Forests of Augusta
New year, hard decisions
With the changing of year a lot of thinking and decision making happened. One decision I had to make was a hard question. Continue development on Forests of Augusta or not?
I'm sad to bring you the news that I decided to no longer work on Forests of Augusta as one of my main projects. I made an awesome game, but it was my first game ever, and it was destined to fail. The game was made without budget, and while I spent some money doing marketing, the results were very poor.
The game costed me roughly 10k euro to create so the game needed to bring me at least 15k euro to get out of costs. I didn't expect this to happen over night and definitely not with a early access release, but I could have continued development if it made me 3-5k euro. Truth is, I sold only 65 copies and made only 200 euro in total.
As a result the time I'm putting in developing this game is not worth it, because it will never become a success because I don't have money to do marketing and even if I had, sales might go up by 10x. But fact is I need sales to go up by 100x, which is never gonna happen.
I still have lots of ideas and work-in-progress on FoA. Basically the Exploration mode is like 70% finished along with lots of major changes to the other game modes' gameplay. But from now I have to focus 100% on projects that CAN be a success in the future, so I'm putting development on Forests of Augusta on hold. I might work on finishing one more patch in my spare time when I need some chill time, but it will take long, and after that patch development will be cancelled entirely.
I want to thank all the people who helped with testing the game, who played/bought the game, the people who gave me feedback, the people who helped me create some parts of the game and the biggest thank you goes to my parents, who allowed me to still live with them at age 31 and paying for my food, internet etc... while I tried to make this game development journey work.
The next decision is if I want to stay in the game industry at all or not. FoA's failure weights heavily. But I think I have a talent, and I don't know if I'm willing to give that up.
Thanks all, and have a wonderful 2020!
Stefan Geerinckx
New patch with balance changes, bugfixes and a new game mode
I decided to make haste with the bugfixes and provide a patch with balance changes based on feedback from new players during the 60% off promotion.
Here are the patch notes:
New Content:
- A new Roaming Mode has been added. In this mode you don't have a timer, you don't get score points or kill chains. You just explore the map and build stuff at your own pace
Balance Changes:
- Decreased animal density
- Animals now don't respawn in your back.
- Animals don't respawn and attack your camp when running away from the camp, instead they respawn after 3 minutes, giving you time to go explore
- You now start with 2 potions, 2 cooked meat and 2 drinks
- As a result of the lower animal density, I increased the kill chain timer from 15 seconds to 25 seconds
- In hardcore mode the hunger, thirst and rest now takes 10 minutes to fully drain, up from 5 minutes, giving you a bit more time to gather needed resources to build a camp
- Opening a chest now takes 3 seconds, so you have less chance to bypass the elite guardian, loot the chest and run away
- Elite treasure guarding animals now have more health, because I removed non-elite monsters around them.
Quality of Life changes:
- Added a Tutorial level, which learns new players how to play with tutorial popups or just lets you practice the game without a time limit
- You can now select which level you want to play in ranked mode and roaming mode
Bugfixes:
- Fixed an issue in Horror (Halloween) mode where dead skeletons or despawned skeletons when you're far away will leave behind their weapons floating in the air.
- Fixed an issue where you couldn't scavenge an animal when it died while you were in melee range.
- Fixed an issue where sometimes when dying in Horror mode would tell you you reached only level one and you can't submit your real level score to the leaderboards
- Fixed an issue where Elite treasure guarding animals would go low on health on the first hit.
- Fixed an issue where in hardcore modes when consuming a potion, cooked meat or drink, the amount of consumables you have didn't lower by 1
Have fun on your hunts everyone!
We're still working on Forests of Augusta's exploration mode
I want to give a little update on the status of development on Forests of Augusta.
First of all, I am a solo developer working on the game. This game was made by me solo for 80%. I had a team who helped me create the graphics update and music of the game. Sadly sales have been so low that I couldn't pay my team members after release. So it's back to me being a solo developer working in his spare time on this passion project. I also never found a way to get seen amongst all those 100's of other indie games coming out each day, So I'm struggling getting the game out there.
After the release of the early access I went in a downward spiral, I had to make a living out of game development somehow, but it didn't work out. So I had periods where I stopped development for several months due to depression or being down. Sadly if you're a solo developer that means that the progress on development stops.
On the good side. I'm still working on Forests of Augusta's Exploration mode along with bugfixes, balance changes and tutorial popups to guide new players.
The patch is for about 60-70% completed. Development goes a bit slow since I'm working on a new project for more than fulltime hours. But development on Forests of Augusta is still going on in my spare time.
Thanks for reading and good luck on your hunts!
Graphics and UI overhaul update along with new features
We at Rebel Camp Games went from a solo developer to a 12 headed team to rework the music and the graphics of the game and to provide more content!
The update consists of 2 new maps for the ranked game mode and a new game mode, the Halloween map with new features like leveling up and stat point allocation. There are also minor new features like resource caches that you can loot when defeating the elite enemies that guard them at a temple or a cave.
What's next?
We are still working on the exploration mode where you will be able to explore a larger map, level up, spend stat points, craft new weapons and new tiers of weapons along with jewelry and armor. After the exploration mode is finished we have plans to create tower defense maps as extra content. The campaign is postponed, since it takes a lot more time to complete for a small indie team, but it is still on the horizon further down the road!
A huge thank you to all of our players for your continued support!
Announcing price drop and update on development
As the game is currently in early access beta, and we wanted to get the base game out there for players to provide us with feedback, we realize that with only one game mode out there the main concern of the players is that there is not enough content. This is why we decided to continue development with working on a new game mode called Exploration. We decided to postpone developing the hardcore mode as this is just more options for the same game mode and doesn't provide much extra content.
The Exploration Mode will turn the game in to a light RPG where you can build up fortresses, assault enemy fortresses, build camps, craft armor and weapons and plunder resource caches of the conquered camps and fortresses. Along with features like acquiring experience and reputation, trading with friendly camps for resources and defending your camps from rogue exile attacks.
Meanwhile we will also keep on expanding on the storyline we have in mind to develop the Campaign mode later on!
While we do recommend waiting until August for the price drop before buying the game, it is highly appreciated if you buy the game now at its full price of 14.99 euro / 17.99 dollar to support development of the huge new features!
Please note that the price will gradually go up again after we implement more game modes and features!
Thanks everyone for waiting and our apologies for the inconvenience!
Rebel Camp Games
Forests of Augusta is now released in Early Access!
We did a lot of bug fixing and improvements to the game since our first beta testers provided us with bug reports and feedback! We feel like the game mode that is currently included in the Early Access version of the game is in a polished state.
We wanted to release the current game mode for the public so we have a lot of players playing the game. The basic game mode has to become very polished based on feedback of the majority of players before we continue adding new game modes like a hardcore mode, an exploration mode, a campaign and chaos modes.
Thanks again to everyone involved in making this game a reality and thanks to everyone else for waiting!
Happy Hunting!
Rebel Camp Games