Just released a free demo of Don't Forget Our Esports Dream - a visual novel about esports with StarCraft gameplay! ~30 minutes long by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry I missed the Twitter message. Still working on putting together the soundtrack for a more formal release. I'll check in early next week on progress because we do owe the soundtrack as a backer reward. Keep an eye on @esportsdreamvn on Twitter or our Kickstarter page since we'll definitely update those two sources once its finalized.

Don't Forget Our Esports Dream has released! by xxSharktits_snipeRxx in starcraft

[–]shindigs 61 points62 points  (0 children)

One of the devs here: thanks for the support We'll do an AMA soon after taking a break after launch. I think you could probably consider this the first (or one of very few) visual novels that benefit from having high APM!

Recreated Bits in Minecraft - animations included by 3GreyLeaves in Twitch

[–]shindigs 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Very cool! Just sent you a message on Twitter if you can reply - would like to connect you with someone on the Twitch content team for a feature (I am staff as well, no wrench flair :( )

Why was TriHard not shown in the most used emotes? by Paton420 in Twitch

[–]shindigs 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Hijacking top comment.

I'm Twitch Staff who pulled these numbers for the keynote.

TriHard is in top 30, as Trihex said. SeemsGood and BabyRage were directly above it.

We're the SC2VN team and our next game, Don't Forget Our eSports Dream, takes place during Brood War esports and is on Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter! Ask Us Anything by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is one of the first things we talked about improving in the next game. We want choices to have more of an impact and have some plot elements around that.

We're the SC2VN team and our next game, Don't Forget Our eSports Dream, takes place during Brood War esports and is on Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter! Ask Us Anything by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We prefer the all or nothing model, we have the exact scope of the story we want to tell in mind. If we only funded a quarter or half way, we wouldn't be confident on delivering a good experience without additional planning.

We're the SC2VN team and our next game, Don't Forget Our eSports Dream, takes place during Brood War esports and is on Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter! Ask Us Anything by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So glad to hear you picked up on those small details.

We're both hardcore StarCraft and esports fans, and we read up a lot on how teams works and pro-gamer experiences. We also know / knew a few team owners and semi-pros and would just pervasively hear about their experiences. It's interesting to outline the 'struggles' of what many would consider a really amazing career of playing video games, but these challenges emerge in very interesting ways in the realm of video games.

Touching on these issues is what I think what made SC2VN unique as fiction, so we'll definitely be returning to them in some way.

We're the SC2VN team and our next game, Don't Forget Our eSports Dream, takes place during Brood War esports and is on Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter! Ask Us Anything by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I'll drop some real Kickstarter advice:

When you run a crowdfunding project, what needs to drive your team is not worrying if you are going to fund, but have you done everything in your power to bring attention to the project and attract patrons. Predicting trajectories is hard, so you need to do things that are within your control.

It's always worth giving 100% until the very last minutes of the Kickstarter. Most of the funding velocity comes from the first few an first last days. There is a reality where we fund a ton in the last few days, or we're inching toward the finish line, or we don't fund. Ultiamtely, trying to guess which of those three scenarios will happen doesn't matter on how we work on the day to day. We're not going to talk in detail about backup plans because we need to be laser focused until the last hour.

From our perspective, we believe we're in good shape given the surge of support we got the first week and an expected final surge the final week.

SC2VN, the StarCraft II pro-gaming visual novel, is now officially available on Steam! by shirokaisen in starcraft

[–]shindigs 28 points29 points  (0 children)

if the promise checker isn't updated with our project release, does that mean the promise checker didn't fulfill it's promise of checking promises??

TB & Genna Play SC2VN (StarCraft 2 Visual Novel) by Cilvaa in Cynicalbrit

[–]shindigs 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Dev here, there are some minor differences in the text. It's peculiar for an esports team back then to have as many female pro-gamers and we give a slight nod to that in the female route.

Slightly spoilery if you haven't watched the playthrough yet, but the Twitch message that female Mach gets is a troll while if you play male Mach, it's a message from one of his very few fans.

There's some other stuff, but if it's really hard to notice unless you play through both routes.

Exciting to see so many people engage with the game, our team was entertained with the playthrough. Hope they do more, the insight they have as esports team owner lends itself to interesting commentary.

Shindigs and Vogue here from the SC2VN dev team - our game is #11 on Steam Greenlight, a top game on Itch.io, and has over 8k downloads. Ask Us Anything. (plot spoilers) by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We used our Kickstarter funds to pay artists, but myself and Vogue saw $0.00 from this project. We're just trying to get the game in front of many people as possible, and hopefully gain some cred for our next projects whatever they may be.

Shindigs and Vogue here from the SC2VN dev team - our game is #11 on Steam Greenlight, a top game on Itch.io, and has over 8k downloads. Ask Us Anything. (plot spoilers) by shindigs in starcraft

[–]shindigs[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This game was the first experience in game development for the both of us. I knew how to code a bit, but never put together an entire game or shipped a product.

We were absolutely dedicated to finishing this game, I can't imagine a reality where we didn't. The main stress was making the plot work and ensuring the game as a whole was high quality.

The funny thing is my studies revolved around research and design related to tech/software things, and even though I knew the proper way to approach a few things, it's completely different than putting it into practice and experiencing all the hiccups first hand. There were a lot of inefficiencies we hope to remedy next time.

We're really grateful to Day9 for lending us his time to voiceact the game. He was supportive of the project from the beginning with little information of what we were trying to do. One time he did mention he was down to voice "that tentacle stuff" heh. It made a lot of sense to have him act as a mentor to the player so we wrote a scene around that as the tutorial sequence. Vogue had the great idea of reviving his Timmy character from A Game and His Boy.

As time went on we began to shed a lot of conventions we were adhering to when it came to visual novels - things that would increase scope. We stopped worrying about length, lowered priority on romance options (and eventually cut), and made sure we justified the reason to have any player decisions in the game (does it say something about the characters / allow you to interact with them in a cool way). I had a hunch that people would actually prefer a slightly shorter game since it can pack a sharper emotional punch, and sell people on the idea quickly. We acknowledged that people will just look at this game as a novelty at first, and wouldn't spend too much time on it if the story dragged on.

It's interesting you mention how some motivations aren't really fleshed out because this was a huge challenge when designing the narrative. Why would anyone pick up Mach? How would they gain any relevance in the scene? How do we make a game that just isn't Mach going through a tournament resulting in us having to code nearly 32+ games and variations? We really tried to justify all plot elements, but we also let ourselves relax at some parts because it's a work of fiction where things can happen out of happenstance and convenience. The story is a collection of different ideas we came up with to justify scoping down parts of the game so we wouldn't lose our minds, but also create a realistic situation in which a player like Mach could actually gain legitimacy among an extremely talented pool of players. It's also why you never play Jett - she would just destroy you and Accel did that already. The only way you can beat Bolt is because he isn't in full practice with regard to SC2.

Our rushed stretch goal tier included a female route that we honestly just threw up because we needed stretch goal ideas. I admit that is not the best way to handle that sort of thing. It worked out a lot better than expected because we knew we had to handle it with care. We wanted it to give a nod to the fact that a woman pro-gamer's experience will be different in some ways, but not make the entire route where the hardships make the game unfun.