While we're not able to continue developing our first project Arsonist of Fate in the current context, we wanted to share a glimpse of what we've been cooking. Let this be a celebration of the creativity, talent and resilience of our small but amazing team.

youtu.be/vfvitxbEovs?...

3/3

It's been a crazy ride learning to be an entrepeneur while building an ambitious new take on weaving together linear and interactive media in a deep, rich world. I'm grateful for the people who believed, helped or joined us on this journey. I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved together.
2/3

3C is an acronym that's common in AA and AAA studios, but that I don't see much in the indie spheres for some reason. It stands for Controls Camera Character (sometimes "Character abilities" which is a better description imo). It's the area of GD that covers moment-to-moment gameplay and feel.

And who knows, maybe also inspire AAA studios to stop reinventing the wheel (as has been my experience with camera systems) and control their costs!

For fairness, I should also mention Black Eye, which is also starting to have interesting gameplay features.
blackeyetechnologies.com

Cameras are a cornerstone of good game feel and a polished experience.
I'm excited to see plugins like this surface, as it will help indies and AA continue to raise the quality bar at reasonable costs.

What Riveting Realms is offering here is an absolute bargain. It will save teams big and small months of work, for a potentially better result if you don't have or cannot hire a camera specialist.

Contexts, transitions, collisions, targeting, etc. are involving not-so-trivial maths and logic, and most importantly require a lot of finesse and tricks to feel good and smooth.

I posted about the importance of designing for player perception, rather than objective mechanical balance.
Seems relevant to bring it back in this context:
bsky.app/profile/bob2...

The lie for this one was not so much on the developers side than it was on Nintendo's side.
What they showed in the marketing was actually impossible to detect reliably with the hardware present in the wiimote.
Their games "lied" as much as any other about the movements required to play.

Yes, I've encountered that when I was at Riot. The best you can do is show that you're listening and keep on adjusting. Over time, it buys a bit of credibility, trust and goodwill.

I find that designing these types of experiences takes a shift in mindset: design a possibility space, embrace the unknown possibilities and adjust based on data (playtests, tracked data if live).

These two twists on the genre's standards set it apart in a very good way: it feels like it's about musicianship, more than pure dexterity and memory as most rhythm games are.
Give it a try, it's a good lesson of how to integrate musicality into game design.
store.steampowered.com/app/2616170/...

2. Unlike all of the rhythm games I've ever played (and I've played a bunch!), its difficulty is not based on how many and how fast it can throw things at you. Instead, it's based on the complexity of the rhythm itself: syncopation, variations, embellishments, polyrhythms, etc.

1. While the rhythm you're expected to play to the music is always the same, the path to follow (i.e. whether a "note" is a movement up, down or a jump) is different every time.
It feels like sight-reading (i.e. reading sheet music you don't know as you play) and it's an exhilarating feeling.

In case you need help choosing: what will have the biggest impact on the experience of your playtesters? Have them understand the game more easily or have a more balanced experience? Is your game easy to grasp? Is the current balancing so broken it can't be enjoyed, and too difficult to balance?