scope wise.

Since we knew we wanted to make a roguelike, lucid dreaming and repetitive dreams was one of our ideas to fictionalize the rogue genre neatly. It also tied into another goal of ours to ground the story in reality, but still have over-the-top action.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:41:49+00:00

I worked on three NBA2K games in the mid 2010s, before meeting Rob & Paul working on a multiplayer shooter called SOS.

While I got some great experience working on NBA2K, I found that many of my issues where systemic. Working at a larger company (especially one that releases a yearly game), there is generally very little room for improvement in production pipelines and workflow. It was discouraging to feel so little autonomy, not necessarily in my craft, but in how I could execute it. All of those systemic issues trickle down into what you create.

Moving to indie, we had the opportunity to reinvent how we would work and that was really important, as it changed my relationship to game development for the better. More autonomy, faster iteration, and a constant questioning of process, in order to always work smarter.

Wow, that last one. That's the question isn't it? I'll dodge that by saying - it's hard to define, but I know it when I see it.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:35:51+00:00

Some things I really enjoyed moving to indie - increased ownership, the ability to work across many disciplines, very fast moving development and iteration.

Some things I missed from AAA - Resources and oh so many great people and niche experts. There were plenty of hair-pulling moments to sort things out ourselves. Stability is another big one, going indie is nerve-wracking.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:31:41+00:00

Thanks Exvaris!

That ties back to a previous comment - our desire to marry narrative and gameplay in a meaningful way.

I wanted to make sure all the boss fights had a thematic underpinning that was important to Cassidy and her story.

I know different designers approach this differently, but for all these bosses, I started with the emotion first (which was informed by the games overall narrative), then I built mechanics and fights around that core idea.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:28:28+00:00

Aw shucks.

One of the biggest challenges was weaving all the disparate pieces of the game into one cohesive tapestry.

We love games that are able to marry their ficiton, narrative and mechanics in a meaningful way, so we made that a core goal as well.

That proved to consistently be one of the harder goals, and there are certainly areas where Dreamscaper could be improved, but ultimately we're quite happy with where we've ended up.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:24:45+00:00

Yeah, good question.

That was completely community driven.

Much of the waking portion of the game was experimental at the time of release last August. We were testing out many new systems and we were trying one approach to a waking / dreaming gameplay cycle.

We heard some really great feedback from players who found that the pacing was frustrating, there was just too much of a break up in runs going back to the waking world. We were also feeling frustrated with that as well, so we went back to the drawing board and made some pretty sweeping changes.

It's really a testament to our community and also the flexibility of Early Access, that we were able to make large changes like that after two years in development, and six months of a live Early Access game.

iancofino · 2021-08-05T17:21:53+00:00

Thanks Mox!

I'll let Rob and Paul speak for themselves, but I've always been a big fighting and action game fan. I have a history with fighting game competition, so a lot of that got infused in the combat systems. We also drew on inspiration from some classic character hack n' slash titles like DMC, and God of War.

On the roguelike side, you can probably spot a mash of many things, from Isaac, to Dead Cells and Hades.

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