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It is kind of relative. While Wadjet Eye has done well *for an Adventure Game Studio based business*, we have to remember that they are using AGS, which is... I mean it's great and a cozy community and all, but in the multi-hundred-billion-dollar games industry, AGS is a drop of water in the vast ocean.

Even in the adventure game space, along with Daedalic you've got Dontnod (Life is Strange), Telltale, Double Fine, and many others that are all technically "little guys" relative to the big fish of the game industry (CD Projekt, Blizzard, etc.).

I do think that Mark has a point about having a huge influencer pick you up, whether that's a Youtuber, Streamer, someone at a big game news/journalism site, in the industry, etc. makes a huge difference.

Congrats on getting to the finish line!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-7CUgzm1M8

In this episode, Christian "Silver Spook" Miller talks to Nathan Hamley, of Sick Chicken Studios and lead designer of "Guard Duty: A point-and-click adventure through space and time", due out Q3 2018. Topics include:

-Guard Duty, a great looking adventure game which bears similarity to Discworld and Cyberpunk adventures like Blade Runner, but fuses them in an innovative, intriguing way.
-Cyberpunk! Deus Ex, Ghost In The Shell, Metal Gear Solid, William Gibson, the evolution of the genre, attempts at co-option, etc.
-Finer ports of art design and visual storytelling
-Duct taping your bumper on and go-fund-me to pay for a 20x10 shipping container to indiedev in (#livinthedream!)
-Silver Spook tries to coax Keanu Reeves (again) into being on the Silver Spook Podcast. Subscribe to get the scoop on how that pans out!

Guard Duty is coming in Q3 2018, look out for it on Steam and GOG!

Sick Chicken Studios: sickchicken.com

Sick Chicken Twitter: https://twitter.com/sickchickstudio

Support Silver Spook Podcasts and Games on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/neofeud


IN ADDITION! By popular request, I am now adding audio file versions of the podcast to the original post of this thread. You can also get those audio files right here:

EDIT 1/15/2018: Audio files of the podcasts for those who requested!

Episode 15 - Nathan Hamley creator of Guard Duty

Episode 14 - Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games

Episode 13 - Francisco Gonzalez of Grundislav Games

Episode 12 - Japes Hirons creator of Neon Sword

Episode 11 - Jonas Waever lead designer of "The Nameless Mod" for Deus Ex 1

Episode 10 - Jamie Patton creator of Spinnortality

Episode 9 - Primordia Writer Mark Yohalem

Episode 7 - Technobabylon creator James Dearden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIYf5sRHPT0

In this episode, I respond to the "BALLISTIC MISSILE ALERT: SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY" warning I got in my phone this morning (I am Hawaiian from Hawaii). Also continue some work, and also talk a bit about the nature and scariness of releasing indie games in 2017/2018, especially a first commercial release.

Special guests Selmiak / Future Vintage Gaming and Funkpanzer / Definitely mortal (from AGS forums!)

LameNick and Stupot: I will look into converting all of the podcasts to an audiofile that you can just download.

Nice work! Those are some trippy flying things!

Right now, for AGSers or p&c makers, I think it's worth keeping an eye on how Silver Spook fares out of it. Because he is in the process of establishing a point and click set of games into the wider world. Dave, Grundislav, Joel Andail and Rem are past that point. It's less tough for them to sell a point and click (and by sell I mean the creative side as much as anything financial) to people even the more casual audience. Silver Spook is in the "proving himself" phase which is why I say it's just an interesting point in someone's development to keep an eye on. I think he's on the right track because he's not doing what I would call a "hit & run", to release a single game and never be seen of again, so he's already got audience engagement on the table by simply providing more than 1 game ever. He's going to have a more expansive audience, be it niché or casual or both, because of it.

Mark is correct in that having your game anywhere on the internet in 2018, even if it *is* the most groundbreaking, mindblowing, revolutionary experience on the planet, is not enough to get anyone to play it, let alone buy it. And that includes Steam.

That is a major take-away for me, having released a pretty large (12-15 hours give or take) game in the Year Of The (Steam) Flood, 2017. I literally had 3 big adventure games, games bigger than mine -- not just some hack's shovelware -- come out on THE SAME DAY as Neofeud. Tacoma was one of them. I can't even remember the other two. Journey Down Chapter 3 came out the very next day as Neofeud. This is a pretty darn well-established series that started in AGS, with much bigger team, higher production-values than Neofeud, great social media marketing game, and they got... I think around 2,000 sales at launch, which Mark Yohalem (Primordia) pointed out, is not enough to sustain a team with several people.

As Dave Gilbert recently said in a podcast I did with him yesterday, "No one knows what to do exactly," to make it in the indie game industry. It is rapidly and constantly changing and evolving. However, from what I've discovered, those folks who have had any sort of success, have been those who have been actively promoting it, putting it out there, in a variety of ways. Just getting a social media account is necessary. Being active on forums, entering your game in competitions, talking to influencers, streamers, Youtubers, journalists. I spent eight hours a day emailing literally THOUSANDS of sites and journalists before the release of Neofeud. The biggest splash of press I had was when a Rooster Teeth Youtube channel called Funhaus with 1.3 million subscribers decided to do a play with Neofeud, that got 200,000 views in a few days. I could definitely see that surge in the sales/views graph. Getting in the Top 100 Indies Of 2017 (top 3 point-and-clicks) also helped, which is apparently how Funhaus discovered the video, along with the Gamejolt folks, who also featured Neofeud for a week. Ultimately, a lot of this is simply luck, a visibility wheel-of-fortune. There was no skill, talent, 4-year-Full-Sail-degree, marketing-masterplan, one-weird-trick, or anything else I could have had that got Neofeud those particular lottery-wins, but the more you put yourself and your game out there, the more lottery tickets you have.

I am an introvert by nature and despite whatever chutzpah charade I put on in the streams and podcasts, etc., I actually have a really hard time with it. I would much rather curl up in a poorly-lit dad-cave somewhere and binge Red Dwarf episodes. But I know that if I did that, no one but the inner-cloister of my game's "AGS Games In Production" *acolytes, all of 10 AGSers, will have ever played Neofeud.

(*You know who you are, and thank you for your camaraderie and being an involuntary suicide-hotline during the grueling twenty-hour background-painting guantlets. Your comments kept me alive. )

Ultimately you have to ask yourself: "What do I really want from this game dev thing?" What are your goals? Do you want 1,000 people to play your game? 10,000, 100,000 people? Do you want to make $10,000? $100,0000? Do you just want to get some great and in-depth feedback from serious gamers and/or critics that tell you that you did a good job? Do you want 1000 "likes"? Do you want a bunch of people clapping for you? Do you need to beat PUBG for most simultaneous players? Do you want to go to white-glove events and have Gabe Newell grovel at your feet at next years multi-trillion-dollar stadium-busting AAAA game event, with an endorsement from Oprah, and an Oscar for best original Game-To-Movie adaptation in one hand and a Nobel Prize in the other? Do you just want people to like you? Do you want to make games while maintaining great and loving relationships with your friends and family? Do you just want enough to pay the rent? To pay the food and rent? To pay for a townhouse in a San Fran exurb and kid's private school? Do you want to retire to Hawaii with a G5 and a supermodel and have a timeshare in every offshore tropical taxhaven? If you want that last one, stop making adventure games. Just make really horrible games and have Artificial Intelligence-generated addictiveness algorithms convert your shitware into digital heroin, turn lots of young children and people with addicitive personalities into junkies, then stuff your garbageware full of lootboxes and microtransactions making you rich and them homeless, take half the profits, dump it into a plagiarized cryptocurrency shitcoin, use the other half to bribe select scruple-free crypto-"gurus" to ponzi-hype it for you, store ill-gotten gains you fleeced from pension funds in a major city's propped-up real estate market making more people homeless, wash rinse repeat.   (Just kidding, don't retire here, please! I already had enough of the homeless to deal with around here in my last jobs.)

But seriously, what do you really, really want? Because if you just want a few cool folks to play your game and give you some feedback, you may be able to just make it and release it on AGS. It's a great, smart, friendly, and very active community here. But you may have to ask for a bit more critique, enter it into a competition, etc.

Personally, I just want to make games that I can be proud of, that have some artistic merit, that are relevant, and to make enough to support myself and my family at a reasonable standard. So far it is working out ok, although of course it could be better.

TL:DR point is that if you really want a number of people in excess of two digits to discover and play your game, making the game and putting it somewhere is, in the immortal words of GI Joe, "Half The Battle." The other half is getting it out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfkKvs42v-4&index=1&list=PLLA7QLc4WB_Feo9QSIX7-To7bCbIygO0o

In this episode, Christian "Silver Spook" Miller talks to Dave Gilbert, head of Wadjet Eye Games, adventure game publisher of the Blackwell Series, Technobabylon, Primordia, Gemini Rue, Resonance, Shardlight, and their newest upcoming game, "Unavowed". Topics include:

-Unavowed, the next Wadjet Eye game featuring a new dark urban fantasy world, original story, and five party members.
-The entire Wadjet Eye Games catalog, and the strengths of each developer.
-The evolution of the indie game industry over the 12 years of WEG's existence.
-The finer points of voice acting, writing, game design, game art
-Running an indie game company while being a husband and parent, balancing / interweaving of personal life and game dev.
-Dave being a merciless self-critic of his own games as Christian plays Angel's Advocate.
-Top-secret literary references in the Blackwell Series, revealed!
-What it's like to be the ultimate grandmaster of adventure games. (Dave declines the award)

Unavowed is coming in 2018, do consider adding it to your Steam Wishlist! http://store.steampowered.com/app/336140/Unavowed/

Dave Gilbert's / WEG Twitter: https://twitter.com/WadjetEyeGames

Support Silver Spook Podcasts and Games on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/neofeud

Check out the rest of the podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLA7QLc4WB_Feo9QSIX7-To7bCbIygO0o

Thanks everyone!

SilverSpook did a great video this morning of him playing the game, and I was around to help (or not, possibly) since I'm at home sick.  Which just goes to show, every cloud has a silverspook lining.  Or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRm41__6TLA

Good times! I think I'll have to play more point and clicks on the stream. It's nice to have a crowdsourced hint system when you get stuck   Great work on this game, lots of fun and more funny cheese-filling than a seven-layer cheese-only burrito.

@Blondbraid: Thanks! Took forever to paint but it has worked out I think.

@Selmiak: Yeah I will try to get to one of those next week! This time I did less devving and more playing. Haven't heard much feedback from people wanting to see more development which is why I kind of have been mixing it up.

Here's another late-night stream that I did when I had more of my mental faculties intact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ze8W3LHymU

"Death is the path to life." A little sneak peek.

Also, sorry Future Vintage Gaming / Selmiak, I was so sleepy and loopy this morning I couldn't get my head straight! Thanks for stopping in though, at any rate!

Make 100 million dollars with Neofeud, finish Neofeud 2 and Dysmaton.

A bit of an overachiever's regiment, but if I can hack one of the three, that would be great.

Neofeud, a cyberpunk adventure and one of the Top 100 indie games of 2017 on IndieDB is now available on the Mac! https://t.co/OB43kAchAE

I thought the season 11 premiere was pretty good, and a smart update for 2018. The pivot from, "I want to believe" in XYZ paranormal thing or "Let's get to the bottom of this/that conspiracy" formula that was the bread and butter of the 90's incarnation into a more, "Ok, the UFO stuff, yep, there's some scheming elites, yep, that's happening, let's fight it," was a smart move, in my opinion. It's a different approach from the original, but different in a good way that makes it relevant to 2018.

The only thing I thought was a little iffy was the sections with Mulder's internal narration track that didn't really work for me in the way that the Blade Runner cut with Harrison Ford narrating the film didn't work for me. But it's not a make-or-break deal, I think. Still give it four Roswell news clippings out of five.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbpbW_aEAek

In this episode, Silver Spook talks to Francisco Gonzalez, game designer behind titles such as "Shardlight" and "A Golden Wake" published by Wadjet Eye Games. Topics include:

-Francisco's most recent project, "Lamplight City", an exciting detective game that allows you to "fail forward" set in a steampunk-ish 19th century city.
-Indie Game Developing in 2018.
-The finer points of Shardlight and A Golden Wake
-The evolution of Cyberpunk and Steampunk from literary movement to subculture to fashion / marketing accessory
-Silver Spook hosting a new hit TV show, "America's Got Gamedevs"

Lamplight City is coming in 2018, and if you're into detective games and/or adventure games, be sure to add it to your Steam Wishlist! http://store.steampowered.com/app/673850/Neofeud/

Grundislav Games Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrundislavGames

If you've been thinking about picking up Neofeud, just a reminder that the Steam sale ends tomorrow!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/673850/Neofeud/

Looks great! I like the chili peppers. (I like the look, and also like them generally)

A little behind on the podcasting recently, but the holidays have been hectic (as per usual!) but I hope to be getting one of these up within the next bit.

[About]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQAMJgs5euA

Neofeud

2033 - We create AI. Sentient robots arrive, but not as our Terminator overlords or our Singularity saviors -- conscious machines are humanity's unwanted bastard children. A few are geniuses who design flying cars, beat cancer, invent teleportation, but millions of defective prototypes roll out of factories -- mentally challenged, motivationally-challenged, criminally-inclined. Legally conscious, but unhirable, these "Defectives" are shuffled through public housing and welfare assistance, straining the already overburdened back of the meager social safety net. The robots who don't end up in prison are dumped, as a last resort, into a massive landfill known as "The Pile".

Humans engage in perfection of their species -- or at least the powerful and well-connected -- genetically engineering children with human and animal DNA. The failed eugenics experiment "Frankenpeople" are discarded into "The Pile" as well. The new dynasties, 'Neofeudal Lords', live in towering neon glass castles, shuttle around in pristine nanotech-enabled pods, minds and bodies full of cyberware, spending most of their time taking selfies and "optimizing their monetization schemes". A race of supermen concerned only with their own status, their prestige, their success. Where machines have become all too flawed and human, people have become flawless, perfect, cold machines.

Karl Carbon is an ex-cop, dishonorably discharged from Coastlandia PD for disobeying an order to shoot an unarmed sentient humanoid. Karl is exiled to "The Pile" as a lowly social worker. There he counsels gangbanging foster-kid robots and confiscates chimera-children from deadbeat half-wolf parents. Till one day a case goes horribly sideways and Karl is drawn into a sordid conspiracy that could threaten the strained fabric of Human-Robot-Hybrid civilization -- or save it.


About

Neofeud is a Dystopic Cyberpunk adventure game in the vein of Blade Runner, but with an overlay of Game of Thrones-like political intrigue, and 1366x768, hand-painted, stylized visuals. 

Silver Spook Games is a one-person developer, Christian Kealoha Miller, a Native Hawaiian indie developer from Hawaii. The art, stories and gameplay of Neofeud are a reflection of my experiences as a STEM teacher for the underserved youth of Honolulu's inner city. Teaching robotics, programming, and sustainability is an often difficult, stressful, and even Kafka-esque endeavor -- being in one of the richest, most beautiful places on Earth, yet dealing with families with working parents, who are living out of a van, or sleeping on the street. It is hard trying to keep the kids out of gangs, off of drugs, and on a path towards better opportunities, such as the ones I had growing up in a slum area of paradise while going to an upscale private school. I made Neofeud to be a fun and engaging game in and of itself, but I also wanted the player to think about the society in which we live, as well as the one which we may be heading toward if nothing is done.

Neofeud took approximately 2 1/2 years to create. The writing, art, programming, music, and 1/2 of the voice acting was done by Silver Spook.

Additional voice acting:
-Amayirot Akago
-Fitz
-Azure
-CaptainD

Lead tester:
-TheBlindRabbit



Download

AGS Database
Itch.io
Steam
Gamejolt


Possible Awards

Best Game Created with AGS
Best Gameplay
Best Puzzles
Best Writing
Best Character
Best Voices
Best Animation
Best Music and Sound
Best Background Art
Best Character Art
Best Programming


Screenshots

Thanks for the reminder! Thankfully I added Neofeud early on.