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Actually yeah it's more common than you think. Developing a game is hard and if you do an early prototype and you dislike the gameplay or some other core game aspect then cutting your losses and moving on is the right move.Developing an early version and abandoning the game, is this how this works?
Might want to consider starting a patreon account.
Even big studio games do this all the time you just don't hear about it because it happens before the game gets publicly announced.
If anything it's actually pretty good and cool that a dev would make a game to some baseline playable level and then release it instead of just scrubbing the project entirely. I hope whatever project the dev moves onto next ends up even better for it.
- Jan 29, 2018
- 253
- 235
Abandoned from the word go.
Like a bull who ran into the steel wall.
Looking at the petreon this person got like 2 or 3 other projects in the works.
In all seriousness, put full work and focus on one project at a time instead of multiple projects. It not gonna work and everything will be abandoned.
Like a bull who ran into the steel wall.
Looking at the petreon this person got like 2 or 3 other projects in the works.
In all seriousness, put full work and focus on one project at a time instead of multiple projects. It not gonna work and everything will be abandoned.
WOAH, WOAH! f95 zone out here digging up my not-so-secret shame.
Dev here, in case you didn't notice my name.
Oh man, Gotta say I was shocked to log into f95 and see this in the "latest updates" page.
(Tl:dr: This is a backburnerd early project with lousy gameplay I'd like to revisit, using the art and characters and completely scrapping the old gameplay)
Okay, so story time. A rambling origin story of Cybershcerzo studios told out of order!
First off, to everyone shouting 'abandoned from the get-go" the OP of this thread may have just now discovered and uploaded it yesterday, but we made this *years* ago. (OH GOD IT"S BEEN YEARS. please excuse me while I go have an existential crisis in the corner.) So they uploaded a 3 year old demo I stopped working on and rightfully marked it abandoned, (though more on that in a bit) "Latest updates" is "newest uploads to the site" not "most recently created games"
This was our 2nd project as Cyber-Scherzo studios (and it *predates* our patreon, so that has nothing to do with why it tanked) and long story short this person right here hit the nail on the head:
I would love to revisit this one day and hopefully get the same artist back on the project. Because I like the monster designs and the world we were staring to build up. But I'm totally scrapping the gameplay loop. Right now the direction we're thinking is a small scale monster-taming RPG. (NO, not like pokemon. More of a sim/puzzle game kinda thing. ) But yeah it's been backburnered for a long time now and I don't know when we'll revisit it.
Our FIRST game is even more backburnered and has sort of never seen the light of day. (A playable build was never created.) It was a point and click adventure game designed to take the sorta style of Corruption of Champions (Which was the super popular shit at the time, and I wanted to upstage it), but with a dynamically generated visual overworld map for exploration and events. It was... a bit too ambitious for a first project.
There's a few scraps of evidence for that game out there.
Wanna see one?
Check this recent tweet with a new character redesign by Bard-Bot:
See that design marked with "old" in the corner of the 2nd pic? Yeah, I'd commissioned the design from them for "mystery first game project that never got off the ground." Heh, I dunno how Bard feels about me getting a couple of pretty awesome character designs from them and then just kinda sitting on them for 4 years. Kinda embarrassed to talk to them now. But cool that managed to recycle the core design into a new character.
So I had two kinda failing hentai game prototypes I'd sunk a good deal of time and money into. I still really wanted to do this, but I decided to go back to the drawing board and make the LEAST ambitious game I could, that I could still be proud of. So I set out to make a short but sweet visual novel. And oh nice I actually managed to get a project off the ground and released! https://f95zone.to/threads/the-litt...treasure-ep1-v1-0-cyberscherzo-studios.14254/
So, I set out to make a 2nd one! I started a patreon to turn that little VN into an ongoing series. And THAT one got stuck in development hell like the first two games I tried to make. Partially because the artist of the first one had like 4 other projects and couldn't commit to working more on mine, and then the next 2-3 artists I tried to hire kinda washed out. I should have just asked Phall to do it but at the time I was still thinking I could try to get Mana Maze done on the side.
Anyway I managed to hire two new artists eventually, but they had drastically different artstyles. So instead of putting them both on the same project, I started another visual novel episode. Because reasons the "3rd" episode managed to get done waaaaaaaaay before the 2nd one I started: https://f95zone.to/threads/the-litt...-proposition-v1-5-cyberscherzo-studios.35215/
I got really carried away on the pong minigame in that other episode so I've been working on turning that into a full fledged, full length standalone game. I wanted a SFW game I can point to when my family asks what I'm doing with my life. Also I want to try to get it on the Switch. For now, It's up on steam. Early Access. Busting my butt to get the arcade mode on it done before the steam summer sale starts. No I can't tell you when the steam summer sale is because NDAs.
The "2nd" episode of The Little Black Bestiary, staring the fairy, is still in development and moving forward slowly. But it's still moving. Teams working on art and writing for it and I'm making more minigames nobody asked for to cram into it.
In the past couple years since I started these; I've moved on from game maker to Unity; and I have been picking up more skills as a game dev. (Game Maker still beats the pants off of Unity at a lot of things TBH, but Unity is better for the specific things I want to do) I'm actually starting to pick up enough confidence in my skills to revisit one of those two "abandoned" projects. But ONLY after I finish this current episode of the Little Black Bestiary we're working on, and I get Takkyu Tournament out of Early Access. (So I can SHRINK my backlog of hiatus projects instead of growing it.)
And there you have it, the story of my game dev career these past 3 years.
Dev here, in case you didn't notice my name.
Oh man, Gotta say I was shocked to log into f95 and see this in the "latest updates" page.
(Tl:dr: This is a backburnerd early project with lousy gameplay I'd like to revisit, using the art and characters and completely scrapping the old gameplay)
Okay, so story time. A rambling origin story of Cybershcerzo studios told out of order!
First off, to everyone shouting 'abandoned from the get-go" the OP of this thread may have just now discovered and uploaded it yesterday, but we made this *years* ago. (OH GOD IT"S BEEN YEARS. please excuse me while I go have an existential crisis in the corner.) So they uploaded a 3 year old demo I stopped working on and rightfully marked it abandoned, (though more on that in a bit) "Latest updates" is "newest uploads to the site" not "most recently created games"
This was our 2nd project as Cyber-Scherzo studios (and it *predates* our patreon, so that has nothing to do with why it tanked) and long story short this person right here hit the nail on the head:
I was doing Phall's artwork a disservice with my shitty pac-man clone. I had started the project thinking lewd pacman, with both victory AND 'game over' porn when you get the monsters or the monsters get you was a winning idea. Heck, maybe it still is, but the actual gameplay just wasn't gelling together. Played some actual pac-man, realized the movement system is deceptively unique even if that part didn't stick in my memory. Just feels bad with RPG style movement. And... I really want to make something that's just... better than porn CGs gated behind a crappy game or I'm not much better than those $1 hentai puzzle shovelware devs you see on steam nowadays. it was supposed to be a quick easy project and it just... wasn't.
I would love to revisit this one day and hopefully get the same artist back on the project. Because I like the monster designs and the world we were staring to build up. But I'm totally scrapping the gameplay loop. Right now the direction we're thinking is a small scale monster-taming RPG. (NO, not like pokemon. More of a sim/puzzle game kinda thing. ) But yeah it's been backburnered for a long time now and I don't know when we'll revisit it.
Our FIRST game is even more backburnered and has sort of never seen the light of day. (A playable build was never created.) It was a point and click adventure game designed to take the sorta style of Corruption of Champions (Which was the super popular shit at the time, and I wanted to upstage it), but with a dynamically generated visual overworld map for exploration and events. It was... a bit too ambitious for a first project.
There's a few scraps of evidence for that game out there.
Wanna see one?
Check this recent tweet with a new character redesign by Bard-Bot:
You must be registered to see the links
See that design marked with "old" in the corner of the 2nd pic? Yeah, I'd commissioned the design from them for "mystery first game project that never got off the ground." Heh, I dunno how Bard feels about me getting a couple of pretty awesome character designs from them and then just kinda sitting on them for 4 years. Kinda embarrassed to talk to them now. But cool that managed to recycle the core design into a new character.
So I had two kinda failing hentai game prototypes I'd sunk a good deal of time and money into. I still really wanted to do this, but I decided to go back to the drawing board and make the LEAST ambitious game I could, that I could still be proud of. So I set out to make a short but sweet visual novel. And oh nice I actually managed to get a project off the ground and released! https://f95zone.to/threads/the-litt...treasure-ep1-v1-0-cyberscherzo-studios.14254/
So, I set out to make a 2nd one! I started a patreon to turn that little VN into an ongoing series. And THAT one got stuck in development hell like the first two games I tried to make. Partially because the artist of the first one had like 4 other projects and couldn't commit to working more on mine, and then the next 2-3 artists I tried to hire kinda washed out. I should have just asked Phall to do it but at the time I was still thinking I could try to get Mana Maze done on the side.
Anyway I managed to hire two new artists eventually, but they had drastically different artstyles. So instead of putting them both on the same project, I started another visual novel episode. Because reasons the "3rd" episode managed to get done waaaaaaaaay before the 2nd one I started: https://f95zone.to/threads/the-litt...-proposition-v1-5-cyberscherzo-studios.35215/
I got really carried away on the pong minigame in that other episode so I've been working on turning that into a full fledged, full length standalone game. I wanted a SFW game I can point to when my family asks what I'm doing with my life. Also I want to try to get it on the Switch. For now, It's up on steam. Early Access. Busting my butt to get the arcade mode on it done before the steam summer sale starts. No I can't tell you when the steam summer sale is because NDAs.
The "2nd" episode of The Little Black Bestiary, staring the fairy, is still in development and moving forward slowly. But it's still moving. Teams working on art and writing for it and I'm making more minigames nobody asked for to cram into it.
In the past couple years since I started these; I've moved on from game maker to Unity; and I have been picking up more skills as a game dev. (Game Maker still beats the pants off of Unity at a lot of things TBH, but Unity is better for the specific things I want to do) I'm actually starting to pick up enough confidence in my skills to revisit one of those two "abandoned" projects. But ONLY after I finish this current episode of the Little Black Bestiary we're working on, and I get Takkyu Tournament out of Early Access. (So I can SHRINK my backlog of hiatus projects instead of growing it.)
And there you have it, the story of my game dev career these past 3 years.
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- Feb 28, 2018
- 1,303
- 860
Ah yeah,coding a game isn't really that easy... thinking how things would continue running until to how it ends and the way to get there is even more of a headache....
Don't take what the others said personally.... It's a pity but if you found an easier and much more comfortable way to do things... don't mind what others say.... Well they wouldn't even comment here unless they are just purely trolling or just feels bad that this is abandoned.... For I too just see this game had potentials... Dunno why, kinda like it the first time I saw it.
P.S. Still hoping you can make this game full xD
Also what other games did that Phall guy do?
- Nov 8, 2019
- 287
- 131
I hope if you guys work on this again you will post on this page that you when make a new thread.
I really hope that does not mean anything like the games Puzzle combat or card collector bejeweled spawn games
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