The game looks more and more awesome! I really second the idea of in-app purchase. If you can do it before the release of the second book, it'd be great. Will there be several ways to finish the book, or is there just one "good" solution?
These are the first games on the iPhone that I have been genuinely excited for. I love gamebooks and have always thought that the iPhone was the perfect device to carry them around in. It's about time someone else saw this!! I am really looking forward to these and hope that they hold half the potential they promise. Just to throw in my tuppence worth I'd also like to concur with the idea of an hub app for the collection. Also, is there a way to write notes or draw your own maps a la Etrian Odyssey on the DS? Just curious...
love the positive vibe surrounding this game, hopes its a massive sucess the fact these are written from scratch with iphone design in mind makes it even more exciting! whilst doing some net searching for gamebooks, i stumbled across a website called http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books all the lonewolf books on your pc/mac for free!! of most interest is the program called seventh sense. this gives you a complete user front end (like this game) in which to play these old books. fuppin awesome
To all who have commented on this thread so far -thanks so much for your support. It means a lot to a small hard working team who are passionate about gamebooks! I'll try and answer some of the issues raised. The Gamebook Hub Idea - It's great that many of you think this is the best way forward and it's a good indicator for us. As Ben said earlier, to start with we will be producing these stand-alone although we do have plans later to use these as portals for in-app purchases. @aricall - the map at the moment will act solely as a guide as you find at the front of most fantasy novels. Again we do have plans in later books to incorporate maps much more within the gamebook structure. @thevagrant - both books are very different actually in this approach. Assassin has several ways to access "the last bit" but it will take some clever manipulation of the path to enable you to have ultimately succeed. Necromancer has more of a dungeon crawl aspect to it, with many paths intertwined and key objects to find to make the adventure easier for you. We have six authors working currently on these (four more books to come later) so each one brings to their story a slightly different twist on the narrative and logic. @PFL - I loved Etrian Odyssey on DS and the gamebooks would benefit from a map generator. This won't be implemented in these books but I wouldn't rule it out for the future. @acidbottle - I second project aon and highly recommend it if you loved the lone wolf series.
I'd just like to chime in here. I've been closely following the development of this project for some time now and can recommend this title as a must have for 2010! The video looks awesome, good job guys, can't wait!
I would like to take you up on that offer. When's the testing going to be? I can always get time to play games and get on Touch Arcade or a website, so that shouldn't be an issue. And one more question. Are there any of those confusing labyrinths or mazes like in Firetop Mountain? I found my way out of that one by accident, so if you do have one, you should have some sort of clue or help system that can get you through it without frustration, or have battles that are a sign of progress. Either way though, I'd like to test this game. Sounds so awesome, and I've always been into the adventure game books and role playing stuff, so this is perfect for me, especially with the mystery storyline of discovering the assassin.
@TheTinMan - excellent news so far, I can't wait for this to come out. I blew $2.99 on the Fighting Fantasy one and am waiting for an update to it so it doesn't crash as much - I've renamed it Failing Fantasy, but it does show promise. That's a hint: please thoroughly test this across as many different hardware/firmware variants as you can before release. Even if it could mean pushing back release a bit. Question: Will the dice be colored to match the stat or skill one is currently rolling? Fighting Fantasy does this and it helps keep things in order a little. Roll for luck and the dice are green, etc. In the short - too short? - preview video I saw black and red dice. Question: What's the release price going to be? Question: What's the average length of gameplay? I also second the idea of in-app DLC for future books.
I like your idea of the DLC... I was thinking maybe extra chapters so that way you can continue the adventure for a minimal price and without having to go for a whole other adventure... man... if only the MGS games could do that... I'd be in my glory, I never wanted those games to end.
Awesome - i'll drop you a PM. Ah that old chestnut. To be fair on Warlock, it was one of the first books of its kind and set precedents (good and bad) for the future of how gamebooks should and should not be written. Labyrinths are bad generally and the narrative should give the player some sense of progression, and should link up as the player/reader is likely to attempt the books in different ways. It's always nice to have cool pieces of continuity where the player/reader realises information from previous attempts that combines with their new attempt.
Lol, yeah that was the only part of Firetop Mountain I hated... It drove me insane... I luckily (and accidentally) found my way to the Maze Master, so I'm in a convo with him right now. So thanks for omitting/improving on that, it really makes it that much enjoyable when I know I don't have to go to some stupid maze in which its mostly luck I have to use to get through... thank God I have a skill of 12 or I would have never made it out of there (or even TO the maze... the vampire almost did me in) And thanks for letting me beta test.
Dice are indeed coloured to match attack, defending, and fitness rolls. Unknown at this point. I'll fire this one back to you! What would you "realistically" be willing to pay based on Warlock's pricepoint and the details we have unveiled? Wow this is a tough one as each reader will attempt the books slightly differently. I would say that if you knew the best way through to the end, reading every word and fighting each encounter it would probably be fair to say around 2 hours. The likely scenario though is that it will take a few attempts. Then there is the small matter of getting the achievements and unlocking all the extras! Ben calculated that for Assassin alone there are over a million different combinations of ways to get through the book.
Hey dude, thanks again. Droppin you an e-mail with my UDID in it. Just gotta wait for my computer to stop being so stupid so I can finish. Suffice to say, the e-mail is pretty... concise. Yeah, just my UDID and lettin you know that it's me. When will i be getting the build? Just curious. Oooohhhh... achievements and secrets... I'm looking forward to this even more now!
Excellent! Well, I feel as though what you're offering is at least $2.99. Warlock right now is worth about $0.99 due to its unstable nature. Well, I figure the first play through should take me longer than that. Extras and achievements is something that Warlock is missing....sounds good to me - provided it doesn't crash after every battle.
I think that's a tiny bit underprice. I thin that somewhere along the lines of $4.99 is definetly worth it for what we're getting with this app. That may even be a bit underpriced. Remember that this is an original, and it takes alot of hard work and time to come up with something original, especially of this type and length. I'd say go for a $2.99 intro price, then go anwhere from $4.99 to $6.99. Prices like that usually catch attention. I find myself looking past many $0.99 and $1.99 games, but when one comes up in this neighborhood, I have to look just to see what it's all about.
TheTinMan and I have talked about this before, but I'm really looking forward to these books. I remember several of these series from when I was a kid, and I think I might even still have a couple of them (Warlock and one or two of the Lone Wolf books) lying around somewhere. I even had plans a couple of times for doing something like this myself (albeit when I was considering it they would have been PC games, since PDAs didn't exist back then). Thankfully the Gamebook Adventures have come around, because I got lazy and opted not to make some myself Personally I think $3.99 or $4.99 is a quite reasonable asking price, especially since you'd pay that much if the same thing was released in paperback. Plus, in a paperback edition you wouldn't get cool things like achievements or dice that couldn't be lost I have as yet to try Warlock on my iPhone, but I have a feeling that even when they get the bugs worked out it's not going to be nearly as enjoyable as the Gamebook Adventures. So did I hear these were done yet... j/k I don't normally like to advertise other products in a thread, but this is such a cool genre I just thought I'd point out one more to tide the readers here over until the best ones come out: myQuest: Rise Of The Hunter I've played this for a little bit, and it seemed to have potential, though reading a couple of the iTunes reviews seems to indicate that it's a bit buggy. Assuming the Gamebook Adventures come out without bugs, looks like they'll already be on top quality wise!
If you're going to have achievements, will there be OpenFeint support? I love seeing my gamerscore increase.
On the price problem, i'm not sure going above 3.99$ would be a good idea. I would pay a lot more, but it'd probably turn away potential customers who are just curious and not interested yet. This said, most of the potential customers will probably be more than 30 years old, very nostalgic and will have a job and enough money to satisfy their crave of gamebooks My quest is indeed a very fine game, but it would severely need a cheat option for the fights. I hope Assassin is more forgiving on this aspect.
It wasn't planned, but if the demand is there it could be something worth investigating in the future perhaps.
@PointofLight and @thevagrant Yeah this pricepoint issue is obviously important to get right. At the end of the day our economics and the way the market responds will dictate the play. No doubt we'll keep you in the loop on how our thoughts are going with this.
