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 need your vote, yes yours. You have a few seconds to make a difference, simply click the image below and help an indie developer out by voting for Violent Sol Worlds for Indie of the Year. I’ve been personally working on this game for over a year and it would mean a ton. Your vote really matters and we need every one of them.
Man has this been a hectic time of year. I’m not even sure when the last time I wrote was. Here is what has been going on though…
Our team for Violent Sol Worlds has been working hard to bring a ton of major functionality to the core code. We have a Screen System, physics, map transitions, rendering, and analytics all baked in the the real game now.
It has been a lot of crazy work, but we have done well. With that we had Christmas, and all that goes with it. I am currently working on getting world interaction in the game now. Why don’t you come check out our pages and see what we’ve been up to?
Greenlight – come give us a yes vote
ViolentSol.com – Tons to read here including creature bios
Come be a part of our Kickstarter – Violent Sol Worlds
Vote now for our Greenlight here
Check out more information on Violent Sol here
Follow me on Twitter @magicrat_larry
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, our team has made a decision to start interactions in a more personal way besides blogging. We are going to start doing videos to describe what we are making and thinking in a better way. We are also going to start streaming more twitch sessions to give you a first hand look at how some stuff gets done. I look forward to do this, even though I also dread the whole idea.
Now I am going to play Fallout 4 🙂
Come be a part of our Kickstarter – Violent Sol Worlds
Vote for Greenlight here
Check out more information on Violent Sol here
Follow me on Twitter @magicrat_larry
There is a good quote that always strikes me and I believe it is a good call to action for POCs.
-Sid Meier
If you just start coding your game from idea and start throwing stuff in you are not necessarily finding the fun first. What I like to do is to figure out a cool concept, as few neat sounding game-play elements and code up some quick little programs to show off those game-play elements.
The key here is speed. Do not spend time designing an awesome architecture. Do not spend time making sure it is pretty. Get the game-play in to your own hands and see if you still think it is fun. For example, for Violent Sol Worlds we started off with the idea we wanted a top-down shooter. So I started to create a POC of a guy shooting
.
This POC at first looked terrible, with borrowed graphics but I could walk around and shoot one immobile cow. It turned out that it was fun to shoot an walk around, but the addition of blood from the cow made it more fun. The feedback was the true start of fun. At that point I thought the cow was detracting from the fun because it was an innocent cow. What would it be like to shoot something that moved, and shoot stuff like a building etc?
So I quickly threw in a wall and animated a bug creature I had been drawing. It was a lot more fun to shoot something moving. But the feedback was 
all wrong now for the bugs. They would need to die. So I coded in hit points and had them disappear when it hit 0. This still broke the experience and the fun.
When I added blood and body parts from the bugs being shot and killed it changed the world. It turned from something that I would launch and stop in seconds to something I found myself playing for minutes and it was just a POC.
You see without the POC I would not have noticed so many subtle things that make the action game-play fun. It is about moving around and shooting, but it was more about what you were shooting and how it felt to shoot them than anything else. This process did not take weeks, it took hours and the learning experience it was, was worth every minute. It changes designs, it effects decisions, and best of all it’s a quick process and adds value.
@magicrat_larry – Join me on Twitter
Facebook – join the conversation
So I have started to use Twitter to post more polls. This is not scientific by any means I was just curious as to what polls were like on Twitter and asked a few questions and will post the results here and blab about each for a little bit.
Scifi – 86%
Fantasy – 14%
This one was interesting to me. I always though that it would be the other way around. There are far more games made in the classic Fantasy worlds with goblins, orcs, and elves than a scifi universe. This made me really happy actually that maybe that same old world that every fantasy game is in might not be the most popular thing out there any more.
PC Games – 80%
Mobile Games – 20%
I was a bit shocked by this as well. Most people that answered prefer to make a PC game. I find that interesting because it seems like the mobile market is flooded with a who’s who of human crap these days. Maybe everyone should follow their heart and not where they think a market is. It looks like creating mobile games is either undesirable, or it is a pain in the rear that nobody really loves. Kinda gives you a good understanding why mobile games are all, for the most part, terrible.
PC Games – 70%
Console Games – 30%
Very close to the poll above on what you would rather make. A ten percent difference with most people who answered saying they would rather play a PC game. Seems like people would rather be on a PC than a console. I do understand why now that console prices are so high and the games all cost $60 a piece. I used to love consoles, now I never turn one on and play on my PC. I really don’t care that much though, gaming is gaming and I am glad people can play on whatever they play on.
Passion – 100%
Business – 0%
I get this one was hard to actually click business. If you click business you are not going to be able to feel like an indie game developer anymore. That is not true really. If you want to make it as a game developer you do have to learn that the business part is what makes it possible for anyone to see your product. I think this shows us why it is so hard for indie developers to break into the market. It seems that 100% of them are there for the love of it, not the distribution of a product. Not a bad thing, but not the greatest thing to get your game to people to play it either.
Star Wars Battlefront – 25%
Fallout 4 – 75%
This one is still ongoing as of the writing of the article so I will only say this, I’M SO EXCITED!!!!
If you have not checked out my current project…
Facebook – join the conversation
@magicrat_larry – Join me on Twitter
Promoting an indie game is an interesting thing to accomplish. I am in the midst of learning it myself. Here is the rundown of what I have so far that is of major help to begin to build a community and get interaction with potential fans.
Most people do not try to get through life without a home, and neither should your game. You need a location to drive people to and a website is where you want them to land. This is a place where you are in control, it is your world, your happy place. It is filled with why they should love your product. It should be the goal to get everyone in the world to here.
What should you setup? It should look like your product. Right now we actually setup a WordPress site with a theme that we could customize and make look like Violent Sol Worlds. It does not take much and you have a good location for your potential fans to begin to hover around learning about your game.
To make it look like your product you will need a logo, screenshots, and important content that makes people feel a part of the game. This is where the real work lies. It takes time and effort to generate good stuff for the website. It pays off to do it though, and the earlier you put this together, the longer is sits on the web gaining momentum for your eventual launch. Create your webpage early and update it often with new and exciting things about your game.
This one is not as intuitive and making a website for your game, but is incredibly effective in driving people to it. Start blogging as yourself, not as your game. This is completely separate from your game, this is you talking about your life, your loves, your hobbies, your work. What this does is it allows you to put out things that people can relate to. It widens your net beyond your game.
Why do you need a wider net? Well it is simple, if you want to be successful, YOU have to be successful, NOT your game. If you are truly serious about your game, you will have many opportunities to plug your content in your personal blog and suddenly you are linking people to your website to see your game by talking about coding a physics engine, or AI.
This also allows for you to change pace, and blow off steam. Often times in-game development you will get frustrated. It is amazing how just writing about something will make you feel better. Plus, many others that are trying to do the same thing will relate and turn to potential consumers of your content, which, in part, is your game.
This is like the Doom shotgun, it is the finest utility you have for marketing to actual people on a steady basis. Sure the content lasts like 8 minutes, but it is quick, clean, and targeted. You should create Twitter accounts for yourself, and your game. Each one should be tweeting things that attract people. You need a personal one that is different from your games because you should be promoting your blog as well as your game content with that one. Your games account should be tweeting only about the game.
The key to twitter is consistency. Don’t just tweet like once a week. Spend the 15-30 minutes every day to queue up like 6 tweets that will go out throughout your normal work day. You can use Buffer for that, it is nice, simple, and easy to use. Get in to a good habit with Twitter and you will be amazed what you accomplish.
If you are interested in more things I learned about Twitter during my first year of game marketing go check out – 5 Things I learned About Twitter in a Year
Facebook might seem dumb at first for a game, it did to me. But it is like a happy medium between a website and Twitter. It does get a slightly different crowd and it is easy for people to share your content just by clicking a button. Our Facebook page for Violent Sol Worlds was created late in the marketing game so we missed this boat a little, but it is a location people will engage in and promote your game socially. Do not ignore the power of Facebook to drive shorter, quicker content for longer periods of time than Twitter.
Here is a simple, quick, and easy driver of people to anywhere and everywhere. Take a second to go to Reddit and see what it is, a simple link to a site and an up/down vote. Yes, you choose a sub-Reddit and simply post links with a nice title and it does the work. People will come to your link and it has the shot of going viral on Reddit.
This is a somewhat of a hidden gem for me. I ignored it for many years then just recently tried it for game traffic and was amazed how it worked for us. It is again, not the golden arrow of marketing but it does allow for you to at will get some form of traffic to new content about your product when you want and need it.
IndieDB is a large community of indie game developers with their studios and games posting there to promote their products. The interactions there seem light, but the traffic that shows up to news, or new images cannot be ignored. You should create a landing page there and join that community. It is just another way to cast a larger net and does not take an amazing amount of effort to maintain.
I found that images are powerful, videos are not so powerful. So simple screenshots and a news article can drive you up in the rankings and get more people to care your game exists. We started our IndieDB site early thinking it could be the home for Violent Sol Worlds, but it is not a good spot for that. It is a great addition to your marketing campaign though and should not be left out.
These two are the elephants in the room. They are awesome marketing machines. They both have a community that is massive. They also are customer oriented events. The thing about these two is that they are events. What do I mean by events? They will take up a massive amount of time to get up and launch. Ours is in the planning stage now and nearly ready to launch for both Kickstarter and Greenlight and we have worked on them for about 2 months now.
They are worth it. Once you get something you want to market on a scale larger than your own website and blog you should put these together, but remember schedule out about 2 months of work here.
There are many more things you can do to market your game, no doubt. The one thing to remember is that you should cast a large net. Don’t just market your game, market yourself. This allows for you to say much more than my game is awesome. Your game is simply your product, and often times people need more than that. If you can show that you are an awesome person, that is enjoyable to listen to and read about, people will be more likely to buy your game. People like to connect and support others who seem like real, quirky, people. Be yourself and good things will happen.
I am so excited. Yes me, calm me. For those of you that know me I am always excited, but today more than others. We have started something awesome for our game Violent Sol Worlds. We have started releasing weekly content posts on our site ViolentSol.com
You are a galactic settler dropped off on a distant planet to help humanity with its overpopulation and lack of resources on the core worlds. In the game you will be playing in a top-down perspective and enjoy an awesome scifi theme. The neat thing about it is that you will be able to craft tons of things like other survival games, but we also include vehicles in the crafting. So you can not only drive a car but you can build them as well.
While you are surviving in the game you will also be enjoying the AI Overlord. It will make sure you are having an engaging time on your new planet. Gone are the days when you figure out survival and it is no longer part of the game-play. The Overlord will inject new events, missions, and general awesomeness into you game and keep it fresh and new for you.
OK, back to the content releases. Violent Sol Worlds is not only a scifi survival game, it has a huge, and rich, background story to it that you will experience in game. We are releasing this content via posts on ViolentSol.com every Friday starting now with the Avrio Corporation. We hope you enjoy the rich world we are building that you will be surviving in. Come read about the Avrio Corporation and keep up to date by following us on facebook.
Hello All, just go have fun with your kids and family. Game Development will be here tomorrow.
