Roadmap and Questions

I've released a trailer, a demo, and some marketing for R0: Concourse of Conquest. Now what? I suppose I should explain myself.

R0 began as an idea to expand on my novel's setting and characters by writing a 'previous generation' story. I detailed a lot of that journey in a post I made about my experiences and goals writing it. I've come a bit further since then, if it wasn't clear. Development has been strong, and even though there are many facets still in need of improvements, many beats still in need of writing, the game creeps ever closer to it's final product.

With all that in mind, I'm going to lay out some future plans. Let's start with the fact that public releases will only go up to chapter 12 in the main game. I have not yet decided if I plan on selling the game just yet; it's been an expensive venture, both in time and in money, and I won't lie, the pragmatic one within me is telling me I should get some tangible returns out of this and not just the satisfaction and happiness of creating a game people like. But is it worthy of a price tag? Maybe. Maybe not yet. We'll see when I get to the end. To be safe, though, restricting access to a demo that spans half the game seems like the right decision for now. If I can improve the quality to something even greater, I may be able to get the game on Steam and provide to an even broader audience. If not, then I'll likely make the game free later on down the line, but for now, 12 chapters feels right for something  that's still in a nebulous 'work in progress' state.

Currently, I've just about finished chapter 21, and there are plans for 28 main chapters, 7 side chapters, and however many challenge chapters I feel like putting in. These numbers may fluctuate as development proceeds, but the idea was always going to have four plot arcs that detail Laelynn's journey around Eirea. To my testers and supporters, I'll likely give a build that has around chapter 27 complete once I get there, but for the most part, currently, R0 is mostly feature complete. I've tinkered with it's mechanics a lot and I think I've finally struck that balance I want and all that's left is to ensure that statistical balance between the player and enemy is consistent throughout the rest of the main campaign. I'm, of course, going to ensure that the story is always the first and foremost thing I pay attention to, but I want to ensure that my playerbase is enjoying a good game as they engage in my brain child.

However, right now, I do work an ordinary job to help pay for expenses related to real life and this project, and coupled with the fact that I have a surprisingly active social life that I juggle between all this, my time for development is rather limited. I do take the opportunity to write wherever I can, such as during my breaks at work, or downtime at an outing, But my PC doesn't go wherever I go, unfortunately, so that limits the time I have to churn out maps, adjust stats, playtest, etc. In spite of this, I do have a plan; I'll have saved up enough money to go summer without working, and thus, I would like to release the full game by late spring/early summer 2023 at the earliest, late summer 2023 at the latest. Do not use these words as hard confirmation, of course, as anything can happen, and I am but one person. This is why I say would like to, as I'll be trying, but I cannot make any promises or guarantees.

Finally, some questions you may have:

• Where is your art and music coming from?
  
  • Any music not coming from SRPG Studio's RTP assets mostly come from the wonderful artists at dova.jp, which is a website that primarily features royalty free music. I frequent the website to listen to songs that can inspire and motivate me to work, and most of the best ones I've found I ended up using in R0. There are other songs that come from a couple of other royalty free artists too, of course, and you can find the entire list in the game's sound room.
  • My portrait art is coming from a good friend of mine, @Amraphenson, who I've known as a budding artist for years. His art may not be stellar, but back when I was first developing R0, he was a cheap, friendly option to getting personalized art into the game. I felt like having that was one of the most important things I needed for R0, being a game heavily focused on it's characters, and his cooperation has been a huge boon to me since I got my very first portrait, that of Laelynn. Since then, he's been motivating me to go further and further, and it's due to a lot of his efforts that I've been able to come as far as I have.
  • Any other custom graphics, such as the map tilesets, icons, and others, are either RTP assets, edits by other people, or made/edited by me.
• Have you considered getting better art and music?
  • I'm willing to admit that the weakest points of my project are probably my friend's art and the selection of music you've likely heard elsewhere before. I've definitely considered it, but that would require a much larger sum of money; more than I could hope to have right now. I'd like to finish the project first, and then think about that further down the line if there's enough demand for it. A 'remaster' of R0, so to speak. I could also gather the money via a fundraising program like kickstarter, but I don't think R0 is wide spread or perhaps even good enough for that kind of thing just yet.
• What are your other creations like?
  • As mentioned in my writing post, I've been writing a novel about St. Ronika, Laelynn's nation to rule, for a long while now, about ten years now, and I've been rewriting it over and over again, on and off, since. It's about a quarter done now, but it's often left behind by current interests and projects, something I want to leave for last as my sort of 'magnum opus' for when I have the most experience I can muster. It's also quite long; how much I have written now is about three harry potter books worth of text! Other than that, I'm also working on a visual novel about the struggles of being transgender, a game about raising pets and a couple of other small things I haven't decided to commit to yet.
• What are your plans for the future after R0?
  • I definitely need to pick up the pet raising simulator and the visual novel back up. Whether or not I'll have the money to pay for art assets of either, I don't know, but those aren't projects I'm willing to drop so easily. As for R0's future, there's always the potential to make more challenge maps and maybe even more scenarios as time develops. If it's popular enough, I could certainly continue updating it like that. A sequel though? Whew, we'd have to see. I definitely doubt it could take off that much but if enough people get into it, I could consider it. Laelynn's journey may end at the finale of R0, but that doesn't mean the troubles Eirea experiences are over.

If you've made it here to the end of this post, all I have left to say at this point is that I hope you enjoy R0 and watching it's development. I am a first time indie game dev so this is all pretty new to me but it's been rather fun, if stressful at times. Thank you for sticking with me to this point.