What's this? Velociraptors! Cannibalism! Oh my.

[Draco18s]

A couple of friends and I put together this little game over IGDA's Global Game Jam about two weeks ago, and we're trying to get it published.

A little about the game:

Velociraptor! Cannibalism! is a card game of survival, mutation, and the occasional volcano. Based on a crude understanding of natural selection, Velocipator! Cannibalism! puts you in the role of a young, eager and bright eyed Raptor as they must eat delicious, adorable prey, survive environmental disaster, mutate and steal the body parts of other Raptors.

Figured you guys might at least take a look at what we've done, maybe even pledge a little.

Thanks!

[x4000]

Fixed the url for you.  Looks pretty cool!

[TechSY730]

Is it bad that when I first saw the title for this, I first thought it was the name of a new AVWW beta release?

I was going like, WHAT, where was the velociraptors and cannibalism in the release notes? 

[keith.lamothe]

Sweet, I hope it goes well

And yes, velociraptors => AVWW is an association in my mind, too.

[Draco18s]

Haha, thanks guys!

Also, Keith: you're one of the best, I swear.  Seems like very few indie game forums out there let other indie game devs (or hell, anyone) advertise for their games.*

*Sample size: 4.

[x4000]

Seems like very few indie game forums out there let other indie game devs (or hell, anyone) advertise for their games.*

*Sample size: 4.

I've been there -- it's rough as heck, to be sure.  I managed to get myself banned from the Gamespot forums for deigning to talk about my own game in forums where people were asking if people knew of games matching its general description.  When I appealed, they declined to overturn it because I had multiple violations (two posts in two threads, but they deleted both at once and banned me in one fell swoop, no warning).  So yeah, I feel that!

[TechSY730]

Haha, thanks guys!

Also, Keith: you're one of the best, I swear.  Seems like very few indie game forums out there let other indie game devs (or hell, anyone) advertise for their games.*

*Sample size: 4.

I get the general impression that as long as you post intelligently, in the right forum, actually make it personal (why you like it and/or why this audience would care) rather than a generic advertisement, and don't do something stupid like link to a malware site or say "Don't buy Arcen Games' stuff", I think they don't mind.

[Draco18s]

I get the general impression that as long as you post intelligently, in the right forum, actually make it personal (why you like it and/or why this audience would care) rather than a generic advertisement, and don't do something stupid like link to a malware site or say "Don't buy Arcen Games' stuff", I think they don't mind.

Yeah, I had. :\

Their stance is "any advertising for any product or service of any kind will be DELETED."  And yes, that included the off topic "anything goes" forum.

Just for spite I went and found two semi-recent threads (that forum wasn't particularly active) and reported them for advertising as well, the note of "We can't have double standards, now can we? " as several threads (mine, included) went unnoticed (mine got deleted only after I posted an update this morning).

I don't play their game any more anyway.  They don't know what balance is and keep screwing with it under the guise of "it's beta and only a quarter of the content is there."  Only it's available on the "ranked" servers (it'd be like TF2 letting you try out new beta items on any server you felt like it running the official client).  Not to mention that hacking is horribly rampant, along with "USD item shops" which are against TOS.

[x4000]

Which game are you talking about?

[Draco18s]

Which game are you talking about?

Trendy's Dungeon Defenders.
They're working hard, but it's one of those things where I realized I wasn't having fun and had to force myself to do Something Else for a few days, and that lead to only following the patch notes.  Which lead to a complete uninstall of the game as the patches moved farther and farther from rational thinking (the biggest issues go unaddressed with no public acknowledgement along with strange and bizarre changes to things that no one considered a problem).

[x4000]

Ah -- that's sad to hear.

[Draco18s]

Ah -- that's sad to hear.

It was such a good game, too.
Still is, if you only play to level 70 and only with friends, and not any of the DLC.

They've even stated that Nightmare Mode (the difficulty above Insane) is only for "5 to 10% of the playerbase."

[x4000]

I've not played it yet, but I've heard good things.

And the Nightmare Mode comment seems reasonable -- our difficulty 10 in AI War is something we try to balance so that it's unwinnable by 99.99% of the playerbase.  There's always some small pocket of ultra-skilled gamers, and if you can have a mode for them without devaluing the experience for the rest of the playerbase, then that's great.  I guess I take the view that inherent player skill is more or less a bell curve, and so the difficulties should reflect that.  By that logic, 5% or 10% is enormous for the top difficulty. 

But I don't really know what goes into a difficulty mode for their game, so if it's actually content and such that's something that is definitely not good.  People playing at the skill that is appropriate for themselves shouldn't feel like they're missing something.

Anyhow, I'm completely uninformed on what is going on with that dev, so don't take this as a defense of them.  I'm in no position to judge them either way, I just don't know anything about them.  But the isolated comment about the difficulty caught my eye.

[TechSY730]

I get the general impression that as long as you post intelligently, in the right forum, actually make it personal (why you like it and/or why this audience would care) rather than a generic advertisement, and don't do something stupid like link to a malware site or say "Don't buy Arcen Games' stuff", I think they don't mind.

Yeah, I had. :\

Their stance is "any advertising for any product or service of any kind will be DELETED."  And yes, that included the off topic "anything goes" forum.

Sorry, I meant on Arcen games' forums they would be fine with it.

I can't speak for other forums, especially when so many forum mods and admins are paranoid, control freaks, or in very unlucky cases, both.

[orzelek]

As for Dungeon Defenders: it's a bit sad to get such nice idea and ruin it with idea like Nightmare mode.
Here diff 10 is not like not allowing you access to 1/5th of game features...
In DunDef nightmare is actually 1/5th of game in a away - it's ability to get one more run with campaign for you with better rewards and higher difficulty. Balancing it so that hours of grinding are required to have chance at it (and silly feature that you run on nightmare one of further maps to get items from there to have any chances on others) is simply ruining the game for 80-90% of players.. thats not something that sits well with players.

Game itself is very fun - had a good time playing it with sister. The fun ended when we reached near the end of insane or that new map from DLC - it's simply for masochists... and some forumites there try to say it's to easy