How’s Betrayed Alliance’s production going?

There’s a lot to say, some of it good, some of it bad, hopefully none of it is ugly. Today I want to talk about it all!

The Good:

The Kickstarter is live today!

Whether or not I should’ve put this in the “The Bad” category will be the subject of the future. But the Kickstarter has 2 primary goals:

• To help fund the hiring of a musician (Brandon Blume)
• To help fund the creation of physical game manuals

Full disclosure, I do not have stretch goals. If there was something I wanted to put in the game, it wouldn’t be tied to a conditional stretch goal. Any funds above the KS goal would be used to bolster development costs.

Here’s a preview of the music Brandon is preparing for the game:

Brandon’s goal is to re-orchestrate the soundtrack so that whatever the preferred playback mode that is desired by the player will be available to them, whether it’s the single-tone PC Speaker, the Tri-tone Tandy 3 on up to General Midi and the Roland MT-32. He knows it’ll be a lot of work, but he’s got the passion and the skill, so hopefully the Kickstarter is successful in this regard.

Artwork:

While putting together the Kickstarter was a big goal in the last few months, so is getting assets done, especially those necessary for a demo that I’m hoping will be ready sometime around March of 2022.

Here’s a few newer backgrounds:

Animations and Coding:

In addition to artwork assets, I’ve also been wiring up animations and some basic inputs. This requires a bit of coding, positioning of characters and props when you enter a room or make an action. While that sounds simple enough, it takes time, especially to get the animations running at proper speeds and proper placements, but overall the process is going well.

Animations:

The Bad

Progress slowed

Project work has taken a hit while getting the Kickstarter up and running, which I’m sure is a common experience. While it will help the timeline of completion in the long run (as I won’t have to compose the music myself – in a perhaps subpar way) it is taking a toll on the here-and-now progress.

Game completion date

As we get closer to 2022 and with the Kickstarter live, I want to assess the completion date goal. At the beginning of the project, I aimed at the end of 2022. When I look at all the work that has been accomplished I am happy and amazed at all the assets I’ve put together in the last two years, but also a bit staggered by the work that still needs to be completed.

I work slow. I’m consistent, but slow. I do this in my limited free time and while it is for me a happy retreat from the stresses of the day, I only have a limited time to do it. I have a full time job and 3 young children.

Bottom line, the 2022 timeline to completion I think is too ambitious. If the scope of the game was about the same as book 1, I think it’d be possible, but as it is, I think the end of 2023 is more realistic.

Again, especially with a Kickstarter and people pledging their hard-earned money, I want to be as transparent as possible.

The Ugly

Want to see something really ugly? Here’s the Kickstarter Project video (and my face! Oof!)

Until December, have a great and adventurous month!

–Slatts

I love making these old-school-style games that many people are nostalgic for, but it takes a lot of work! But that doesn’t bother me, because for me it’s fun and actually a nice relaxing break from “real life.”

That being said, I have lots of ideas for more games in the future! After Betrayed Alliance Book 2 I want to take a short break from finishing that series to make a shorter Adventure Game called “A Night at Snake’s Tail Tavern” which I want to be a bit of a mix of Colonel’s Bequest and Leisure Suit Larry. I know, an odd mix, but I’m loving the ideas I have for it so far.

I also would really like to eventually try my hand at a “Space” style game, but that would be after finished Betrayed Alliance Book 3 and closing the chapter on that series.

Future plans are nice, of course, but all of this takes a ton of time and effort for a guy with a full-time teaching gig and 3 small kids.

Bottom line, if seeing games like these being made is something you like, I’d love your support! Thanks!

It’s been 2 months since the last update in April. That one featured some “bad news” after I had Pneumonia and was also diagnosed with high blood pressure.

Good News!

June, however features more good news than bad! First and foremost, I’m down 22 lbs from 212 to 190 lbs! While I haven’t checked my blood pressure, this can only be good news on that front. My personal goal is to get down to the 170’s, so I’ve still got some work cut out for me, but what a wonderful head start.

But you didn’t come here for my personal health update, so onto the Betrayed Alliance update stuff.

Development Stuff

Development has slowed for a couple reasons: First, to allow time to exercise more. Second, for a reason I’ll talk about below. That said, things are getting done.

• 61 Screens (basically finished) out of probably 100 (way more than I anticipated at the beginning!)
• Plot line is coming along very well and I’ve gotten all major plot points and character turning moments mapped out. Now it’s a matter of weaving them together with puzzle elements.

A word on plot

I’ve found this project harder to plot than previous stories I’ve written and I think it has to do with the gameplay mechanic I started the project with (having 2 switchable characters). It took me a while, but I realized this wasn’t just the story of the General you played as in book 1, but rather had two main characters and I needed to flesh out Leah in this game. She cannot just be a side character here, she needs to have a character arc as much as any main character. This sent me back to the plotting board numerous times to make sure both characters had motivations, backstories, ghosts, that not only did them justice, but also played into each other as well as the other characters they’d be spending a lot of time with.

I have to say that I’m excited with how the story has developed and hope that I can translate it to the game the best I can.

Kickstarter considerations

I’ve kicked around the idea a bit with some friends and talked about it casually on stream, but I’ve never fully announced my intention to kickstart.

Now is the time.

No! Not the time to kickstart, but to begin planning for it. This is the second reason development has slowed a bit. Planning a Kickstarter is a project in and of itself, but it’s one that excites me because I’m hoping it will allow me to do things I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

First, I’d like to put together a physical box set of the game with printed user manuals. I’d like the manual to be old school for sure, but also much more. I’d like it to be part game manual, part art book with concept art, and part story book featuring a short story similar to how the King’s Quest manuals often had fairytale-like stories in them. Kickstarter will give me the overhead for the materials and printing of these boxes and books.

Lately I’ve been working on concept artwork for use in the manual (as well as the Kickstarter page itself). Some of these are physically colored with Copic markers, others were outlined with Ink on paper and colored digitally with photoshop. I would like to draw and color 2 large images (one vertical and one horizontal) for the box cover, and whatever other uses you could use such art pieces for.

I’ve also been writing script ideas for the Kickstarter video. I’ve got two scripts, but I’m not sure I’m quite sold on either of them.

As to when I would kickstart, I’m thinking either November or February, mainly because I don’t know how long things like this take to get up and ready.

It’s summer! Does that mean more time or less?

I’ve got big plans on doing arts and crafts with my kids this summer. Also learning to read and write better with my six and eight year olds. I’m not currently sure what kind of daily schedule I can put together for work on the game, but when the kids go to bed, I get to work, so I’m sure I’ll put at least an hour a day in.

I’m hopeful for the return of streaming background artwork asset creation, too.

Feedback

What are your thoughts on the project so far? Are there things you’d like to see? Do you have reactions to the idea of me kickstarting this project? Most importantly, what cool stuff would you like to see as Kickstarter rewards?

Past Updates:

• April 2021
• January 2021
• September 2020

It’s our quarterly update!

We started the year off right with a post on death and dying (in Sierra games), and worked on a lot of animations for that aspect of the game. Probably about half of the 30 unique deaths possible now have either animations or cute frames like you see below to accompany the player’s death.

We’re also looking into making some “inside” pics and buildings. We had a great Twitter thread explode with people posting their personal favorite “inside” shots. Check them out! Creating and furnishing these areas will be a big focus in the next couple of months as puzzle elements start coming together for the first major plot point of the game.

Semi-consistent art streams are in the works each Friday evening on my YouTube channel, depending on family demands. The following two images were completed almost from scratch over the course of 3 nights of Streaming. It’s a great time to come out for a few minutes or even hours and chat about Adventure games (or anything really)! While my usual schedule has me working on backgrounds once a week on Wednesday, adding a second day is a nice jumpstart for planning and getting things done.

*Due to circumstances, Friday streams are being rescheduled. A new time will be forthcoming.

We also had a vote for the tagline for Betrayed Alliance 2. So let’s see how it turned out:

So there you have it: “Betrayed Alliance 2: The Betrayening” is the runaway choice. Other great names included in the comments: “Electric Boogaloo,” “The Second Book,” “An Alliance Betrayed,” “Cruise Control,” and “The Rebinding.” It is clear I have been outsmartassed by my followers!

So here’s the breakdown comparing no to the last Update (January):

• 56 Backgrounds “basically finished” (45 in January)
• Story – Overall Plot Points are known – details for first 25% finished
• Puzzles – Puzzles designed for first 25%, but not implemented in game.

You can also check out the 1-year devlog if you are so interested.

During this time I’ve also painted an oil painting inspired by Betrayed Alliance 2. While not strictly a game asset, a large oil painting depicting the two main characters can be seen observing a stained glass window. Could this image have anything to do with the plot?

Slowly we inch towards a completed game. Due to some “Bad News” I’m not sure about completion dates and I’m no longer projecting one. See below for details.

Last update I said the following systems list would be good until March:

• Monday – Write/Design BA2 STORY
• Tuesday – Write/Design BA2 PUZZLES
• Wednesday – Work on Artwork for BA2 – BACKGROUNDS
• Thursday – Work on Artwork for BA2 – ANIMATIONS
• Friday – Draw artwork (Physical)
• Saturday – Work on YT/Website
• Sunday – Rest

I think I’m going to keep it the same for April and May. By May, I think it is imperative that I have the story (and it’s details) 100% as I am reaching the point where artwork assets are necessarily tied to story and puzzle beats. So next update will be a large milestone. Hopefully I am able to see that through.

And Now the Bad News:

At the end of March, I got pneumonia, which knocked me off my work schedule. Antibiotics, a steroid, and a week later, I’m feeling much better, but, while at the doctor, they noticed my blood pressure was high.

Having high blood pressure and being the father of 3 kids is not a situation I take trivially. I decided I’d need to make some lifestyle changes. While many of them are diet-related (eliminating soda and fast food, subbing my nightly chocolates for DARK chocolate, and eating more fruits and vegetables), one lifestyle change will be effecting my productivity.

I’m not fat, I’m pudgy! Being overweight and having high blood pressure are not the kind of siblings I want in my life, so one (if not both) need to go. Cardio is calling my name.

Since I work on Betrayed Alliance in my free time (and have a full time job with 3 small kids), slotting in a semi-daily 30-60 min routine into my daily life is going to take a toll on other activities.

Whoa! Whoa! Wait! I’m not waving the towel or throwing in the white flag. I’m just saying my “slow-motion” development of Betrayed Alliance just got a little bit more slow-mo-er.

This is a passion project, and you can’t stop love!

Update: This article contains potential spoilers for Betrayed Alliance Book 1, which you can download free of charge here.

I’m biased. I made the game I’m looking at today. But that bias cuts both ways. No one sees the flaw in their art like the artist. Of course, the flaws the artist sees are usually not the flaws others find, but that’s where you can help. I’ll give you my perspective, then you can supplement it with yours!

All that aside, I’m going to talk about one thing I believe works well in the game, and that is the Structure of the Overworld and how it plays out for players seeking their goals. We’re not talking artistic direction here, but rather game design.

The Main Objective

After the first self-contained room of the game, you are plopped into the overworld and from there are tasked to “find the princess” (A very original video game goal, I know!). The wizard tells you the Princess is being held captive in the castle, but the way there is barred by excessive combat, and the game spells it out for you just in case you didn’t get the message in combat. There must be a better way in.

So where to go? Well, if you ask any person in the game about the princess, they will all universally tell you they heard a rumor she was taken to a cave in the north east. So this becomes your first goal.

Exploration Along the Way

And it’s here that I think the game gets two things right in its design:

1. The route to get to the cave will take you across the entirety of the overworld, and along the way you will run into many puzzles, some of which you can solve and some which you cannot. And because of that:
2. It allows a lot of freedom to explore. This is something I loved about Quest for Glory 1. You are dropped in a town with very limited direction and you get to just go out there and find things. I wanted to replicate this feeling, but with more of a concrete goal.

One of the rules of puzzle design is “don’t put the key before the lock.” If the player solves the puzzle before even seeing it, that’s not a good sign. So in the normal course of things, you’ll want to come upon a problem, then discover a way through or around it.

For instance, in Betrayed Alliance, you will come upon a cave elevated above the ground. Climbing to it is the first intuition, but it doesn’t work. Players will tuck this place away in their minds and come back later if they finds something that might work.

Another example along the way is a tile puzzle with a squirrel. This time, however, the solution was provided before the puzzle (assuming the player investigated the area before arriving here). Players will find an acorn and then they will run across this hungry squirrel. The next step is evident. Players give the acorn to the squirrel and the squirrel activates the puzzle. But there’s a snag – the puzzle still isn’t solved, just activated. So after tinkering with the tiles for a moment or two, players will leave with another mental note. Again, they’ve found a lock, but don’t yet have the key.

Mitigating Frustration

“But won’t this become cumbersome or frustrating to players?” I hear you asking.

Yes it will be! If every time a player comes upon a puzzle or obstacle with no way to solve or bypass it the “exploration” part of the game will lose its luster because the “interaction” part isn’t working well.

To avoid that feeling, I wanted to make sure there were things players could do and succeed in along the way. For instance, there is a shovel players are able to find on their way to the cave, and there are a couple places where they are able to use it to successfully fill in their teleport map (which will make backtracking to the puzzle locations later all the easier). Additionally, players can discover four of the five missing library books along the way to the cave, play up to three mini-games, best soldiers in combat, and talk to different characters discovering new things about the world and the plot. In this way the player isn’t frustrated with the locked areas because not everything is a locked area.

When players arrive at the location of the cave, they’ve already traversed (or at least could have) the entirety of the overworld and found four areas they can’t access, but now can be on the look out for ways to progress.

All the while through to the first area the player has found plenty to things to occupy their time and fill their hunger for success. The feeling of not progressing at one of these areas is mitigated by the fact that there are still more areas to find.

That frustrating feeling of “not knowing what to do” is usually triggered not by a puzzle itself, but when the player feels they’ve “been everywhere” and “tried everything.” That’s when things get truly frustrating!

Size Does Matter

One final thing that works in this game’s favor is that the Overworld map is not cripplingly huge. I think if it were doubled in size, having the player traverse the entirety of that distance would become disorienting and the multitude of blocked areas would be hard to keep in mind all at once. Having the southern area blocked by soldiers was mainly due to the fact that those assets hadn’t been created yet, but even if they had been, having them blocked for the first part of the game would still have been a good idea.

The Rest

After the cave, the game becomes far more linear as it’s now a matter of visiting the “off-limits” areas from before and discovering their secrets and solving their puzzles. I think that’s where the game falls into some “less-than-good-design” traps (It’s hard to just say “bad design” when I’m talking about my own game!), but analysis of that will have to wait for another time.

That’s my analysis of the overworld structure in Betrayed Alliance and how it plays into the puzzle structure in a positive way. The first part of the game is very open and free, and the first quest takes you across the whole overworld, presenting many of the games puzzles before you find the solutions.

I’m not saying it was perfect of course, and perhaps you have some other thoughts or considerations to share!

Line up the suspects:

• First Person Shooters (according to PC World)
• Moon Logic (Old Man Murray)
• Bad Design (Ron Gilbert)
• Myst (as one among many culprits according to Al Lowe)
• My guess…

An Experience:

Adventure games were quite popular at the beginning of the video gaming revolution and the reason to me is clear: Adventure games offered a kind of gaming experience other genres couldn’t come near: the Experience of Exploration. Graphical Adventure games let you walk, run, and fly through strange and big worlds in a way no other genre could. I define the “Experience of Exploration” as the feeling one gets when they feel they can “get lost” in a world. Great books and movies do something similar, but video games offer a level of interaction that make this experience all the more rewarding.

Other genres of games couldn’t replicate anything like this experience. You had Mario-style platformers, but they focused more on arcade-style mechanics than the experience of exploring a new world. Metroid was about exploration, but it was a fairly lonely experience, and the landscapes, while cool, were rarely anything more than platforming or fighting backdrops. Fun, for sure! But the exploration aspect was not quite what the Adventure game genre could offer. Final Fantasy and other RPG’s did a better job at achieving the experience, but interactivity with the world was far more limited and stats grinding the and focus on random combat did hinder the experience for many people.

Adventure games were the only place to go to get that Experience of Exploration, at your own pace, on your own terms (or the best a type-parser or mouse could get you). But something changed, and it’s still changing. And I think it’s the real assassin of the Adventure game genre.

The Real Killer – Hardware:

As the years went by, games were getting bigger, better, and more advanced. Adventure games did evolve with the hardware, but their main gimmick, the thing that kept most people coming, was that Experience of Exploration. And while Adventure games could get bigger, better, and more advanced just like everything else – their gameplay loop never fundamentally changed. Nor could it change without becoming something fundamentally different.

“So what?” You might say. Adventure games were getting “better” with the upgrades of hardware. They could have better music, bigger worlds, more detailed backgrounds and sprites. “How’s that a bad thing for Adventure games?”

The problem wasn’t that Adventure games were getting “better,” it’s that the other genres were getting better at the same time, and the hardware upgrades allowed them to also start planting their flags in Adventure games’ sacred spot – the Experience of Exploration.

While it is true that platformers didn’t mechanically change that much (bigger jumps, longer jumps, 3D jumps! etc.) the change in hardware allowed them to expand into territory that once only Adventure games roamed – the Experience of Exploration. A platformer like Mario 64 could now be both a joy to explore while also having a gameplay loop that was more “fun” than your typical Adventure game. An Action/Adventure games like Zelda: the Ocarina of Time now offered a great world to explore and interact with, but also featured, again, mechanics that are typically more “fun” than standard Adventure game inventory puzzles. Horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill also boasted creepily fun adventuring through zombie/demon infested locales with a added benefit of “fun” combat/resource management.

As Al Lowe said in his article on the death of Adventure games:

“To a certain extent, adventure games’ key elements have been absorbed by the other game genres. Action games, shooters, and RPG’s have all adopted many of the characteristics of adventures.”

And all of this happened at the beginning of the 3D consoles’ history. The Playstation debuted in the United States in 1995. Three years later Adventure game Grim Fandango could win Gamespot’s “Game of the Year” and have universal critical acclaim, but still underperform financially. Now that 3D consoles are into their 5th generation, the opportunity to make non-Adventure games that capitalize on the Experience of Exploration has only widened.

Adventure Games in the Modern World:

Where does that leave Adventure games? They used to have the market cornered on a really lucrative experience – that of really getting lost in a world. While Adventure games haven’t been evicted from this design space, they now share it with any genre that wants it, thanks to the greater flexibility hardware progress has made possible.

Adventure game fans are a comparatively tiny, niche community now. Passionate for sure, but the heyday of Adventure Games as a truly mainstream contender is gone, and I think it’s because what it did best was an artifact of hardware limitations. Now almost any genre of game can offer the Experience of Exploration AND a gameplay loop that appeals more broadly to the general population.

Note: I’m not saying that the gameplay loop of Adventure games is “bad” or “not fun,” only that its appeal is more limited in the general population. Many people love the Adventure game gameplay loop!

Is there anything left that makes Adventure games unique? Yes!

• a “go-at-your-own pace” gameplay speed (usually). Most adventure games let you explore and interact with things without pressuring you to get things done before you are good and ready. There are usually little to no arcade-style dexterity challenges. Some people enjoy that leisure.
• Inventory and environmental puzzle-solving. This is the main gameplay loop for almost all adventure games. In my experience, these types of puzzles are what separate the proverbial sheep from the goats (the people who like Adventure games and those who do not.)
• Narrative storytelling as a focus. This is one feather Adventure games still have in their hat that many other genres don’t. Open world games tend to be more about creating your own stories within a wider narrative, and platformers like Mario still don’t need deep storytelling. Even the Zelda games with all their deep lore spanning 35 years of games, still don’t make narrative story-telling front and center (except perhaps Skyward Sword). Adventure games still live and thrive on their storytelling.

Adventure Games – Dead or Alive?

Some people would say that Adventure games are indeed alive and well. I think those people are correct! I chalk that mainly up to the internet’s ability to connect people to their tribes. Adventure game enthusiasts are all around us on the internet and they are an amazingly positive community. But it’s a small community, and Adventure games don’t in my opinion (as a stupid blowhard on the internet) have much power to regain their status as big sellers in the videogames market.

Did you guess “hardware” was my killer at the outset (or did you think I was blaming Grim Fandango because of the picture)? Am I wrong? Tell me what you think!