The free Open Beta is available now on Steam! Simply download the Infinium Strike demo off of the Infinium Strike Steam page, and you will receive the Open Beta. It includes basic and advanced interactive tutorials as well as the first 4 missions of the game! Storytelling, arcade mode, and multiple difficulty levels have been left out of the Beta. Feedback is welcome on our Infinium Strike Forums.
Read MoreWe are coming up to the halfway mark in our Kickstarter. The response has been very positive on the game and the demo! Our supporters have given us some great comments and feedback. With the closed beta starting next week, we expect more input and even feedback on the mission design and suggestions.
Read MoreCodex Worlds completed its first full year. Here are some fun facts about what we did in 2014.
Read MoreIt's time for an update on our futuristic tower defense game, Infinium Run.
Read MoreHow do we develop project teams within our overall 25-person team? There are many challenges in making and publishing a game and just as many challenges in managing a team of 25 people. This blog will give more insights on how our decentralized indie team works on both development and publishing projects. Here are some of details/challenges:
Read MoreIn Production Part 2, the topic of project management was written about in a theoretical manner with a bunch of definitions. In this blog, I will cover how we run things at Codex Worlds and why. My hope is other indies will benefit from this information.
Read MoreI think it is important to dive deeper into the concept of project management. It's not complicated: A project manager or producer manages resources and processes to optimized efficiency in development. How one goes about it is often up for debate, and being an indie developer, this further stretches the already thin resources available to manage game development.
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Any developer who has done a project of any significant size will tell you production issues are just as important as the game design, who is on the team, and even what is the total project budget. Developing a project is lot like learning a skill or sport ... You can always get better, and often, there are new ways to do things. Game production has always fascinated me because there are so many opinions on what to do, how to do it, and why one way is better than another. I certainly have come to some conclusions in my 20 years of producing games. In this series of blogs, you'll hear about some of my experiences.
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Making a Role Playing Game (RPG)
RPGs are one of the biggest, most immersive experiences in gaming. RPGs can be compared to reading a great book; there is a lot of time put into reading one and a great deal of deep, emotional satisfaction after completing it. Making an RPG is truly a huge undertaking and is a great case study in development.
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Game Design is similar to the design process of building a car. There are many systems to be developed and many stages of development. Taking this analogy further, cars have a body shell, primary parts, like the engine, fuel system, brake system, and electrical system, not to mention the interior, tires, stereo, paint, safety features ... You get the idea. The car we drive every day takes thousands of people coordinating for years to design, develop, and manufacture a product that does all these things, hopefully well. Of course, these systems need to be designed before the engineers can develop anything or manufacturing can meet specifications for functionality and quality.
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I started out writing these design blogs to offer some tips about game design, and I decided to tie that in with what has been going on with Codex Worlds. It is also important, however, to talk about what else goes on in pre-production in addition to design. In the past two blogs, I covered some production, project management, producing, and team evaluation points. Now onto some tactical game design tips ... the whole point of this blog. :)
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My last blog covered some of the higher level items worth thinking about during the game design pre-production phase. Resources, communication, team size, and individual skills all play into how our processes work, but that's not the end of the road. Here are some tips to help maximize efficiency:
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There are a ton of different ways to implement your game design. Some considerations may include team size, member experience, difficulty level of the project and resources. Of course, big publishers may have team sizes anywhere north of 50 or even 100 people, and their approach to design may necessarily be different than 10 indies doing a "garage" project. Having stated all that, it might be fun to look at how we are doing things at Codex Worlds.
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