Hi all good folks Here you can follow and engage with our journey on Woodland Edge. It will be a thread full of artwork, questions, pictures, animations and hopefully great debate with you on what you see. generally we will share our progress as we move along. Also I will share the progression / decisions weekly ABOUT THE GAME: Woodland Edge is a puzzle progression game for iOS Primary for girls 8+ “But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat:"we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland Behind Woodland Edge, is a growing core team working away, to create a great experience for all: Jan Rybka, Lead Artist and Art direction Simon Magic man, Lead Programmer Thomas-Bo Huusmann, Creator and Business development Tobias Dahl Nielsen, Audio wizard If you want to test Woodland Edge. Sign up in the link below: https://goo.gl/forms/LczqU06Rv3oVlYvn2
#Update 001 - The team is updated - Audio designer As we are working away on the business plan, and doing tests with our prototype. Today inbetween building businessplan and planning tests of the prototype, great news knock on the door. Great news We have now added a new team-member moving forward on this journey. The kickass Sound Designer/Composer Tobias Dahl Nielsen have accepted to join us. Here is some of his work: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Audio tool As for tools we have decided to work with Fmod, as this is free until we land $500.000 in development cost. Do you guys have any recommendations for an alternative solution? On the business side, we are looking into a lead investor, who understands the mobile games industry. But before it even makes sense to talk investment, the team need to be sharp as the unit is everything. The spirit of a product can be found in the team behind it. So having the right Audio designer on board is a strong step in that direction.
#Update 002 - Positive mental attitude and taking action, when you hit bumps in the road. Whether a product is a success or failure, will be determined by actions based on mental attitude, a lot more than mental capacity I start with this little one-liner, as there is an interest in the ups and downs in the business side of Woodland Edge. It sums perfect up with what has happened since the last update. A tough setback - MAYDAY programmer down We lost our programmer, as he got offered a great job. That was a tough hit, and losing a core member, set us way back. Without a programmer, it is hard to move forward landing a partnership, investment or even production. This was a real bummer. But the train is moving, so the only thing to do, was accepting the challenge, and pushed all effort into finding someone new and fast. Darwin said it nicely: The World belongs to the most adaptable species. What I did was to look at all potentiel candidates from my network and beyond on Linkedin. The trick is to check out jobs and past companies, that relates to the game we are making. I Wrote to many and got a lot of no. I kept doing this, till we had a new team member, and to our fortune. The team got the best guy of them all. An experienced lead programmer in mobile games, who already within one week have impressed the team with his input. So now we are back hunting investors. First thing we need is to show that the targetgroup is interested. So time to test the game. Our new technical lead, added lose condition and a few test features to the core gameplay of the Woodland Edge prototype. Next week we test. Social aspect of Woodland Edge Here we are looking into Toon Blast and C.A.T.S for direction, as we feel that Facebook is not interesting any more. What is your guys take on this?
#Update 003 - Working out Logo - and 100 % honest approval of audio concept Time to make the pitch material to present for investors. Here we are looking for Preseed investment, as we have no traction on Woodland Edge and no 5 year projection. Advice for Preseed My advice for anyone seeking investment in Preseed. If a potential investor asks for a 5 year projection, then my opinion is that they are very inexperienced, as it is very difficult for a startup to have a longterm projection, when the product is still in early development with only limited real experience with the market. When developing a Pitch Deck, our first step was to develop a business plan. The business plan for Woodland Edge focuses on excitement and dream expectations, the team and what we will create with the investment. As for valuation, there will be an open invitation for the investor to come with his recommendation. What are your thoughts and experience with Preseed? Working out the Logo A good game, needs a strong logo that is memorable. Here is our first attempt on the Woodland Edge logo. We looked at several inspirations, and from those we took elements and added a sense of Art nouveau. The reason we chose Art nouveau, is that the style has a flow with nature and a level of magic in its expression. Nature and Magic are two of the keywords for the Woodland Edge game. What logos out there do you like? 100% honest Audio approval, from my new born baby girl. As Tobias sent the first track, to discuss the audio design, my wife came over with our 12 days old baby girl, and here is her response
#Update 004 - pitching and story development Pitching and distribution Business plan and presentation is ready to be sent to advisors. After feedback from the wise people around us, I will start pitching for investors. There is one thing I would like to share, and that is the importance of working out, how you expect to distribute your game. So even though we only have a very early prototype of Woodland Edge, I am already setting up meetings with potential distribution partners. This could be strong publishers or investors who understand the mobile games market. Story development When you are creating a World around a game, it is important to really understand the targetgroup. Here I got really inspired by the Alice in Wonderland quote, from the first post. By thinking this way, we choose to narrow the target to girls 8-11 years old for Woodland Edge. But it will overall be for all who want to explore their inner madness. So as inspiration we are looking at projects, that works around coming of age like: - The Neverending Story - Pans labyrinth - Alice in Wonderland A great scene as inspiration: The Swamp of Sadness scene above is a strong moment, of development, in the Neverending Story. For us it is about letting go of the innocence of being a small child, and starting to understand action and consequence. What coming of age film, would you recommend us to see, and how did it inspire you?
#Update 005 - Search for new team-member and dialogue tree Team-member / Business Developer As we are ramping up preparation for investors, there is one thing that comes up again and again. Something that hunts me. The lack of energy that I am able to put into building our knowhow to really hit our target-group. So last week I had meetings with CMO at Mobile Game Alliance in Denmark, and a former senior game producer at PBS and Lego. What I got out from the meetings is that the team is in need of a awesome person to take charge of researching the market, building our partnerships and setting up a strategy for distribution channels. So far I have been in charge of these areas, but with only 24 hours in a day, we need to add a member. So for now I am reaching out and meeting with potential candidates. This is really needed to lower the risk for the investor and for our path to not only make a great game, but to make a game to remember with Woodland Edge. Direction of the dialogue tree We have started to develope how we would like the dialogue tree of Woodland Edge should work. Here we have discussed several different version and angles. To find our way, we made a strength/weakness assessment of titles already on the market. Below are a few examples of what we looked into. 1. Egglia: Legend of the Redcap | 2. HomeScapes | 3. Professor Layton vs. Ace Attourney | 4. Broken Age Here we liked some of the elements, but are at the moment testing something that consist of elements for these games above, but done in a way we see working better. Do you have any examples on dialogues in mobile games, that are really good? For you guys who have signed up as testers. I will get back to you tomorrow
