Charting the games universe with indie game veterans Omni Systems

Intro

This edition of Game Invention brings you:

How we fixed our game release communication mistakes!
Part two of our indepth Alan Dean Foster interview.
Various new mods and contents for Eufloria and Bioframe.

And as always; many useful and fun resources to share with our subscribers. Hope you enjoy it!

Omni Systems News

Alan Dean Foster Interview Part 2

We have released the latest part of our joyously indepth interview with Alan Dean Foster. It is super interesting across the board, discussing his work in games, writing Star Trek and The Thing tie-in novels, traveling in Africa and how it inspired his writing and much more.

(You also get to see Rudolf be a fanboy with his Last Starfighter T-shirt.)

Eufloria Classic Mod and Secret Mode

We made an interesting little mod for Eufloria Classic that allows players to treat a level like a sandbox with multiple optional scenarios and goals.

It is fun to play with, but also very pretty. It features random level background colours and if utilised with our secret attract mode it becomes verrrryyyy nice to look at. We set it up so that it just runs forever, which makes it a nice infinite self-playing microcosmos.

Secret Mode? What secret mode?

Well, if you select a level while pressing CTR, it will load in Attract Mode. This is a special mode where all factions, including the player’s faction, are controlled by the computer. The camera will travel around the level and go to areas of interest to show off the game. Try it, it’s lovely.

In fact, here is a (newsletter exclusive) example of what that looks like.

Fun Fact: Alex added this way back in 2009 (I think?) so the game would show off itself when we couldn’t be at our booth at tradeshows like the Independent Games Festival. I have never seen another game do this quite like ours.

If you own Eufloria Classic and you want to play the mod you can grab it HERE.

First Look at…

Newsletter exclusive:

Bioframe Mod in the Works

We will go into more detail on this in the next newsletter, but… we made a fun little Bioframe mod in our spare time. It’s a cozy photography mod, where you can play the game without everything trying to attack or infect you. You even get to be friends with the flying defenders, who will now fight for you like loyal guard dogs…

We call it Bioframe Snap, and will hopefully release it soon. (Alongside modding support for the game)

If you reach out to us we can arrange early access!

New Eufloria Dev Activity Discovered

This is very hush hush for now, but this thing is starting to look really really good:

Feature: How We Fixed Our Game Release Communication Mistakes!

As you probably know by now, we released an anniversary edition of Eufloria (the original PC version) called “Eufloria Classic” last month. The original game was no longer available, having been replaced with Eufloria HD many years ago, and that version is/was the only one with modding support and was graced with a whole host of custom content made by fans. It’s been bothering us for some time now that it wasn’t available anymore.

So, as we are building up the Eufloria IP and fanbase again, we thought it a nice idea to do something about it, hence the idea to release an anniversary edition.

We obviously wanted to make sure it was a valuable addition to our indie softography (stupid word, sorry) while making sure to keep the integrity of the original intact and maintaining backwards compatibility with all the existing mods and custom content.

To achieve those goals we settled on the following content:

Eufloria Classic

All original content from the original release
Playable on modern systems
Modding support
Backwards compatible
New additional music from the original composer
HD style Speedup buttons to make the experience less err… slow
New Game modes with example levels!
Community map pack
Additional languages supported

And the whole thing was to be free for owners of Eufloria 2009 or massively discounted for owners of Euloria HD. Not bad, right?

We did a thorough community beta test, fixed bugs, and despite the old creaky codebase from 2009 made it work (mostly) well on new machines.

And we made sure we spread word of the release and why we were doing it. Early response to our plans was thankfully very positive.

What could go wrong, eh?

What went wrong?

Steam Trouble

Much to our dismay, Valve’s policy had changed, denying us the ability to gift the game to existing Eufloria players. As this used to be possible, we had told people this was going to happen, only to find this had become untrue. We explained this to Valve and also that it was really unfair to deny this because the old game was still in people’s libraries and we had no way of reaching them with this anniversary release otherwise. But alas, the policy does not allow exceptions.

Ultimately the only solution was to provide owners of the old game with an update that allowed them to play Classic as a launch option for the old 2009 release.

It works, and it has the exact same content you get when purchasing the anniversary release, but it won’t let people unlock Steam achievements associated with the new release.

It also meant that we reached fewer people than we would have if Valve allowed us to gift the game directly to old-game-owners, and that we offered those players something less valued than what we had told them in our initial messaging. We explained and apologised, but it still annoyed some fans, even if it was free.

Naming and branding

Most people totally understood what we were doing and generally gave us nice positive reviews and useful feedback, but… over time we started to receive some pretty harsh comments and complaints that felt very unfair to us, even by people who received the game for free. It didn’t take long to discover that we only had ourselves to blame for this, because we did not effectively tell people what we were doing, outside of the beta audience.

So, for a lot/most people, they thought they were dealing with a new Eufloria release, with genuinely new core game functionality. Just like the Eufloria HD and PS3 releases came with actual new units and gameplay improvements, people expected a new Eufloria game to add similar improvements*.

So most bad reviews came from people docking us points for not being a new game, when we never said we were releasing a new game. Ouch.

*And that is not unfair at all.

To reiterate: Eufloria Classic was meant to be an anniversary release to bring back the original experience from 2009, playable on current devices, with nice bonus content on top, and reintroduce modding to the series while maintaining backwards compatibility of historic mods and content. All based on the original code, which we had to keep intact.

While all this was perfectly clear within our beta which ran for several months, we stupidly did not make that clear (enough) to the rest of our audience.

I say clear enough, because honestly, we thought we were good because we did provide this information many times over in various shapes and forms:

Like we did here, here and here.

But none of this mattered enough because we failed in a few essential places, notably by failing simple, basic Steam page and website messaging, and through clumsy brand confusion.

The latter stemmed from the fact that we named this release “Eufloria Classic”, which immediately invites questions rather than answering them. Because that name could mean anything right? We should have picked a name that better explained that this was a return of the OG release of 2009. We could have called it Eufloria - Anniversary or something like that, although to be fair, that is not a great name either and we haven’t figured out a better one yet.

CHALLENGE TIME: Send us a perfect name for Eufloria Classic that would have helped avoid our issues, and you will win a prize.

As to the landing page issue: our Steam page focused too much on marketing speak (trying to tell people why it was fun) rather than clarification, (explaining the difference with other Eufloria releases). So, expectations were set that people would be offered a whole new Eufloria game experience. And when people bought the game they got something quite different, which led to some upset reviews and responses. The game rating on Steam went from “very positive" to “mixed”, and the forums were not the happiest place to be either.

So what did we do about it?

Turning It Around

While it is better to avoid these kinds of issues before they arrive, real life isn’t always that simple. So we had to figure out how to correct and mitigate damage. Luckily we managed to find a few ways to make that happen. Here is how:

We completely changed the store text to better explain what the release was about and what people would get. This was to prevent future buyers being wrongfooted and definitely makes an impact.

We wrote and pinned a post about the confusion, where we explained the situation with honesty and clarity, and apologised for the mess and asked for feedback on the new messaging. This was essential for making sure we were actually making things better and people appreciated it a lot.

We spelled out EXACTLY what people were buying in a post, and urged people to read it before buying or redeeming the game. We even made this chart for people. This is also essential in simplifying our communication, and helps prevent future issues.

We directly replied to negative reviews that were negative due to the misunderstandings, not because of the game itself. We did so politely and with frank admission that we were at fault for the confusion. This led directly to several people flipping their reviews.

We combined threads about confusion and tech issues so that they stopped overwhelming the forum and making it feel like there were more issues than there were in reality. It is very important to keep a handle on this, as bad impressions can do a lot of damage and trigger additional negativity.

And finally, we are releasing new content and improvements to show that we are actively supporting and adding value to the game. This includes new mods, Steam Deck compatibility, revealing a secret mode, and (Soon to be released) patching issues and adding improvements.

We explained the situation on our Discord, and asked the fans who like the game to consider leaving a positive review. Every review counts, it really is essential for indie devs to be able to show that people like their game. If you own Eufloria Classic, (or can redeem the free version) and are happy with it, we would MASSIVELY appreciate a positive review. 🙂

All these things combined have made an impact. Currently we are on a 80% very positive review score, which is a major improvement, but we hope to raise it quite a bit more.

Hopefully this feature will be useful for other devs to avoid these kinds of issues with their releases.

Gamedev Resources Roundup

Ambient Game Soundtracks

We asked the good people on the r/ambientmusic subreddit about their favourite ambient videogame soundtracks, which led to maaaany good responses.

So much so that we decided to turn it into a resource, by collating all the answers into a handy searchable spreadsheet.

Have a browse. It’s full of lovely stuff and hidden treasures. Check it out HERE.

We will continue to update it, so if you have any suggestions for ambient game OST’s that haven’t been added yet please tell us, and/or post your suggestion to the dedicated thread here.

AI-free Resources

If you are not inclined to embrace AI slop or AI hallucination-infected data, or AI assets coming from illegally scraped human art, it can be hard to use online resources. Everything is potentially infected and it is hard to even know where to start. This is true for game dev, research tasks, blogging, and so on.

To try and help a bit with this we have gathered some potentially useful links for you below:

Open source or affordable resources from reputable sources

http://Kenney.nl

It is hard to believe but the enormous amount of free or cheap game assets and tools available here all stems from the work of one person.

There is enough here to base an entire career on, if you are so inclined. Asset packs, tools, 2d/3d, themed kits… just check it out.

https://www.si.edu/openaccess

The Smithsonian Open Access digital archive is insanely large and wideranging, and afaik AI-free. Have a look but be careful, it is easy to get lost in there.

https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc/

Sonnis have been around for a long time and have an archive of all the free, opensource, AI-free sound effects that they keep giving away every year. It’s A LOT of content and high quality.

Useful AI-avoidance browser plugins

Bye, bye Google AI - Chrome extension - Removes the AI overviews from Google search results.

Slop Evader - only gives you search results that predate chatGPT’s release in November 2022.

The Grab Bag

Book Review

There is no Antimemetics Division

If you like genuinely mindblowing concept driven sci-fi that relates to our world yet makes you see it in a completely different way this one might just be for you.

(Wikipedia link)

Works on several levels:

As a fun sci-fi thriller
An existential horror story
A philosophical exercise
Social commentary on what modern technological existence is doing to us

Bonus fact: The videogame Control was heavily influenced by the SCP Foundation Wiki, which is where the writings for this book originated.

Either way, it is a highly recommended book for people who enjoy these kinds of themes.

Fan Submission of the Month

CLETTUCE from our Discord server is back again with another charming personification of the seedlings from Eufloria!

Goodies

Our ever growing goodies page is full of fun Eufloria and Bioframe rewards, and we've just added a convenient link to the modding repository we mentioned earlier in the newsletter. Check it out HERE, the password is LOVEGAMES.

Thanks for reading!

“

“One test is worth a thousand theories”

(Source: disgruntled engineers worldwide)

— Rudolf Kremers

Game Invention Newsletter

How We Fixed Our Game Release Communication Mistakes, Part Two of Our Alan Dean Foster Interview, and More!