Fell Tracer
Posted: October 10, 2011 Filed under: General Stuffs 15 Comments »
General response to my last blog post was that folk wanted to help out, but couldn’t afford to commission me, so since I’m not keen on taking donations in exchange for nothing, and for a short time I have access to my step-mum’s laptop, I’m making a small game I’m happy to sell.
it’s a small exploration platformer with a few puzzles that I’m calling ‘Fell Tracer’ its all pretty much laid out and coded now, it just needs some sounds and the environments painted. since there are ~120 ‘screens’ to it, painting may take a while, by my predictions it’ll be 2 weeks if I’m on fire right to the end. this is unfortunately longer than I have access to this laptop for, so in the next week or so I’ll probably start selling pre-orders and make a short demo available (probably on kongregate, I do rather like it there).
I’d wanted to avoid this if possible, since I already have another incomplete game available for pre-order, but if I can’t get a new laptop soon I won’t be able to work on either, or Swift*Stitch, which is also not far from completion.
anyway, general breakdown of the game:
- Exploration platformer (old school screen-by-screen camera)
- ~120 screens
- run, jump, grab, crawl + 8 collectable special abilities
- hold only 3 special abilities at once, plan routes accordingly (navigational puzzles)
- each screen painted individually
- fixed up with Unity’s lighting effects so 3D objects sit in screens nicely
I expect I’ll sell the game at around £3, I think that’s very reasonable for what it will be and at that price I need around 400 sales to cover the cost of the laptop.
any thoughts or suggestions? regarding pricing or my plan of attack for getting money together?
Don’t you have to pay income tax in the UK?
The game looks nice, expect GBP 3,- coming your way from me 🙂
This sounds great and I’m looking forward to it!
What’ll be awesome if you could get this on the Humble Bundle; it’s worth a shot. 😉 You’ll probably overshoot the cost for the laptop though.
More seriously, you should try to hit on the “Ever Sale Counts!” angle. Perhaps even have a counter on your website “###/400 Sales”. That’s actually what got me thinking about the Humble Bundle because they got all of that set up already. But seriously, 400 sales ain’t no thang, I’m sure if you can get enough exposure you’ll definitely overshoot!
@col000r: yeah, I have to pay VAT , but I’ll worry about that later, pretty sure I don’t have to figure that out till next year, and I should be in a more stable position by then :), also, thanks! 😀
@Galaxy613: no chance of it getting in the humble bundle I’m afraid, since Unity doesn’t have a ‘build for linux’ option yet, and humble bundle games have to be 3-way cross platform. 😉
I probably will cover sales on my twitter, not sure if I can make a live counter though. but I did just sign up for fastspring to manage the payments, maybe they have such a widget I can put on the page. I’ll look into it 🙂
This is looking great! 😀
Best of luck finishing it off, hopefully this is just the start of even greater things to come 🙂
Hi Sophie, how are you? =D
So, why you don’t use the kickstarter project? http://www.kickstarter.com/ May be you can receive more suggestions or thoughts from there. =D I guess.
By the way, nice work. 😉
Humble Bundle or not, once it’s done send it to Steam. You can export it to work on both Mac and Windows and they’re constantly looking for more Mac content. Also don’t forget Desura, they have an Alpha Funding program set up now similar to Kickstarter, so you can at least take preorders for this and Swift*Stitch on that service.
Sadly, I predict this to be Lottie’s Dungeon 2.0.
after these disasters I’m surprised you still have the gall to sell things you probably aren’t going to finish (lottie’s dungeon, pixexix, surprised you didn’t take pre-orders from sarah’s run-though you said you would eventually).
I don’t mean to be rude, but your track record speaks for itself.
legit point allen, I look forward to disproving your prediction 🙂
just a note though; pixexix is totally usable already, and I am still working on it from time to time. besides, it’s not something I will ever call ‘finished’ anyway, I keep adding to it as I use it for my own 3D projects.
and yeah, the state of Lottie’s pre-orders is not something I am happy with, but as I’ve said in the last blog post, if anyone wants me to refund their purchase, that’s fine.
don’t worry about being rude, my track record is pants. but like I say, this game is near completion, something that at no point I’ve never been able to say about Lottie yet, so that’s where my gall comes from. 😉
You could probably charge more, but people such as myself who want to pay more will just order multiple copies. I’ll probably preorder Lottie’s Dungeon too.
Mind you: The Sarah’s Run demo doesn’t even work on my old p.o.s. pc so if these so much as run I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I’m not buying the games, I’m paying for you to KEEP MAKING GAMES, SOPHIE!
Side note: Couldn’t we just forego all this “I don’t want to accept charity” stuff and make a damn donation link already?
Oh, and remember to make a blog post so my rss reader can queue me to hand you some dubloons or whatever Brits exchange for laptops.
What I would buy is a tutorial about how you model, rig and animate your models in blender.
I am a programmer with some artistic feeling but I would like to know how to create these.
I would pay 20$+ for them.
Maybe this is an idea, I have always liked your characters and animations.
@Wilds have been wanting to make some blender tuts for a while, only have this so far https://sophiehoulden.com/tutorials/blender/unwrapTut.html
don’t think I’d be happy charging for them though 🙂
Make some more about different areas and put a donation button online! just your article about avoiding adds makes me want to donate!
At 3 quid i’ll order two.
If you sell as much games as your laptop costs including VAT, the VAT you have to pay will be deducted by the VAT you paid for the laptop, hence you’ll pay 0 VAT.
Take care, Sophie.
Any word on this, Sophie? Can’t wait to give you some money.