When Cogmind was rebooted in mid-2013, the intent was that it would be a relatively quick production that would take “about a year” to finish. As we approach the two-year mark, it’s looking like an accurate forecast would have been more than twice that.
Of course, the original plan was to simply make “a polished version of the 7DRL, with some new mechanics.” And that would’ve taken about a year. But it turns out the project had so much potential that it seemed like a wasted opportunity to not expand it further. Thus we end up with a huge number of assets, significantly expanded mechanics, and a bigger world and story to go with it.
Not to offer these up as excuses--I wouldn’t have it any other way! As one follower mentioned earlier this year: “I’m away from Twitter for half a year and you turn Cogmind from something amazing into something I can’t describe!” Drawbacks of having an indescribable game aside, that’s a good summary of exactly why it’s been worth the additional investment =p.
Alpha Access
Development could go on for much longer, but the desire to steer clear of feature creep gets stronger with every passing month. So it’s about time to release this thing into the wild.
Cogmind Alpha Access is essentially a paid early access program scheduled to launch in May.
Setting that deadline has also had the positive side-effect of accelerating development beyond full time (we’re deep in overtime territory now). At the beginning of January I drafted a three-month development plan leading up to the alpha launch, and that plan remained right on schedule except when we ventured outside my familiar territory and into tileset land, mostly due to handling the strong response from pixel artists looking to join the project.
For three months I’ve worked day and night to make the intended April launch despite all the additional tileset-related work, and while we could theoretically still be ready to release by late April, I should probably stop developing at breakneck speed to avoid a complete burnout.
The release is still too far away to set a specific date, which probably won’t be announced until shortly before launch. Regardless, now that there’s a feature freeze in place it’s only a matter of (finite) time before we launch. Much of what’s left to do is peripheral business and marketing nonsense rather than actual game development.
Release State
Just because there’s a feature freeze doesn’t mean the game is complete--the freeze is temporary so we can get this thing out the door in a tested, playable state.
As an alpha launch the game is naturally still a ways from its intended final state. That said, the core experience is there and it’s plenty fun, so you’ll without a doubt be getting something you can enjoy immediately.
All the core mechanics are complete, and you can salvage parts, engage in combat (or avoid it) with help from hundreds of unique components, hack multiple types of machines, and interact with dozens of robots while exploring the “main areas” of the world and a couple of the early branches.
Still to add are environmental sound/music, many more “branch” maps, bosses, more story elements, fluff, and NPCs, plus a few other features that aren’t required but will improve balance and/or the overall experience.
Progress has been reported intermittently throughout the development process, on the website FAQ. The pre-alpha progress chart and roadmap have been replaced by new ones which will continue to receive updates as development continues, as before.
Cogmind’s state for alpha release.
A follow-up post after this one will go into even more detail regarding the state of the game and how it will evolve in future months. (Edit: Post is now up.)
Supporter Benefits
Back to Alpha Access: The obvious primary benefit is access to all alpha release builds of the game, including everything up to 1.0 and beyond, forever. While enjoying the game you can also join us in the forums (not open yet) to help improve and shape its future.
Assuming Cogmind eventually finds its way on to Steam, as currently planned, you’ll also be the first to have access to the game on that platform (via private beta testing before it goes public). In that case, everyone in Alpha Access will receive a Steam key.
Your name (or a name of your choosing) will also appear in the game, but not just anywhere…
Item/Art Collecting
Introducing the ASCII Art Gallery and Item Compendium! The game menu Credits page now includes access to a new area where you can browse the many hundreds of pieces of ASCII art from the game. But, you can only view art for those items you’ve discovered so far. Art and names for items never seen before are listed as “unknown.”
The art gallery also keeps track of an interesting piece of meta info: the total number of times you’ve attached an individual part across all your plays combined. So there’s a reason to open it other than just to look at art.
Where do supporters come in?
Everyone* who joins the Alpha Access program is randomly assigned their own unique personal item from among Cogmind’s huge selection. One supporter per item. Your name (or a name of your choosing) is then forever listed with that item in the gallery (you can of course opt out of this if you prefer). Consider this “adopt a component drive” a chance to be immortalized in roguelike history :D.
I wonder who will get Matter, the most basic and common item in the game, or any of the many rare items that could take a while to discover. Some of you may embark on a “personal quest” to find your item ;). Or perhaps you could enlist help from others…
ASCII Art Gallery and item discovery records (click for full size). As an example I added in names left by some of the blog’s more frequent commenters :D. Unshown is some descriptive text telling you which item is yours (unless you haven’t found it yet) and an indicator of the total percentage of the game’s items you’ve discovered so far.
*Personal items are assigned randomly on a first come first serve basis. If all available items are taken by previous supporters, your name will be added to a waiting list and assigned in order as new items are added to the game, though there is no guarantee that new supporters will have a chance for assignment beyond the existing set of items. If we really have so many supporters that becomes an issue (there are a lot of items), I’ll add a separate scrollable list of every supporter. (I may add that anyway, but it’s not in there yet.)
T-Shirts
Alpha supporters who, like me, really want a Cogmind T-shirt also have that option by adding the cost of the shirt and shipping (I’m not looking to make money on the shirts).
I went through a lot of potential design concepts, and most of what represents Cogmind doesn’t work too well on a shirt. In the end I settled on two main designs, the title logo and a (previously unshown) Heavy Battle Rifle in ASCII. I ordered a few samples to make sure the ASCII details would come out alright. They sure did:
Cogmind T-shirt Samples! (click for full size)
Aw yeah, I finally got me a Cogmind shirt--so official :D
Now that I know how this company’s process works and the quality of what they can produce, I may add another design or two later on. (And no, I didn’t try green because high-contrast saturated green doesn’t work so well with ink printing.)
Price and Distribution
The Alpha Access price is set at $30. With a T-shirt (mentioned in the benefits section above) it’s $60, which includes the cost of the shirt, printing, handling fees, and international shipping anywhere. It’s not the absolute cheapest shirt available, but I figure that if much of the fee is the base cost for printing anyway, adding a little extra for better quality is worth it.
Alpha Access sales will only be processed through the Cogmind website. This is better since I can receive a much bigger cut than going through a value-added distributor like Steam. It also helps us ease into sales and gradually scale up, rather than jumping in the deep end with more chances to screw something up on the business side of things.
The price of the final game will be lower, but you’ll have to wait, and will miss out on the other benefits. There is no set time limit on Alpha Access availability--it depends on reception and the pace of subsequent development. The details are also subject to change since I haven’t yet set up the business side of things. Final details will be announced on launch. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Money Matters
In a perfect world we could all sit around and make and play games all day :D. In the real world (or my world at least), making Cogmind a reality has required that it be my full time job for more than a year now. Otherwise it would simply never see completion (unless 2030 is soon enough to be considered outside the figurative realm of “never”). To clarify, I’m not a young carefree kid anymore--I have a family to care for, lots of bills to pay, and nearly zero free time outside work and other responsibilities. Not to put down any carefree devs out there spending their copious spare time making free games! I did that for a decade myself, and my advice to them is to do their best to take advantage of that opportunity!
I felt that it’s worth it at this transitionary period in my life to take a shot at making something grand, with the hope that the investment could be recovered and possibly fund “other grand schemes” ;). Even if it doesn’t turn out that way, we still get a grand game out of the deal, eh? :D
Cogmind in particular has cost over US$ 25,000 to develop, and I expect total costs could reach $45k or more by the time it’s complete. For those of you unfamiliar with expense budgets behind indie games similar in scope to Cogmind, this is actually a very modest amount. (There will be a detailed budget breakdown at or after we reach 1.0, when such data will be more meaningful.) Based on sales potential, recovering that investment is quite possible. Many will agree Cogmind is a unique quality game and has a good chance at being fairly popular. In any case, with enough support during Alpha Access we can continue to make this game better, and hopefully lead to more like it in the future!
Post-Alpha
We should probably reach 1.0 some time this year, though the pace of development will depend on Alpha Access reception and feedback.
I may put Cogmind on Steam Greenlight around or shortly after the Alpha Access launch, just to begin some community interaction over there and get the voting started. And because by then we’ll also have our first trailer :D.
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26 Comments
I wish you the best of luck and I can see why you’re charging the amount you’re charging but I have to say, I count myself as a medium to large fan of cogmind (if I played the 7drl version a lot more to this day I would say “large”) and I’m in two minds about whether to go in for the alpha.
Another rl dev I talked to thought it was a lot for an alpha too. He (who shall remain nameless) said it was a lot for an “indie ascii game”. He has written ASCII games himself so it’s not that he is really prejudiced against ASCII; he just feels that less money is needed because you don’t need an artist. That doesn’t count as a factor in my mind but perhaps that’s because I’m a dev who does his own art.
I hope you at least get back the money you spent developing the game. I can only think about how much work you’ve put in. I get exhausted enough working on a rl game for one week a year. I just think that once you get on steam the general unwashed masses will be pretty critical of whatever lower-than-30 price you put on it.
Although I have the business savvy of a confused mouse I think that not putting the game in bundles is the way to go for max profits, and find some other way to get publicity. Also a good idea would be a solemn promise from you that the game would not go in a bundle for X amount of time following launch, maybe even a promise that the game won’t go more than the launch discount percentage of for X months too. It’s all about getting people to buy at launch for the price with launch discount, knowing that it won’t be cheaper for at least 6m or a year.
Yeah, pricing is a bit of a tough one in this case, because it’s a highly polished game, but it’s not common for an ASCII game to charge. That said, Cogmind does so many things that no ASCII game has done before, so there will be plenty of value to make it worth more.
It doesn’t help that I haven’t shown any videos yet, meaning almost no one has seen the full production value of the game. This will change before alpha launch when we have a trailer and you can actually hear Cogmind in combination with the visuals. Sound effects make up a huge part of the experience, are something almost no traditional roguelike has or does well, and are not free. Cogmind has 900 sound effects (and counting); most indie games might have maybe 100-200 at most. As an example, ToME4 has ~200. (So far sound design has also required a total of about a month of full-time development, not to mention the acquisition expenses.)
And what’s this about not needing art? I’ve already paid two artists for their ongoing work on Cogmind’s tileset, six weeks of full-time work went into designing the weapon particle effects and GUI animations, two weeks were spent on scalable fonts in three different styles, and the hundreds of ASCII art pieces took another several weeks. Altogether that’s quite an investment!
Regarding the idea that “less money is needed,” I completely agree. Certainly less money is needed than your average indie game, which is why Cogmind has cost “only” $25k so far. A similarly scoped non-ASCII game would have a much bigger budget (or simply not have the same scope, period).
I’m not banking on the alpha having a massive uptake, though I think it will serve its purpose. For now the potential audience for Cogmind is and will remain small, which might change come the broader release, but until then I’ll continue to believe it’s a fairly niche game, and price it as such. Niche games are hurt by too low a price, and simply not sustainable. I hope to continue developing Cogmind and more games in the future, and doing so costs what it costs.
So yeah I won’t be dropping it to $5 after alpha. More like $15. The unwashed masses on Steam are spoiled and I don’t plan on participating in the race to the bottom where development of niche games is no longer profitable. Sure Cogmind could be sold for less--I could also spend half the time I do on it and leave it half-complete like much of the other crap flooding Steam (even that by major developers…). Nope.
As you say, bundles are a bad idea, at least at first. You can always lower the price of a game, but once you’ve sold it for pennies or a few dollars, it’s not so easy to justify raising the price. And then you’re stuck with… pennies. There are plenty of other avenues for publicity; we’ll see what works as we progress through alpha, though at this point Cogmind already has a fairly strong core audience from two years of publishing development details.
Good point about the price promise. I’ll add that to my notes for the official launch. Sure it will get cheaper over time to meet the price tolerance of players at the lower end, but those players can wait. If anything, know that it could be six months or more after the alpha launch before anyone not in early access can play. I recently drafted a day by day long-term development roadmap and it looks like it will be impossible to even finish what I want to do for 1.0 any time before November, not to mention other optional content and suggestions by alpha participants we can add if enough people support the game.
Thanks for the input! We’ll see how it works out.
I’ve been lurking and following the development of this for a long time. The price point seems fair to me, and I’m confident that the final product will be more than worth it, based off all the awesome things that have been shared through the developer blogs. I’ve spent more on “AAA” titles that I stopped playing after a month or two. A really good roguelike would last far longer.
Hello long-time lurker! :D
I do believe the price point is pretty similar to what you see for alpha access on niche Kickstarters, which is essentially why I set it there. And of course I can agree with your sentiment on value--a good roguelike will trump many AAA titles. As such, I can see Cogmind being played for a long time to come, and a game that will always be worth coming back to.
I do, however, want to make sure that everyone knows what they’re getting should they join alpha, so the next post will go into more detail about the state of the game and its features, while some future pre-launch posts will talk more about the actual game world and what it’s like, since we haven’t covered that yet and it’s a bit different from your average dungeon romp roguelike (in good ways, I believe, but it’s worth warning those who are fixated on tradition).
Hello long-time developer. :D
I’m not an expert on roguelikes by any means, but I’ve played a couple and enjoyed them. Then I stumbled on Cogmind and went :O
Looking forward to your next post(s), and rest assured you’ve got random promoters saying “Hey, ever heard of this game?” to friends.
“Then I stumbled on Cogmind and went :O”
That seems to be the general reaction. I’m counting on it :)
I do hope we get more word of mouth promotion going through alpha. Early on it was more difficult to do so since all I had running was the blog which just showed random features here and there, then it got easier to show off the game as a whole when I added the actual website with summary and screenshots in November 2014, and pretty soon it will get even easier because we’ll have a trailer :D
I want the trailer to make everyone go :o :O :@
Count me in for the Alpha launch. Although not for the t-shirt (I can’t justify myself spending 30$ on a t-shirt), but that’s ok.
Your detailed blog posts and regular twitter presence helped me see the quality and quantity of work you’re investing on Cogmind, making it an impulse buy for me, even if the price is above my usual impulse buy (can I use the impulse buy expression if the game isn’t out yet and I’m just planning to buy it? :)).
I hope the game becomes profitable before leaving alpha, although I guess it’s more realistic to expect it only when it’s released on STEAM (btw, wise choice not to use STEAM’s EA program).
I’d be surprised (in a very pleasant way, of course =p) if alpha sales alone can recover costs up this point. As you say, it’s much more likely to happen once we have wider distribution via Steam, and I’m fine with that as part of the long-term plan.
I don’t see a need for Steam EA at this point--there are a lot of negatives and the game isn’t really ready for a mainstream audience yet, anyway. Then of course I’d also have to hand over to Valve 30% of the revenue from long-time fans who are going to buy no matter where the game is sold, which would be kinda stupid…
I have heard from several people who attempted to “impulse buy” buy Cogmind as soon as they saw some of the gifs, but couldn’t find a link to do so--so I guess that feeling can extend until such a link does appear ;)
While I really wanted to support on day one I think I will need to wait until the steam release, the prince isn’t really a problem since I think the game will be great, but paying taxes and converting currencies really add up making have to pay for anything outside of steam being really expensive for me, so I will have to wait even more T.T
also, did I misunderstood or the game doesn’t have sounds/music yet?
i wish all the luck and success for you and cogmind
Thanks for the support. Early access can’t be for everyone for various reasons, and in this case offering through Steam/EA right away would be an overall negative. Sorry about that!
There is no music yet, but sound effects are almost fully implemented. There are only a couple secondary features missing sound, but those are definitely in the minority. The next post will explain in detail all the features currently available.
Oof. The Kickstarter approach to alpha access… I can understand it, and it’s not silly, but twice a reasonably expensive retail pushes it into pain territory. It’s worth noting that Dungeons of Dredmor made its way into filthy lucre asking for USD$10, or thereabouts.
I guess it feels hard to sell a game that is ones precious baby for ‘so little’, but…
I think it’s also a question of audience--Dungeons of Dredmor has a much broader potential audience than Cogmind. If I was making a game like Dredmor I’d set the price around $10, too.
Doing it this way gives those who really want to support the game and what I do (and have been doing for many years) a way to do that, while keeping the number of players from exploding while we work through alpha. I’m more into interacting with a reasonably manageable number of close participants than a ton of people unfamiliar with the game’s origins and prior development who would buy it on a whim.
With a game like Cogmind, I don’t believe that offering alpha access at a low price would be a net benefit, primarily because the final number of players even after 1.0 could end up on the low side (when looking at the bigger picture).
In short, I doubt Cogmind could ever reach the same number of players that Dredmor can, simply due to the less mainstream appeal.
>>I think it’s also a question of audience--Dungeons of Dredmor has a much broader potential audience than Cogmind. If I was making a game like Dredmor I’d set the price around $10, too.
I think you’ve got this completely backwards. IMO, if your target audience is fans of ASCII games, you’ll be lucky to break even. I’m not a fan of ASCII games, I’m a fan of turn-based strategy games, and to a lesser extent, roguelikes, yet here I am. $30 might work for the Alpha since I guess it doesn’t really matter how many people buy into the Alpha, but please tell me your release price will be $10.
On platforms like Steam you’re not marketing your game to existing fans of a niche genre, you’re marketing it to everyone who plays computer games. Set your pricepoint wisely and you’ll have people paying for Cogmind who will *never actually play it*. Cast the net wide.
Oops, bit of a misunderstanding there: My comment about $10 is referring specifically to the alpha release, as in if it were a game like Dredmor, or any number of other more mainstream games with already wide appeal, I would price alpha access at $10 (or even lower).
So I agree with you. $30 works precisely because the goal of alpha is not to recover costs, it’s more of a KS-type model in which a smaller group of players gets to participate in and influence the remainder of development. This is probably a bigger deal than I’ve implied so far, but being able to play the game and give feedback on its various aspects will lead to changes that a majority of alpha participants enjoy more, giving it a rather meaningful “I am a part of this” feel.
The future Steam price will be much lower, but Steam access probably won’t be available until the end of the year at the earliest. Maybe even 2016.
Well, I’ll have to give it some thought. I’d love nothing more than to contribute, both in finances and suggestions, but in terms of discretionary spending, $30USD is a modest dinner for my wife and I at a tasty restaurant.
Not sure how enthused she’d be on my spending that on an “ASCII game”, even if she’s a gamer in the broader sense. ;)
I have next to zero budget for discretionary items myself (being super frugal to the point of annoying my wife for all eternity, apparently), so very much understood! If anything you can always wait until it’s closer to the “dinner for one” price instead of “dinner with wife” price, then she doesn’t have to “contribute” ;)
Are you saying the price will be dropping closer to release, or that the price will drop once it’s released?
I don’t plan to change the alpha access price before the full 1.0 launch. The closer we get to that launch, I’ll just make it clear on the purchase page that interested players can hold off a bit to get the game cheaper if they’d like to.
Alpha access is really meant for those players who will jump on the opportunity within the first few months and be a part of development over the next six months or more--the price will not fluctuate with deals or discounts or anything like that. This is necessary to preserve the meaning of the benefits for those who decide to join early. At this stage the model is designed to be exclusive rather than inclusive. It’s not the official launch of the game, after all, and we don’t need a massive influx of players this early. I’ll be content with a smaller number of dedicated fans.
Just making sure.
Well, you’ve certainly managed the ‘exclusive’ bit, sure enough. At this point all I can do is wish you luck, I’m afraid…
Sorry about that. But at least release won’t mean the dev blog will be discontinued or anything like that. There are plenty more topics to cover and posts will continue as usual. I appreciate that you’re interested enough to comment and offer input or ask questions related to this “free” part of development (which honestly is quite an investment in itself--to date 16.4% of Cogmind dev time has been spent writing blog posts and interacting with followers!).
Haha, don’t think I didn’t spot my name there. I think you mentioned the art gallery once before and it made me sit up and take note then too -- I love such things. Seeing it in action, yep, that makes me grin. I love having stuff to hunt for in games, but I prefer to keep permanent progression that actually improves your future characters out of ‘classic(-ish)’ roguelikes. This is, I think, a great middleground!
As for the alpha, yep, the price seems fair, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to go in for it right away. It is, unfortunately, a lot for me personally to put down all at once, so it might have to wait awhile, we’ll see. Either way I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this thing!
Oh I was hoping you’d notice your name in there :D. Thanks for often dropping by to comment!
A couple months back I suddenly had the idea for an art gallery, and decided it was something worth adding immediately--it even happens to tie in well as an alpha access reward. I did mentioned it in passing at some point before, though this is the first time I’ve shown it in action. It does have that nice long-term “collection” appeal that a lot of players are interested in, but doesn’t affect gameplay in any way, which I would certainly want to avoid.
Another similar “meta” idea I’ve had is to go further than just give you post-game stats (of which there are hundreds) for a single playthrough, adding another system that tracks your stats through multiple playthroughs to show your highs/lows/trends/etc. I will be revisiting the whole morgue file system at some point with an eye towards improvements like that.
Regarding alpha, don’t burden yourself. Everyone will have a chance to get it eventually at a price that suits them, it’s just a matter of time. Of course we’d love to have you if you can make it happen earlier :)
I can see why you would put the alpha access to $30. ADOM resurrection indiegogo got ~$90K and the money has already been spent, although the creator has an artist, composer and second programmer. The alpha/prerelease access for ADOM is also around $30. I can see the development cost of Cogmind going over 50K before launch. I’m not sure yet if I will be buying into the alpha. Cogmind Is already one of the more interesting looking games this year so I might give up some other releases in favor of this game. I hope you will get some publicity for the greenlight, if the system is still being used then. I have no idea how well-known this game is ATM.
There are quite a few expenses involved, for sure. So far outsourcing expenses include two artists and a lawyer, and later on a composer on top of that. Of course I do all of the programming and a lot of the art and sound design myself, but I have to pay myself *something*! Though unfortunately it’s far less than I can make with a normal job, and less than I pay contractors :/
You can wait until you see videos before deciding whether to join or not, that and other online materials that will start popping up following release--then you can make a more informed decision and see if it’s worth it :)
Cogmind is actually fairly well known as far as niche indie games go, but the already small community is fragmented so it’s difficult to see. I post development news to a number of locations, each of which has a separate following. Before long we’ll have forums where we can centralize player interaction during alpha, and where I’ll be posting news/development/release updates that are too small for the dev blog.
We’ve even gotten occasional coverage in RPS (including a mention among the best upcoming PC games of 2015), so Cogmind is certainly not an unknown.
I should add that I’m glad you understand game development budgets. So many people these days are like “What?! There’s no way it costs that much and takes that long to make this!” And as stated Cogmind’s budget is really on the low end! I would be wary of letting it get too high since this style of game is quite unique and unproven in the commercial market.
Hmmm nice!
Two questions though:
1. is there a possibility to split those $60, like $30 in the beginning and $30 for the t-shirt later down the road?
2. As far as I remembered xcomrl and cogmind7drl ran well in wine on linux. Is there any chance to test if the alpha works too?
1. I haven’t set up the payment system yet, but I’ve now added that to my list of things to try to make possible.
2. The engine is the same one that powers XCOMRL and Cogmind 7DRL (and REXPaint, for that matter), so if you can run those you can run the alpha. Also, Kacper is Linux only, so we can confirm that the latest version works as expected under an emulator :D
From a performance perspective, Cogmind is a little more demanding than XCOMRL (with a much more detailed interface than the latter’s current setup) and a fair bit more demanding than the 7DRL (which was pretty simple and had only half the grid size and fewer bells and whistles). I did, however, recently introduce a system that does away with the graphical artifacts slower machines experience with XCOMRL/Cogmind7DRL, so general UI performance should be a non-issue as well. I can imagine in the mid/late-game there’s a chance that turns could slow down as a result of too many actors on the large maps, but I’ll work on further optimizations in that regard if it becomes an issue. (I’ve already optimized the AI a few times on my own laptop, though it’s only a few years old.)