Cogmind is here!
Pre-Alpha development has officially come to an end with the release of our first Alpha version over on the website. Thank you for your patience and support through the nearly two years that this blog has been sharing progress updates on the game. It’s been a long journey, and we’re not done yet, but Cogmind has finally reached a state worthy of release as we work towards 1.0 in the open.
Welcome to Alpha!
To introduce you to the awesomeness inside, we’ve put together an epic trailer that you’re going to want to fullscreen and watch in HD for maximum roguelike (wouldn’t hurt to turn up the volume, either =p):
Trailer music by Alex Yoder.
Please help spread the word by sharing the trailer and/or Cogmind site with anyone who might be interested, be they friends and family or online communities. The more support we can rally at this stage, the better the final game will be! Thank you!
Future of the Dev Blog
For those of you who have enjoyed reading about the implementation of Cogmind’s features and roguelike development in general, know that the dev blog will continue to serve that function. Game news updates and release announcements, on the other hand, will be concentrated on the appropriate forum board.
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/r/Cogmind
Indie DB
23 Comments
Congratulations and good luck!
I was viewer #2, by the way. :D
Thanks, and awesome--that makes you the real #1 because by YouTube counting #1 was me =p
hahahaha that’s brilliant! Do I win a prize? :P
A text signature you can copy anywhere you like :D
“For I am REIVER, OFFICIAL FIRST VIEWER OF COGMIND’S ALPHA TRAILER.”
Fantastic!
:P
And, your first youtube fan video appears!
http://youtu.be/fF9-xnlwx6s
Absolutely the first! That was fast. Thanks and from watching it’s apparent you have totally been both closely following Cogmind and played the 7DRL before ;)
After taxes, the 30$ transformed into 39$, making it the same price as The Witcher 3 for me. Having bought both, I can already say that Cogmind has a much better performance on my PC! :)
I’ll take better performance, and I’ll bet by the time it’s over you’ll get more replay value, too ;)
(And about the price: Ouch, Europe and its VAT…)
Ehhrm, I must say -- I’m a Roguebasin lurker who occasionally ends up dappling with 7DRL content and Cogmind, by how damned beautiful it looks and practically raising the bar for animating ASCII graphics, put it on my list and that I was very ready to lay that cash down like some bass and get a copy of the game seeing how fun it might be too.
I did not, however, expect the 30-dollar price tag, especially since we don’t exactly get much outside of having a random item named after you…
I mean, feel free to refute my sentiments and justify the entry price but… the hype burned me at the tip of the rope…
I don’t really want to argue about this topic because I’ve already gone through it elsewhere, except to say that players already in the game are saying it’s worth it, and in other price discussions phrases like huge budget and niche audience were thrown around. (Also, I announced the price on the blog a couple months ago, too, but not everyone reads everything, I know.)
If it’s any consolation, the final price of the game at 1.0 is likely to be $20, and you can get alpha access for that price right now by sharing tier two with two friends, if you know anyone into roguelikes.
The market for this kind of game is simply too small to do the FTL/DoD thing where you sell it dirt cheap and make up for it with massive volume. Cogmind is very unlikely to move that many units, regardless of price. Niche audiences pay more for niche games, that’s simply the way it has to be for quality niche games to be created. See: Atlus.
If we can’t really rely on support from a huge player base, and the niche audience can’t pick up the slack and support Cogmind enough that it can make back the rather large financial investment, there simply can’t be more games like it. And trust me, I promise you there’s literally nothing out there like it.
Okay, sorry, looks like I started arguing, anyway =p
In any case, hopefully you’ll join us at some point!
I’ll buy a copy as soon as I can get a hold of the money. I was wondering if/when you might be resuming work on X@Com? Maybe making use of what you’ve learned developing Cogmind?
Thanks :D. The original intention was to pick up X@COM again immediately once Cogmind is complete, which is taking longer than planned mostly because I significantly expanded the scope of the game.
Without a doubt I will eventually resume X@COM (under a different name), but if Cogmind is successful I think it would make more sense from both a business and community standpoint to do a sequel first before moving on to X@COM. A sequel would naturally take much less time to produce. We’ll evaluate the situation early next year and see.
And yes, X@COM will be absorbing all the cool new features and engine advances made during Cogmind!
How.. great alpha website! Good luck!
I will probably wait till version 1.0 as I have too many games / side projects under my teeth now. Is the dev blog going to still be regularly updated?
As for X@Com… there is no excuse for not having neat automatic HWP with all kinds of mounted weapons ^_^
Hey nullzero! Thanks!
There’s a dev blog notice at the bottom of this post. While it will continue for sure, at this point I’m guessing it will be updated somewhat less frequently than before, since I have so many other things to do with a community and all…
About the HWP, we could even call it “The Cogmind” :D
If not name it a HWP, then a secret mission where a rogue artificially intelligence gets hold of the xcom base and starts replicating cogminds in the workshop muhahah!
Either that or I’m seeing too much Avengers ^_^
Sounds like a potential scenario! (In fact, even more so than anyone realizes because no one really knows the Cogmind story yet…)
On the technical front, honestly X@COM will be so moddable that one could easily do that. In fact, a mission like that could be handled via modding even in that project’s current state…
I for one would not mind at all if more of the community-related stuff kept flowing through the blog, even if you flagged it explicitly or the like.
I may sometimes when it relates to development in some way, or, as you say, some explanations/descriptions meant mostly for the community could come via the blog, though the intent is to keep this as a more pure “development” blog, not meant for announcements and the like.
That’s reasonable; the blog could be all too easily flooded with ‘fixed a bug where the Cogmind explodes if you bump into a western wall’ type patches. ;)
That said, commenting on and tracking changes made to the game as it continues is part of development, so do note the interesting ones!
Yep, the main issue is coming up with meaty enough topics that are also interesting and in which I can make some kind of bigger point.
I wanted to play this game the first time I caught a glimpse of it. Beautifully designed! Didn’t know much about it but after playing for about a day I’m hooked. Great to look at and extremely fun to play. You’ve really out done yourself.
Thank you, Asa7!
A majority of the current players have been following for some time awaiting release, so it’s nice to know that even now Cogmind is attracting an audience outside the regular fan base. This will be really helpful when we get further in development and finally expand Cogmind’s exposure to a broader audience.
Enjoy, and prepare for Cogmind to become an even greater game throughout the year! I’m still working on lots of post-launch essentials here, but once I finally make it through that list, development will be on track full speed ahead once again.