Glad to see you’re making good progress! What part of your work flow do you think is giving you the biggest challenge?
Thank you for caring. With the amount of time and effort I invested lately, I indeed started getting sick and burnout. Taking few days off to do something else really helped to fix this.
I honestly couldn’t have enough of Magincia series back in the day. I could imagine every scene, dialogue and mannerism of each character so vividly. I was pretty much skeptical with Mercenary life, but in the end of the day, I played this game the most.
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Thank you! What did you like or dislike the most about the game?
There are 2 biggest challenges I have at the moment:
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First and foremost, doubts and answering my questions to myself, which I think every new author had: whether I should continue developing the game? will there be demand for my game?(to answer this I published the game early) maybe I should follow in footsteps of Philip Kempton and go back to original idea? will my efforts pay off and I get to make some profit to cover the time and I effort spent which I could have invested in learning new skills that could earn me a better living?
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Creating a new story while keeping it from becoming a nonsense. I already half failed at that. I didn’t read the books of LOTR and Warcraft which I use as primary source of inspiration. All the movies and games are already at the point where all characters are developed and set. However, there is only a brief information about how they came to be.
With how my story goes, I’m trying to convey everyday life and how characters become someone. And I lack so much information about this part, thus forced to rely on original sources those universes have drawn inspiriation from. For example, orcs clearly have a tribal system of people from steppes and nomads mixed with native americans’ traditions and culture with brutalism of aztecs and warlike culture of germanic tribes. It makes it a bit interesting, but I risk digressing from canon, which I want to follow above anything else.
My poor Elf died after the second choice in the game 
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Good, the only good elf, is soil.
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There was a guy who was first to email me about elfs too. I haven’t laughed so hard in a while, his quote:
"What, the heck, is the elves path. I Can’t even survive childhood, died many times, it’s as if childhood is some kind of hell mode that needs rigorous planning.
Which i loved.
Good luck, the game is good."
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Are we important or are we just a dude in the world? I always wanted to play a game like this where you’re not really an important person. You’re just a individual. that just happened to get lucky.
In response to: “Are we important or are we just a dude in the world? I always wanted to play a game like this where you’re not really an important person. You’re just a individual. that just happened to get lucky.”
I would like to seek for forgiveness(not really) for my unfiltered, uncultured french that will follow. I will give you short and long answers. Had many complaints previously(different places) about long texts from people who have short attention span issues.
Short: Based on the feedbacks, your only luck is surviving past birth episode. It’s not a fairy’s tale. Your actions, decisions and stupidity have real consequences. I will continue setting traps for stupid decisions, so, to survive, you have to “think” first, and “do” after. There are many instances of how elaborately you can get to the dead end. All that cuz I enjoy people complaining about dying stupidly all the time, MUAWAHAHAHA. Khm…khm.. What was I about? Ah, yes, importance of the character. if you still didn’t catch from the story.
Human, parents are peasants in a remote village. Father tends to the land, mother is housewife who takes any job she can get. Patches clothes, collects herbs, fixes books and broken stuff.
Elf, parents a bit wealthier than average elfs and life is safer than other races. Because they are favored by their creator(me) and diversity is necessary to be able to see the life from different perspectives. Also canonically in this genre they were there first and had lots of time in their hands to improve living conditions. But limited, they still had their fair share of losses. Father is a soldier, mother is a mage.
Orc, father is blade master. High status, but no material or financial advantages. Big disadvantage, you must either live up to his status or become a servant for a villain. Mother is a housewife, similar to a human, but in tribal orchish way.
Dwarf, greedy and financially better off due to race’s high organization level, contract with a Wyrm(otherwise the great almighty Smaug would have paid a visit). Father is a mason, uncle is a smith, mother is lucky not to grow beard, yet…
Long: After seeing countless non-stop stories about overpowered ultra strong xxxl characters, my vomit reflexes started to play tricks on me. It’s often justified by the setting or random event. In the hemisphere where I live it can be called “a piano in the bush”. You can easily find this idiom in google if you’re not familiar. Especially in anime, which I can somehow tolerate and even enjoy if there is something more to it for 20 min an episode, but if I think about reading a book or long story… I cant make myself to work in such environment. Plus, it never made sense to me, nor was that much interesting.
Creating a new story is challenging as it is. It works well for fresh teenager audience(10-18 y.o), but I am writing for a bit smarter and demanding young adults(14-25 y.o). Who are too old for a super powered entity studying in a highschool to romance a girl, yet too young for difficult classic adult books. Those who are older can still find some amusement and treat it like a light read in a favourite fantasy setting like I do.
There will be major events that affects the life of a character, and your role in it will have an impact. However, you are not going to be the only figure who moves the story. I will give an example. Have you played War in the North? Its decade old game about LOTR. You cant play as Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli there, but your party took on a job that had to be done. They were able to ruin plans of allies of Sauron which weakened his positions, made him divert his attention and recources and created more distractions for Frodo’s quest, which allowed good to win evil. Eagle Beleram was the best imho. War is not only about main characters winning, it’s a joint effort in multiple theatres of war. You can study any major war in our history, and find the proof of this.
I can’t guarantee a unique story, there will be overlaps for sure, but at least I can sometimes give a new perspective, which looks refteshing for me. I am open for ideas, cuz I’m improvising most of it. If people would like to improve the quality or add something of their own - I will prioritize objective thinking and give it a proper thought. Subjective is okay too, but priority is lower.
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I don’t know but I’m the only one who has the elf route doesn’t work because when I choose it then after I choose to cry then it immediately change to a orc start
I tested it just now, works as supposed to. Maybe you were playing at the same time when I was updating game files? I update frequently when I do the proofreading and testing. Can you try again and let me know if issue persists?
P.S I don’t know for sure why game switches to another character when player runs out of choices. I guess the enginge considers another race as unused choice. I think I can fix this, but it will take longer time to revert it back to continue the story and sort out the dead branches.
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Yep the elf start doesn’t continue after the first choice it immediately change to a orc start and the human start just end after the first choice and dwarf start doesn’t know about that much but the only thing that kinda work is the orc start
Did you try using different device? It should work the best on pc or laptop
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Yeah, putting in a fail-state for choosing the most interesting answers immediately ended my interest in the game. I dislike fail-states in IFs in general, but this didn’t even feel like it was an informed choice to take a risk during a major plot point, it felt like the author was setting the reader up for a prank. Having the playthrough end that early for that reason told me I couldn’t trust the choices I was given, and therefore couldn’t trust the author. There’s really nowhere to go from there except into someone else’s WIP.
I’m sure mileage will vary with that, but it was a total non-starter for me.
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I don’t know really my PC is currently dead so I’m only using my phone
Hi Jenna. I’m the author of the game. There was no intention of putting fail-state for the most interesting answers. The genre of the game is RPG(Role-Playing Game), to survive player need to role-play a bit, plus I encourage players to think before making a choice. Newborn baby cannot speak right of the bat, nor any race children, except orcs can use orcish battle cries. It will confuse the other characters, thus choosing such options will lead to unexpected consequences. Once you get past that episode, choices and consequences become more obvious.
Example: At the start of orcish path, only warriors are accepted to the tribe and the rest get discarded. Thus, you may conclude that chosing options where characrter shows weakness will lead to similar results, while choosing options that require strength are encouraged and praised, it’s their culture. Other races are more tolerant in that regard. Humans dont care as long as child is not speaking. The older is the character, the more chances of survival. There is a bit of realism to it, since setting is early medieval.
Besides, that part wasn’t a major plot point, game saves are permitted. Replays are encouraged which will allow to learn more and better understand the world, thus improving immersion.
Updated elven positive choices. Let’s see. Can you also try mobile version of the game for android, version 5? Latest version 5 for android: Download Tales of Ellaria (2).apk | LimeWire
If it ends with “Elsirium guard to ensure safety and awareness of possible hazardous events.” then its not the game issue, its lack of content which I haven’t finished yet.
If android works out better, I will be updating the mobile version more often. Let me know. Feel free to click on disucss in the game and email me. I would like to get to the bottom of it.
Ok I downloaded the game on my phone it’s Android here is a picture of the elf start
Afterwards in the next page it changed to a orc start
Good. Now it’s clear. It’s not a technical issue. I started creating this game last week, and haven’t gone further than the first screenshot. It’s only introduction of the race. So when content ends it goes to the next character because that story line is finished.
Right now, orc has intro+infancy, other races only intro. Give it some time, and you will be able to play for longer. Since it is 4 games in 1, it takes more time and juggling to develop concepts and lore. I could break it into 4 separate games and make production easier for myself.
The question is would that be as interesting as being able to play 4 unique stories within 1 game?
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4 unique stories in 1 game is interesting but you can decide whether you yourself is up for that task.
To be honest it’s your game so you can decide yourself but personally I think it’s better if you break it up