We finally have a website! If you want to see more information about the game head on over to https://www.stouthollowtales.com/​​

If you want to join the discussion about our game you can go to our discord server: https://discordapp.com/invite/dSnNabg

Anytime you start a project like this it’s very easy to fall prey to the idea that every single idea you have needs to go into it. Our project, for example, had a laundry list of features and interacting systems that really just didn’t fit with the ethos of the game. This is one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned, you need to discover your DNA before you make big decisions.

Above is an example of a positive iteration. We were very obsessed at the time with discovering what our game was and character customization ended up sneaking up on us. As far as negative iteration, we had fairly complex systems such as a system where each one of the guilds in the game would compete with each other. This was supposed to allow the user to take advantage of their feud and hike up their own prices. The issue was: it went against a part of our core game-play that we hadn’t fully designed yet.

If we made a very simple list of our game-play and expanded the game around that to start with, this would have been obvious. Also the introduction of the concept of “if it’s not fun, take it out of the game” made removing these not fun features very easy to justify.

We had determined that we were a story-driven game. We looked back and saw the games we drew inspiration from: classic JRPGs from the PSX era like Final Fantasy 9 combined with the shop-keeping simulation Recettear. Figuring out the relationship that Stouthollow Tales had to Recettear was vital in getting our core gameplay loop down.

Overall It’s easy to get mired in your own thoughts and concepts. And while it is good to let your game come into it’s own, you can’t let it get out of control. You need to be designing the game without a set of parameters that let you know how much of thing A is this game going to be, and how much of thing B is this game going to be. We’re listening to where Stouthollow Tales wants us to take it, while attempting to help steer it in the right direction.