Author Topic: Dust and Air IndieGoGo Is Live!  (Read 10759 times)

Offline Squidslinger Gilder

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Dust and Air IndieGoGo Is Live!
« on: August 07, 2017, 03:06:22 am »
All is Fair in Dust and Air IndieGoGo Campaign

Hey all, big update time! We're now live on IndieGoGo! The Guns of Icarus VN has reach another milestone!

Offline Squidslinger Gilder

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Re: Dust and Air IndieGoGo Is Live!
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2017, 08:47:41 pm »
And we've passed $500! Thank you for those that have backed us!

One comment we caught through one of our postings that we'd like to address is whether or not this is a "dating sim".

While Dust and Air shares a romantic sub plot where you can determine the outcome of the relationship, it is a different beast. The story and world takes a bit more focus. You aren't managing stats or figuring out correct answers.

The primary goal of the main protagonist isn't to hook up. In Dust and Air it is more to survive in the world of Guns of Icarus. The story leads, the romantic sub plot flows within, you decide the ending.

Katawa Shoujo, If My Heart Had Wings, Clannad...there's quite a few fantastic VNs with a similar style. They were, in fact, great inspirations to us. However, the one major difference being, the overall scope.

Dust and Air encompasses 6 nation factions + independent cities, those other VNs stick more to a local school or city. Not that they are bad for doing that, in fact we're big fans of those VNs (Hanako Forever!). Just we considered the Guns world and figured, settling with just one city is rather boring isn't it? Given airships and some of the rich factions to see. There was too much potential that would be untapped and lost if we settled with one.

Hope that clears that up.

Offline Squidslinger Gilder

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Re: Dust and Air IndieGoGo Is Live!
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2017, 02:43:39 am »
Alpha Demo has been posted!

Offline BinaryDragon

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Re: Dust and Air IndieGoGo Is Live!
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2017, 09:01:11 am »
I played trough your game and I would like to give you my feedback.

Please put into mind, before you read the following post : I would not usually play this type of game, at all. And the only reason I did it, is because it is related to guns of icarus.

I will try to break down my experience into bits

Starting off with the autocamper and fire somewhere.  I can't imagine where that would take place ? Also I don't understand how the dialog is relevant to anything else that goes on in the game

After that we move to a gathering of people from all over the (goio) world, politics goes on...I found it interresting. And I would have liked to see some more drama. After some time the protagonist is back outside and all like "eww politics, ill rather pick up girls"

then he starts picking up girls like the insecure teenager he is. I can't relate to any of it. I mean maybe if I had been between 15, and 19 it would have made sense to me. But as of now; all I see it a inseucre teen that I can't relate to or identify with. 

I don't know what (age)group you want to target with your game. But for me to enjoy this game; I would need a lot more politics and combat, and a lot less (teen)dating. The parts I truely enjoyed were inside the forum, the music and the artwork.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2017, 09:21:40 am by BinaryDragon »

Offline Squidslinger Gilder

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Re: Dust and Air IndieGoGo Is Live!
« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2017, 03:06:19 am »
You aren't really meant to know where the in world the camper sequence is. It's taking place some time in the future. We can't really say where and how the world turned out because that hasn't been covered in Muse's lore. Also if you knew where, you'd possibly know what the true end is. Although you can draw some ideas based on the type of trees present, but given that so much time has passed, it really could be anywhere. We could maybe add a note of that. Maybe make up the name of a forest. But then we'd run into the same problem.

Not feeling much for William is intentional. He's not going to be the McGyver, do everything perfect the first time, kind of protagonist at this point in the story. Most Visual Novels tend to be created within the 13-18 age bracket. There is a lot of reasons for that. One of the most common is because the main consumers of VNs in Japan are those who did not have the best high school experiences. They want to go back and do things differently. Hence why you see the vast majority of them set in schools.

Because of this, emotions and personalities are a little more wild. The maturity level of characters can often be rather low. Although there always will be one character that is the mature straight laced character. There are also some real bad ones where the protagonist is about the biggest jerk you'd ever see and there is next to no way you'd ever feel anything for them.

Dust and Air actually hits in the 18-25 bracket. You see William now as more of a screw up before you see him later after maturing. So he is intentionally a bit of a screw up right now.

William's interest in the event is simply not there. At this stage in the story, he isn't all that interested in it. His interest is in exploring the city and seeing something he hasn't gotten a chance to see back in Mole. We can rework some lines a little, but really he's a crossroads character in the NA. Hasn't decided what he wants to do, or where he wants to go.

Day 2 is probably what you'd be more interested in as we explore more of the faction interactions. Unfortunately, it is still in development. You'd have to join us as a tester to see it and, right now, we haven't released the rest of the NA to our testers yet.

Personally I feel ya on the political world building side because I'd be interested in it as well. I'm a veteran player too. That's certainly something I'm interested in knowing. Just, as one of the writers, I know there's so much more coming. A lot of the answers you want will be addressed either in the NA or the story arcs.

There is also a danger is unloading all the political at once. Which is what Lucas did with Star Wars. Some fans loved it, most just utterly hated it.

If we were able to release all of this at once, I'm sure it would answer a lot of questions and ease a lot of emotions. Unfortunately if we did that, we wouldn't need to release the VN at all because you'd know the entire story. That wouldn't just be shooting ourselves in the foot, but dropping a nuke on it. 

However, we will consider expanding the demo to include Day 2 in the future. Or perhaps chunks of Day 2. There's pros and cons to doing that. Just like there has been pros and cons to releasing just this Alpha Demo.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2017, 03:09:33 am by Squidslinger Gilder »