Violent Sol Worlds has officially launched its Kickstarter project – here
Violent Sol Worlds is a story driven, single player, action hero combat game with a massively procedural generated planet covered in caves and complexes with an AI director that injects events and stories into the world. The entire game is highly mod-able including gear improvements, vehicles, drops, and much, much more.
I asked myself this question, if I cannot come up with 50 reasons to support Violent Sol Worlds then why would you? So here is my list…
The Art – It’s a top-down stylized survival experience that looks like a graphic novel in action.
The AI Overlord – Nothing will remain the same for long. If you get good at surviving in your current situation then the AI overlord will generate a special experience to mix things up for you.
The Cars – What good is a near infinite world you get to walk around? In this game you can walk or drive, gotta love that!
The Creatures – There are an absolute ton of creatures going in to the game. All I have to say is Rhino Turtle.
Crafting Cars – There have been plenty of games with crafting in them, how about crafting a car? Can anyone say tank?
Crafting Guns – you don’t just buy guns, you can make them. Put the coolest laser rifle together to match your game play. Heck just make a laser chainsaw.
The Corporations – The universe is being colonized with massive help from companies. Here are a few – Mal-Atomic, Avrio, The RTA
Is that enough yet? Come see our Greenlight and give us a quick vote.
The Biomes – the planet will be diverse and varied. There will be a ton of biomes for all he creatures to live in, from forests, to deserts and every other thing you can think of.
Building – You don’t just survive on a distant planet, you survive by building and adapting. Construction of buildings is a huge part of the game.
The Universe – Trust me the universe has a level of backstory that a sandbox survival game has not touched. Each corporation, each faction, came from somewhere. Nothing just exists, it all has purpose and evolution.
Farming – A man has to eat. You will be able to plant crops and grow your own food for survival or profit.
The Maker – A key part of your survival in Violent Sol Worlds is the Maker. It is the technology that allows for you to store molecular configurations of object and essentially print them from raw matter for use in your daily activities. Need a gun, make it. Need a car, make it.
The Technology – There is a huge mix of technology to be used. Anything from an automatic miner to some old-time cars. You will be shooting laser rifles, and conventional weapons. You might even see some sort of hover bike, or laser chainsaws.
The History – How did a recycling company go from Earth to helping people light years away reconfigure molecules to form a lase pistol? Well the history of Renew tells you that. Nothing in Violent Sol Worlds is just thrown in, it all makes sense in the history of the universe.
Laser Weapons – Who does not love the idea of some top-down action with lasers? I’m in.
Is that enough yet? Come see our Greenlight and give us a quick vote.
Aircraft – So you can drive cars, why not fly? So there are aircraft, and you can craft them.
Car Physics – Each car is simulated in a physics engine. This allows for different terrain to change how a car handles as well as tires blown from gun shots.
Lighting – It’s not enough to have a cool comic book feel. How about true lighting and shadows to help with the feeling of explosions and lasers flying around?
Conventional Weapons – Not everything is high tech. Sometimes a nice shotgun does that job well and cheaply.
Top-down – Survival is awesome. How about survival from a tactical top down view with action combat?
The Mal-Atomic Device – You get to use a scifi device called the Mal-Atomic to help with your crafting. It’s like an iPhone but more scifi and can help rearrange molecules.
Pets – You can have a pet cat, dog, or whatever. Yes this is a thing.
Turrets – The game might just be cruel to you, so build some turrets for defense. Laser turrets to help ward off attackers, expensive but effective.
Wild West Scifi – We landed on a wild west settler vibe for the game. So it is scifi, but there are some wonderful wild west feels to the world as you attempt to settle the wilds of the Rim.
Is that enough yet? Come see our Greenlight and give us a quick vote.
Living World – You are a settler on a planet that will not stop trying to kill you. Much like the old west on Earth it will keep throwing events at you that change up how you need to play to survive.
The Team – I like to call our team a dream team of game development. Not one with super stars on it but one that is truly a team built for an unforeseen victory. Meet the Team
Weather – There will be sun and there will be rain. Each weather event can help or hurt you.
Open Development – Join our development by giving suggestions and feedback starting now. You can also just watch us on Twitter and our website and see the progress of nearly everything we do.
Modding – The game is being built from the ground up for you to mod. This game will be able to live longer than most because of the new content you can produce for it at its core.
The Music – The music is composed purely for this game. You will not hear the music anywhere else.
Don’t Walk Drive Mentality – This is a huge world you are settling on. Don’t just walk for miles, drive. We want you to be able to see a lot of places so cars are vital to this survival game and will be in from the early stages.
The Dream – The idea of the Violent Sol Universe is huge. There are plans for many things beyond Violent Sol Worlds. Supporting us early keeps this dream alive. See the dream here
Is that enough yet? Come see our Greenlight and give us a quick vote.
Play With Friends – Surviving with friends is often times harder than alone, but oh so much more fun.
Play Alone – See if you can make it alone in a world that is harsh and unforgiving.
Run your own server – Take control of a server for your own gaming community. Don’t like most people, just your friends? start up a server and only let those who you want in.
Continuous Development – Our team is a special one. We move fast and get things done. We will not stop this game and plan on a very long haul here. We often times talk about the potential for ten years of development for content. We will develop new and fresh things for this game as long as people keep supporting it.
Create a Colony – Why are you surviving on a planet 4 light years away from Earth if not to create something larger. Work toward building a complete settlement to support more and more NPCs and players.
News Ticker – The universe is not dead while you are settling the planet. Keep track of the news as things happen. If Pirates start pestering Rim settlements yours might be next.
Is that enough yet? Come see our Greenlight and give us a quick vote.
Expand-ability – Violent Sol Worlds concentrates on planetary explorations. We are making sure we can expand into space when we want to.
Laser Chainsaw – Yes, a laser chainsaw. You gotta get wood somehow and swinging it at creatures sounds like a blast too.
Calling Home For Population – Need a mechanic? Call home and request one. They probably will need a facility, and place to live though so be prepared to have some requirements met.
The World hates you – Yes, being one of the first people to land on a planet is going to be difficult. The environment will not enjoy you and the AI overlord will make sure you have a challenge.
Equipment – It’s about the equipment. Pick up resources. Craft an awesome laser pistol. Build a car with a turret. Construct better armor.
Everything is a Resource – Kill a creature, use its horns for a new hood ornament.
Is that enough yet? Come see our Greenlight and give us a quick vote.
Action Combat – This is a top-down game so the action is going to be both tactical and fast paced.
Car Combat – Sometimes while driving things happen. Sometimes those things require a high powered laser turret. Sometimes they require missiles. All I know is be prepared to drive and shoot.
The Crystals – We are in love with the crystals. They have many properties and are the dynamic element in the universe that allows for many awesome crafting opportunities. Read a story about them here.
Your Colony Ship – You we placed on the planet by an elaborate process. Like the rest of the universe we figured it all out. About your colony ship
Simulation – We not only have action we also have simulation elements to the game as well. Many systems work under the hood of this game to make the world feel alive
Your Crate – You get dropped off on the planet on day one in your crate. Much like a train car, but this one is your home. Don’t worry in no time you will modify it and make it a lot less terrible and a little more like home.
Support Violent Sol Worlds Today by checking out our KickStarter, our Greenlight and our website. With your help and support we can make all of this a reality.
So it has been a bit since we launched both Greenlight and KickStarter . It has been interesting so far. I am encouraged by Greenlight and blown away by the severe lack of KickStarter wanting to make money.
Let’s start with Greenlight. We launched that thing and we blew up with traffic. We got votes by the bucket load. We unfortunately had some improvements to make and had a lower than what we had hoped yes percentage of 37%. It was still fantastic and that percentage is nothign to be sad about. Since then we fixed the wording on our page to better explain the game. So for the past 8 days our yes percentage is 62% on average which is more like where we thought we should be.
So Greenlight is rocking forward and people are really liking Violent Sol Worlds and would like to see it on Steam in the future. We have a lot more votes to go though, your vote would help greatly in promoting our title. Please head over to our Greenlight page and login to vote it up.
Now for KickStarter. We expected more from KickStarter than what they offered. I know you should not rely on somebody else to drive traffic to you, but the difference between Steam on launch day and KickStarter was like the difference between a Saturn V rocket and a rubber band. Both fly, but one gets somewhere substantial and quickly.
I’m just saying that They can make a ton more money if they actively improved their own traffic and pointed more people in an active way to new projects at least for a day or two to see if they catch or not. The truth that we did not know is that your first day will be the exact same as your sixth day. They did not seem to do what Steam did and drive people to you for a few days. They simply provide you a website and that is it.
Really we have learned a ton about game development in the past few months and have really gotten a ton more fired up about our Title Violent Sol Worlds. Mathematically all our current adventures are proving very good for us. All signs still point to people loving the idea of Violent Sol Worlds and the development is going forward full steam. With all that being said let’s go vote on the Greenlight and promote the KickStarter, let’s get this thing rolling.
Thank you all for your support.
We are proudly announcing Violent Sol Worlds has been launched on Kickstarter. Now everyone can see the top-down scifi survival shooter where you can craft cars, weapons, and buildings. You can help us increase the awareness of Violent Sol Worlds and help create the momentum it needs to become an amazing reality. If you find the game to be of interest please help us promote it by telling the world about it. Take a look and discover what we are so passionate about.
Violent Sol Worlds on Kickstarter – we need your support
Violent Sol Worlds on Steam Greenlight – we need your yes vote to get into the store
Violent Sol Homepage – keep informed about the Violent Sol Universe
I personally am so excited, freaked out, and a bit nervous all at the same time. It is by far one of the most interesting feelings to work on something this hard and then finally launch it to the public. For those who follow me on Twitter you already know that this process has taken a long time for our team. We have put a ton of work in to get to this point. We really look forward to the next phase of the project which is very exciting for me.
We have already began to design the final game so it can be expanded greatly over the next few years. This is truly a dream project to work on and I hope you will join me in my journey to bring it to the world. We are creating something magical here that I love and hope you will too. If you are a scifi fan and love a good survival game I am sure you will be pleased with what we are putting together.
Thank all of you who follow my blog and everything else I do. You are the best and I am truly grateful for each and every one of you.
So Last Friday, it was fun. Fun like taking a kick to the zinger fun. Here is how it all went down…
I started my day as normal, no problems. Got to work and Aaron, our architect, let me know his car broke down. So that is terrible for him. We worked our normal, day job, day. Then go to the weekly game development meeting for Violent Sol Worlds. In this meeting we see the final art for some cars etc. Then we begin to discuss the Kickstarter video.
See, we have somebody else helping us edit the video down and make it great. That person is busy. So we debate how to move forward to meet our deadline we set for the Kick to launch. We figured we would end up editing the video ourselves. Then we kept talking.
At this point I threw out the questions of, why not delay the launch, to start the conversation. Then my head started to freak out. Yes, one more delay. I knew it was the right thing to do, but delaying one more week seemed like I was being asked to kill a puppy. It was hard. 
I tried to rationalize it away as I could take a week off and get ready for the deep dive in to design that we will have to take. That did not work. I then realized that I had to convince myself that the video will be much better because we wait the week and that we will be better off for it. That seemed to calm my brain down a lot. I also had to get myself in to a head space of there will be no more delays beyond that. 
So the basics is that we are slipping one more week on the Kickstarter we had planned to launch really soon. So we basically were done with our meeting at that time. We did what we always do, and walked out to the parking lot. At which time Ben, sees his car tire is flat.
What a lovely day for game development. It was a great test for the team to have nearly all of us have some sort of mental test that pushed us to a breaking point. We held together, and made what I think were great choices. Like I always say, when the world gives you lemons, it’s a trick, get an axe.
If you have not checked out my current project…
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It is no secret for the past two months the Violent Sol Worlds team has been working on putting together a Kickstarter. The thing is we did not think it would take this long. We figured a month and it would be out the door. A month is a very long time to work on essentially an elaborate blog post that asks for fundi
ng.
Well we are on the second month now. It just keeps going. We had something that could have launched a month in. There just was not the pride I feel today for it, it needed more cowbell.
The second month really took our content and polished it up and made us move from a Kickstarter that we kinda just needed to launch to one I want to launch.
See, At first you develop all the things that Kickstarter wants you to fill in etc. You play by the rules and do exactly what they say. I encourage anyone doing a Kickstarter to do it that way, just get it filled in and able to go to review. Then stop and take the time again to make it something you would even put on a resume.
I never want to do anything anymore that is just enough to get to launch. That is not a great way to live. I want to make sure that I do enough to make the world notice that there was work there. Simply filling out the forms and getting it ready to launch was work, but launching it then would have looked like we just threw it together. I want to make sure people see it and think that is a great Kickstarter page.
I also learned that you should not do the hard work to make anything above and beyond without doing it just for the work. Don’t expect anything beyond the privilege of working on a quality product. Hope for the best but be rewarded by launching a Kickstarter that you would write home about. I’m going to choose to be proud of what I have helped put together. I look forward to the world seeing it.
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Fear of all this work not paying off is looming. As we push to Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight it does cross my mind that people may not support us or even know about us. I’ve been working hard for a long time now to try and make that not happen. I suppose the fact that you are reading this is a sign that my fears are at least not 100% solid.
It will be a slightly crushing blow if our efforts do go unseen or even worse un-liked. Well our best is all we can give. I do appreciate everyone for supporting, following, and just being there through our hard work. Game development is not hard, the workload is the hard part.
Holding down the full-time job and performing on game development at the same time will kill a lesser person. I have the largest amount of respect to those who have made it before me and hope like heck that hard work pays off and I follow them in stride. All of your support is appreciated and there is a much longer road ahead. I’ll keep digging in as long as I keep getting up in the morning. I love this stuff.
As always here are some links to learn about our game Violent Sol Worlds
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I tend to work through lunch. Yes, even on the weekends. The one thing that weekdays have going for them is that I actually eat a lunch. The weekend I tend to just grab the computer and start plugging away as my daughter eats her food. There is just so much to get done.
See, Violent Sol Worlds is getting close to launching a Steam Greenlight, and Kickstarter campaign both in relative closeness to each other. The thought is we will launch Greenlight first and refine anything we need to in a couple of weeks. Then launch Kickstarter and hopefully have more than my mom go to both of them. I love my mom and all, but I kinda want to have somebody other than our families support this awesome title we are making.
So I am putting together the final coding of the game-play demo, which is just a little bit more. I am also tasked with the Greenlight page which I would like done by end of day Tuesday so we can hit “GO” whenever we like on it.
Well wish us luck, and if you have not seen the game yet please go check it out, we have a webpage now – Violent Sol Worlds
