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Here's another chance to win a free copy of the game!

I was asked to sponser a trivia quiz over at Gamecafe, with a free copy of Blackwell Unbound as the prize. 

The quiz will consist of 30 questions from The Blackwell Legacy and the Blackwell Unbound demo, and will take place in a live chat room.  After the quiz there will be a Q & A session with me where I'll talk about the game and my experiences with the casual game market.

This contest is being sponsered by a lady known as The Game Fairy, and you can get all the details on her site.

without opening AGS and testing... is the "hide player character" check box checked in the room? Is it the player character is probably what I should be asking...

...

GAH.

In other words, yes.   Very good catch. 

CJ: I'm obviously using the non fancy 3.0 version, so this might be redundant, but is it possible to change the text of this error message so it's clear what the problem is?  Unless, of course, there are other ways to turn a character "off".

Hi all,

I am at a loss to explain this crashing error.  In a specific room where the player character has a walking command, the game crashes with the error "This character is turned off and is unable to be moved." I didn't know it was was possible to turn a character on and off like that.  I can't seem to find anything in the manual to shed any light on why this happened.  Moving the character to any other room causes no crashes with the walk command.

I am mega confuzzled.  Any help is appreciated!

-Dave

It's hard to compare adventure games to casual games, because adventure games are highly dependant on plot and writing to make them work.  As such, what makes them "popular" is very subjective. 

There's no real "magic formula" to selling games, so don't worry too much about making the type of game that will sell.  You'll drive yourself crazy if you do that.  Just make a game put it up for sale!  You'll find your audience as you go along.  Once your game is out and selling, try and keep track of who is buying your game.  Break it down in terms of age group, geographical location, male/female, etc.   You'll start to notice trends eventually.  Once you determine who your customers are (i.e., who is buying your game and coming back for more), try and find the best ways to reach more of them.

Ah.  Well the "casual game" is definitely a genre, so when you said you wanted to write a game for the casual market I assumed that's what you meant.  

Usually it means simple, easy-to-pick-up games that you can play for five minutes or five hours.  Games your mom could play, for example. The biggest audience for these games are women over 40.  The sheer numbers playing these games are astronomical. Check out Playfirst or Big Fish Games for more examples of what typical casual games are.

Interesting discussion here.   Making a commercial game is very different from making a freeware one, if only because there's so much work to do after you finish the game!  It takes a long time to build any business, and you're bound to be a bit overwhelmed and discouraged at first.  I started Wadjet Eye Games over a year ago, and it's only now starting to seriously take off.  The games were successful in terms of reviews and publicity, but they never became financially successful until they went on the casual game portals last month.

If you want to go the casual game audience route, there are some things to keep in mind.

1 - Casual portals prefer games that are cute, light and funny.  There are exceptions, but they are not as eager to take risks on games that are untested.  It took me 6 months to convince one portal to take Blackwell.  They gave me the runaround for ages.

2 - They like games with female characters.  It might have taken them ages to put Blackwell up, but they wouldn't even look at Shivah.  I'm currently writing a game for a portal and their first major change to the design was "make the lead character female." 

3 - The byword in casual games is "simpler = better" and to provide as many things to click on as possible (the term "click per reward ratio" is something I recently learned).

The more I look at the casual game market, the more it looks like adventure games are the next "big casual craze."  in 2005, it was all pretty puzzle games like Bejewelled.  In 2006, the craze was all task-managing games (usually involving a struggling businesswoman, like Flo in Diner Dash).  This year the big trend is Hidden Object games like Mystery Case Files. 

Point-and-click adventure games seem to be a natural progression from the hidden object games, which are essentially point-and-click fests but without any thought behind them.  The best-selling hidden object gamesare the ones that involve more story and characters.  Dream Chronicles, for example, is a huge seller that has a pretty good story, and they want more games like it.

Anyway, I have tons of opinions on this subject but I'll shut up.   If you want to talk about this further feel free to PM me.

-Dave

I liked GK3 for the most part.  I think it broke lots of ground and would have pushed the adventure game genre forward if the mass market still liked adventure games.   That said, it's hardly perfect.  Some of the puzzles bordered on the innane (the cat/candy/mustache puzzle is now famous), and the character of Mosely turned into stupid comic relief. 

As for the ending, I liked it.  It would have been a good setup for a fourth installment, if Vivendi had any interest in making it (which I hope they don't, cuz they'd mess it up).

-Dave

Oh, neat!  Congratulations!  I'm afraid I wouldn't know.  You'd have to write the manifesto folks and ask them.  The general support email is: customerservice@manifestogames.com. If you don't get a reply, let me know.

-Dave

Mystery Manor recently interviewed me, and are having a little contest/giveaway.  You can read the interview and get more details here:
http://www.mysterymanor.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5799

Hehe.  I loved this show as a kid.  I was convinced I hallucinated it, because nobody I met ever saw it.  Then the internet came along and I discovered lots of fan sites for it.

By "english release" does that mean the voices are dedubbed? 

-Dave

I cast my vote in for Zazzle.  I created a few posters from them (and a Wadjet Eye cap!) and I've been very happy with both their service and their quality.

This sounds very useful, but I'd like to know more about the console before I download it and install it.  Could you provide a list of the features that this console gives you? 

I can't give out the specific sales figures, but I do manage to squeak out enough sales to pay my mortgage every month.  The deal with Playfirst has helped a LOT in terms of exposure, but I won't know until next month how well the game has sold on that site.  It takes time to build up any type of business, and this is no exception.

As for posters and things, I'm in the process of doing exactly that.  I'm not sure what the market is for that kind of thing, but it can't hurt to have one.

Thanks Lucifiel!  The dream diary was mainly a way to foreshadow future events, as well as a way to justify Lauren having a dictophone in her possession.  There weren't many portable recording devices back in 1973!  That said, you're right.  I'm glad you liked the game regardless.

As for everyone else: a demo of the game is finally available!  You can nab the demo HERE.

Also, Manifesto Games is having a promotion for the Blackwell series.  Send them a ghost story and you could win both games!  Details are on the Manifesto site HERE.

It's been done already, unfortunately:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=1750

I wouldn't ever consider altering my game's intro just to show a logo of the site which hosts my stuff.

This is quite normal, actually.  If someone distributes your game, they want a version that includes their logo.  It's the least they deserve, if they are putting work into marketing and promoting your game.  I'm not sure how much work Tim plans on putting into marketing and promoting, but it's a normal business practice.

We're sort of missing the point here.  The original poster asked if this was a faux pas.  To answer that question - yes.  Yes it is.   KOF is a popular game, and the players will instantly know that you stole the graphics.  Ripping graphics from commercial products is generally looked down upon in adventure game circles (as evident by the responses here), so take that as you will.

T H A N K S ! ! !

Hi all,

Adventure Europe recently posted this review of Unbound, but aren't able to provide a translation.  Can any kind German translate this review for me?

http://www.adventure-eu.com/de/index.php?option=com_contentask=view&id=569&Itemid=1

I'll post the translation on my site along with the name of whoever translated it.

Thanks muchly!

-Dave

You ordered the digital version, Ped.    Log onto the store and you'll get your download link.  If you have trouble finding it, PM me.

-Dave