What are /r/CastleStory's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Well, Ever since December, I've been doing research on how sauropod has spent the KS money. Sauropods inner devs had open facebooks for awhile. Sharing a lot of information and living WAY out of their means for college kids developing a game with no jobs other than claiming they are game developers. Their studio is a really nice loft, way to expensive for a developing studio with NO INCOMING money and a dead early access title. Lets face it, Castle story is dead, check out these stats https://steamdb.info/app/227860/graphs/ On average, less than 50 people play this game a day. There just is no real reason to even poor money into this fail project of theirs. They know it, We know it, best embezzle the rest of the money.

Link: https://www.humblebundle.com/login

Again, to reiterate what OP said. EVEN IF you've bought a humble-bundle pack before, you might not have actually registered for an account and you'll have to do so now.

This is another indie game that revolves around building bases and defending yourself from hostile locals. It is not as graphically demanding as CS, but it has a smaller team and less funding.

Things to note:

The team is currently vacationing separately. This isn't a whole team thing, but members are out all the time at the moment. There is still a core every week, and that core is still working. Even vacationers are reporting back about what they are doing, and even contributing at times.

They are talking about what is to be expected soon (multiplayer primarily, and tanks).

They have a new member to the team. They are discussing how they plan to ramp up that member. They even mention an unfortunate problem getting a computer for that member, but at least they are being proactive about explaining the game and the reasoning behind why things are the way they are.

They are talking about their progress with multiplayer, the big issues encountered recently, and how much fun they are having even though it is not complete. This is the kind of update that makes you want it.

I've been thinking a bit about what I would like to see from Sauropod. This is a shining example of a weekly update done right. Just thought everyone would like to see how things could be.

edit: I'd like to point out this section

>A big discussion emerged at our forums after showing some first concepts we were considering. This clearly shows that the tank will be a significant addition to the game if done right. Which we really want to do.

This is in reference to these tank concepts from update 44.

They are showing concepts for the course they intend to follow and are reacting to feedback. I love to see this.

Ok, since Ben on the forums trying to make me and others look at best uninformed and at worst outright liars:

Thierry told me about the update last Tuesday. Here's proof: http://tinypic.com/r/29mk38p/8

Only things that immediately come to my mind are Dwarf Fortress (It can be fairly overwhelming at first, but it is the best, IMHO) and it's clones, like Gnomoria.

They're a bit different from Castle Story, they lack Castle Story's 3D graphics and physics. You also have to supply your villagers with things like food, drinks, and clothes.

Took me about 30 minutes to make. If there is a good free file hosting service let me know and I can share the map with people.

Edit:

Here is a link to a download for the map (dropbox). Extract the files into Castle Story Prototype\Info\Niveaux and then it should be there as a playable map.

So after the failure of the CastleStory kickstarter, I refuse to put money towards any alpha/greenlight/unfinished product. So I'm not going to play Stonehearth until the 1.0 release.

That said, I did check out their roadmap. Interestingly, they also use Trello for their roadmaps. CastleStory is just an example of how to not run a game company.

> they may be subject to legal action by backers

Don't get too excited now. KS will not take legal action against the creator. That is up to the backers.

There is already a precendent of legal action against the creators with or without this being in the ToS.

source: http://www.geekwire.com/2014/attorney-general-asylum-playing-cards-crowdfunded-project/

This is KS merely covering their asses and not really trying to protect backers.

(EDIT) Disclaimer: IANAL

>Dwarf Fortress fot it's first update in 10 years too.

In binary maybe.

>DF 0.31.01, was released on April 1, 2010. The last update was v0.31.25, released on March 28, 2011.

>DF 0.34.01, was released on February 14, 2012. The latest version is v0.34.11, released on June 4, 2012

I would also discount DF because there was clear news of progress. Not slightly changing percentages on a meaningless webpage:

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_2013.html

Lastly, DF .34 was a complete, playable game for all of that time. Not really a fair comparison.

>Towns got "release" and abandoned.

True. They took about 2M gross IIRC, so about 1.4M after Valve's 30%. After taxes and whatnot, not too disimilar to Sauropod. However, even though it was abandoned towns has pages and pages of updates:

http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1420

Heck, the fact we can look at towns and see a list of missing features puts it massively ahead of castle story IMO.

>Multiple big studio realease game on an objectively sub par state.

Also true.

>Each game has it's own stories, Castle Stories is only longer to get a conclusion, whatever it is.

What it is, is failure.

>They had the chance and the missfortune to have a project in the early stage of Kickstarter.

The only misfortunes of Sauropod are of their own making.

Edit: ordering issue.

here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnw5m9lyjoufwib/Ista%20pulcra%20insulas.zip

but you could also tap the image at the top and then you will change to a different side with the link and pictures, but it's okay ;D

Kickstarter projects aren't allowed to use promotional material like renders and concept art anymore; they have to show the project as it currently exists. There were a lot of projects like Castle Story that got funded based on impressive concept videos that didn't actually deliver anything close to what they showed.

EDIT: Looks like I misunderstood. It's part of their guidelines on hardware and "product design".

From Kickstarter's rules:

"Product simulations are prohibited. Projects cannot simulate events to demonstrate what a product might do in the future. Products can only be shown performing actions that they're able to perform in their current state of development. Product renderings are prohibited. Product images must be photos of the prototype as it currently exists."

It also mentions they must show a production plan explaining what will be done to complete the project, and when.

And the link. Not sure if this applies to games, but probably not. Unfortunately.

UPDATE 10

Im not trying to be a dick but frustration is boiling up and I came off a little bitchy. Thanks for taking a look, it could provide some good information into what we backers are looking for out of updates.

From the Kickstarter FAQ:

>Anyone, anywhere can pledge to a project with a major credit or debit card. Anyone in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the Netherlands can start a project.

And, IMO, KS isn't the problem. This studio reached their goal and then some. At that point, the options should have been: finish and release a product, or screw over the "investors".

They found a third option: put the prototype/alpha/whatever on Steam where it is clearly labeled as Early Access software yet is sold (sometimes on sale) on the main store page, thus putting the fault on the customer that didn't stop to read the fine print instead of the company that continues to only promise road maps and a product.

This is a really simple map I've been playing with. You start on the middle level and have to work your way to the upper or lower levels. It's forced me to come up with some interesting construction methods and of all the maps I've made it's been the most fun to play on. Hope you enjoy it. (Also be careful with lots of tunnels. Overlapping tunnels tend to crash the game for me. =/)

If you bought the $45 pack and haven't received the email containing the two keys you can go to the following link: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/keyresender

and put in your email, this will send you "your" key and your "gift" key, I think it was in the form of a URL, you send the gift URL to your buddy.

When your buddy has downloaded the game make sure they click the button from the humble bundle site to make an account for the game...

They are building it on the Unity game engine. Here are the generic requirements listed on the Unity site, (system requirements for playing Unity-authored games at bottom). I don't know if they have said what the final requirements for the game itself will be, but it's not going to be state-of-the-art graphics-intensive stuff. Your system is much more powerful than mine. If yours can't handle it I'm screwed.

Actually they sold the prototype, but after realizing their deadlines are never going to happen, and after considering the other backers who only paid to get access to the beta they told them, "alright, we'll call this a beta, so now you guys have access to the game too! And what the hell, we'll put it on Steam as well, cause that's what people do"

Proof: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/902505202/castle-story/posts/432425

People's opinion of the Early access announcement: http://www.reddit.com/r/CastleStory/comments/1l4g6d/official_castlestory_launch_date_announced_23rd/

I know I'm reviving an old topic here, but here's a perfect example of how this should be handled legally. Despite The Banner Saga and Candy Crush saga having absolutely 0 things in common, a Notice of Opposition was still issued.

link

Sorry to be a downer but I've never seen a fan built remake of any game completed ever. The only exceptions are Theme Hospital (CorsixTH) and Dungeon Keeper (War for the Overworld). The second was definitely not cheap or a small project what so ever.

It happens fairly often that fans of a game which has had a disappointing presence in the market try to remake it themselves. It never works out.

This is too ambitious. You can do it anyway as a hobby but don't expect the game to get done. You're going to want money for it if it does as this is a serious investment of your resources.

I'm reading a book called The Lean Startup and I see many things that tell me it's never going to be released or if it is, it'll be when they run out of money and won't have the ability to fix it to what it should have been, rather than what they thought it should have been.

That said, I believe it's not too late. I haven't tried the last few releases but to me, last time I played it had a severe lack of objective. Some sort of co-op would also be cool. One last snarky remark, I hope the game ships with t-shirts because I'm still waiting.

/u/Sukrim, I looked on Google Play, and this is what I think it is.

/u/Sofie_Emilie, please tell your friend to contact the developers of the Android version of Castle Story. We're a different Castle Story.