Help Promote Paper Sorcerer

Paper Sorcerer needs your help!

How?

11 Things that you can do…
Why eleven? Because Ultra Runaway Games goes one step beyond.

1. Buy the game, it’s only $5, every sale counts! 

     Ultra Runaway Store

2. Buy the soundtrack, add a tip to your purchase, or buy the game as a gift.

     Paper Sorcerer is a great stocking stuffer!

     You can buy a gift copy with the Humble widget on the Ultra Runaway store,

      or you can buy gift copies on Desura, GamersGate, IndieGameStand, and Mac Game Store!

3. Like our Facebook Page and share it with your friends

4. Follow Jesse on Twitter

     twitter.com/UltraRunaway

5. Send out a tweet on Twitter, spread #PaperSorcerer

     Retweeting @UltraRunaway tweets are good too!

     Click here to automatically tweet about Paper Sorcerer

6. Use a Paper Sorcerer avatar on forums/social sites

     Instructions and avatars here

7. Give a shout out to Paper Sorcerer on forums that you frequent (mention the free demo)      

       Example Below:

Check out Paper Sorcerer, a stylish first-person turn-based RPG with adventure game elements, only $5 at ultrarunaway.com There's also a free demo here: ultrarunaway.com/web-demo.html

8. Do a Let’s Play or mention Paper Sorcerer on your Youtube channel

     Youtube/Vimeo/etc. Legal details here

9. Sign up for our Newsletter

     ultrarunaway.com/about.html

10. Mention Paper Sorcerer to a gaming news site (email them and let them know how awesome Paper Sorcerer is!)

11. Tell/E-mail your real-life friends about Paper Sorcerer – tell them to grab the demo and play it for themselves.

Paper Sorcerer Avatars

Hey guys, I thought you guys might like Paper Sorcerer avatars! 

Each album contains all the square images at the size listed. 
Right click the image, "Save As" somewhere on your computer, and set your Avatar on forums and the like to spread the Paper Sorcerer love! 

You can also download the whole avatar set as a zip file if you like, from the Ultra Runaway website. 

If you haven't already tried the demo, you can download it or play it in your browser! 
Try the demo now 

Hope you enjoy, here are the links! 


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Paper Sorcerer giveaway!

Hi there! It's been a while since the last post, got a bit behind on writing blog updates, mostly because of a few things:

• Collating and updating the mailing list data and learning how to operate and build newsletters
• Making a Facebook page and telling people about it
• Figuring out how to use promotions and the like to generate interest in the game
• Finishing the game

So as a result, I've decided to run a small giveaway to find a cool name for the newsletter! All you have to do to enter is write in a suggestion for the newsletter name and 'like' Paper Sorcerer on Facebook.
If you haven't already pre-ordered Paper Sorcerer, you're going to want to enter our contest, 10 lucky people will win free copies of the game! And even if you have, enter and you can give the copy you win to a friend!

The Grand Prize winner will be determined by a poll on the newsletter name suggestions, and will get bragging rights in addition to a free copy of the game. The name they suggest will be used for the newsletter.

I've set this to run until the end of the month, so hurry and tell all your friends about it!
If you'd like to embed the entry widget on another site, here's a link to the embed code: here

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you're not sure how to enter, here's an infographic going over the entry process:

Skill animations, short trailer

Today I'm talking about skill animations, last post I talked about the final summon roster.

I was working a long time on special effects for all the skills. The game has 327 unique skills right now and about 300 of those have unique animations. There's also quite a few other incidental effects, like different types of slashes and hit effects, as well as a death animation and enemy swings. For a better idea of what 300 looks like, here's part of my skill checklist I've been using to keep track of which effects I have implemented:

http://i.imgur.com/WK0x2.jpg

And without further ado, here are some special effects in Unity:

http://i.imgur.com/viJ1C.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nR6UH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/yeiS2.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Fl2Ef.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7b9t1.jpg

I also did animations to indicate whose turn it was, and who was being affected by buffs and heals. Before making the game, I didn't realize that the player needed so much feedback. I had to do research when I started getting playtest feedback that the battles weren't clear enough to know everything that was going on.

I also just finished working on the short version of the trailer, so you can see some of the effects in action there.

Press Release complete!

So, finished up the press release today, here it is:

http://i.imgur.com/LKczJ.jpg

 And here are some screenshots, too!

 

http://i.imgur.com/iGpIt.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/zYs3t.jpg

 http://i.imgur.com/rq9gG.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rRwGT.jpg

 http://i.imgur.com/DTLiZ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/XmVFv.jpg

Ways of Minimizing Risk

Like I said before, there are many obstacles in the path of a single developer finishing and shipping a game. So I thought I'd do a post about what I'm doing to mitigate that risk.

• Using a pre-made engine: Unity
• Using middleware: Orkashi RPG Kit
• Using a unique art style
• Chose to do a relatively easier to develop game structure
• I decided to do a dungeon crawler, which I love, but also doesn't require as many unique art assets as an open world. 
• Easier to be creative within constraints
• Finding ways to minimize animation
• First, animation is time-consuming. 
• Second, it doesn't contribute as much to the world/gameplay for the time it takes to do as many other tasks that are faster.
• Using sprites instead of full 3D models
• Focusing on digital distribution
• Rather than focusing on finding a publisher or investors to fund a large scale physical distribution and advertising campaign, I'm going to try crowdfunding and releasing in a digital format.
• Developing with a harder heart
• If I cut features that are close to my heart when I see them taking too much development time, or that they're making it less fun, the game is that much more likely to succeed.

New Beginnings

This is the Ultra Runaway blog, chronicling the story of one man with no industry experience or programming training making a PC RPG.

Why make an RPG when it is one of the most content heavy game genres out there? Because it’s what I like and I don’t feel like there's enough classic turn based RPG’s out there these days. Yeah, as a one man army I should probably make a simple puzzle game or pong, but that's not my style.

I want to design stat systems and classes. I want to come up with cool dungeons, weird spells and all sorts of crazy traps. For example: you walk into a room, then everything turns upside down! That might not the best trap ever, but I’m still new and at least it’s more unique. That leads me to one of my goals with this game, I want to try to bring something a little different to the RPG genre, while still keeping all the cool exploration and strategic combat I like. As a one man team with the freedom to make whatever crazy game I want, I feel like I can make that happen, despite the many risks.

Well see how this goes. I've got a good feeling about this.