Invisible Fist
-50%!
Invisible Fist storms to capitalist markets next Monday, 6th May
See you on Monday!
Invisible Fist is coming soon!
We are getting to the finish line with our crowdfunding for Invisible Fist!
Most probably, we won't unlock any stretch goals. Of course, we would have liked it to be different, but making our first Kickstarter campaign we were open to the notion of failing. It's in our name, after all.
There's still time to join us in the production of Invisible Fist. It's just three days, but all the funds help us make a better game.
Anyway, in the possibility of us not collecting the basic sum on Kickstarter, nothing bad really happens - we are finishing the game anyway, and are doing a lot of progress lately! Just check out these screenshots.
Stress-related disorders in action
More particles! Moaaar!
I know this guy from somewhere...
Debt mechanics. To chill, you have to pay, baby. And if you overdraw, you will get additional stress every turn!
Trailer Park Girls!
The things we do to survive...
We added two new characters and their cards, graphics, and now we are also adding their stories. They still need proofreading, but we are happy with what we have and eager to show you in just a few weeks!
We are working hard to finish the game in April, but there might be some issues that will make us hold back a little bit longer. We are hopefully talking days, maybe a week. After 1.5 years of developing Invisible Fist, we are probably the ones that want to see it published as soon as possible!
Kickstarter and development news!
That's said, we could obviously do more. There are still people there who are thinking about supporting us, so if we're talking about YOU - now is a good time to back!
No, seriously. We are just a month from publishing the game, the timeline right now looks solid and we are not really afraid of any problems. They obviously can happen, but the timeline is solid and let's stick to the things we can control.
As for the development update - we recently added new cards for Rena and Dian Hua, and are putting both characters into the game. Exciting time, especially if you, like us, played only as Jeff. In our case, for every day for the last year. Everyone in the team is ripe for a change of scenery, especially since we are very happy with the results. Anyway, check out some sample basic cards for Rena:
Well, we all have to manage somehow.
The last month of development is also very important from the polishing point of view - we are adding visual feedback, both as an exclamation mark for mechanics and just for fun. Just take a look at these gentle parallaxes in the background while moving the mouse over the screen:
Parallaxes. What every game needs™
See you soon!
Game Developers Conference
(Funnily enough, it coincides with the start of the Kickstarter, so we're not getting any sleep whatsoever. Come, part with your money in style!)
Since we are in the motherhood of Late Capitalism, our Creative Director got himself a photo to immortalize this grand moment.
We are showcasing the game wherever we can, and get great feedback from developers of much bigger and popular titles, which leaves us both humbled and motivated.
(The game was also tested in hazardous conditions of GDC parties.)
It seems people genuinely love it. We also got a ton of valuable feedback. We would also love to get some feedback from you, so don’t be afraid of spamming the comments section.
We hope to come back to you with a bigger update after the GDC, so stay tuned!
Kickstarter and where we at
It’s been a hectic few months at Failcore. We are so focused on developing Invisible Fist that we had to cut out all other activities – including writing a regular devlog. I’ve came to a conclusion that it can’t be really treated as an unnecessary activity – even though only a handful of people now have access to the demo, it will soon change, and we would love to make you all part of this crazy process called game-development.
So, let’s start with some exciting news. We are coming to Kickstarter in a few days! Kickstarter is a thing we discussed from the very beginning of Invisible Fist development, but had many reservations – should we really stretch the budget? What if people won’t participate?
Well, the last one is a big one. I have to admit that trying to stand out in the cluttered games market, especially with our first game, proves harder that it seemed at the beginning. We’ve got a lot of cool press from the US, Poland, Spain, Russia and Czech Republic, as we presented the game during Games for Impact event, and even won Grand Prix award at one of the Polish expos!
We’ve won a fancy award at the Warsaw Games Show! Yay!
We’ve showcased Invisible Fist on Games for Impact.
Alas, having some PR just doesn’t seem to be good enough. I could start talking about the new way of publishing games that everyone can participate in from the very beginning and create hundreds of YouTube videos, but for now, let’s just say we still have a lot of work to do if we want people to see our game.
So, the Kickstarter. We probably wouldn’t do it if not for Alexis Kennedy (Weather Factory, Cultist Simulator), who pushed us a little bit in this direction. It’s happening! We are cautiously optimistic, having set a really low goal and some reasonable stretch goals. We mostly treat KS as a way of promoting the game and letting in people who may not be big gamers but still want to keep an eye on the project. And lastly, there are some things that will not be possible for us in terms of our budget but could make the game better, so if we are able to collect the funds, we will implement it.
It will happen in the next few days or so; so, stay tuned for more info!
As for the game itself, we’ve done a lot of changes in the past few months.
– We had to let go of some of the people in Failcore. Monthly payroll got too big for our limited budget and we did not have any other choice. The good news is, we are still friends and we helped them find new jobs. This is never easy, even more in a case when you like someone and they are doing a good job, but it was probably the best way we could do that in these circumstances. Natalie, Wojtek, Maciek – thanks for your great work – we miss you guys!
– We’ve moved from one programmer in Failcore to an outsourced software-house and this was a great decision. A lot of our ideas waited months to be implemented into the game, and with more senior people tackling the issues, we were finally able to bring the game closer to our dreams. It’s still not perfect as we have a lot of work yet to do, but we are really happy with the results.
– We’ve introduced new mechanics to make the game more challenging and have a deeper gameplay. I think this is a big one. Since the beginning, we only had the Anti-capitalistic / Late Capitalism theme in minds. We were searching for long for the game genre and finally settled to Card Game. As we found out, there’s a big difference between being a player of Magic The Gathering, Hearthstone or Slay The Spire (even a pro-gamer one) and designing a card game from scratch. This is a point that’s most expressed in terms of negative critique of the game – even though theme, stories and graphics stand out, the mechanics are not deep enough for the category’s fans. We have taken this issue very seriously and we made a lot of progress in the last few months. We are still working on the balance, since most of the card game players find it too easy, but we are on a good way to do that. Additionally, Kickstarter will let us dive even deeper into the mechanics. Right now, we added:
– Special Cards for every character – these are your typical synergistic cards that create powerful combos and let you take change of the course of the gameplay by introducing new strategies.
– Critical hits when you fill up the whole 24 hours in a day. It gives you a 20% chance of dealing critical damage to the hand by requiring you to prioritize playing more around your stress and just playing the same cards over and over.
– Stress-related disorders – that’s a completely new one. Previously, you could linger in the “Panicked” stress tier for as long as you wanted, and the only punishment was that all card cost 2 hours more to play. Now, every day you go to sleep with the highest stress you have a chance of developing a disorder that will dramatically change your gameplay. You can become depressed, delusional or suicidal among others. Even though they are negative, they will push you to adapt your playstyle, adding more strategies to the gameplay.
Ok, this could go much longer than that, but we would love to stay in contact with you and get into discussion with more frequent pieces in terms of development, so we have to keep some stuff for the next devlog. Stay tuned for the next issue of the devlog and in the meanwhile, hit us with any questions you have!
Don't forget to join our Discord channel!
Last chance to become a tester!
We have some very exciting news.
For the last few weeks, the development speed boosted almost as fast as the rise of inequality in Late Capitalism.
We're really happy with how the game begins to look and play and we would love to share it with you!
During the next few days, we will be sending keys to youtubers and press, so hopefully, you will hear more on the changes from them.
But if you want to try it yourself, that the last chance! We still are open for testers. Just join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/MJJvvgW - and we will send you the Alpha Build.
We hope you have an amazing time,
Failcore
Join us on Discord to get your Invisible Fist ID!
Join us on our Discord to get all the news first, become a tester and get your own ID!
We have our first winners!
Join us on our Discord to get all the news first, become a tester and get your own ID!
Weekly Discord challenges
We are starting our brand new shiny series of weekly competitions! The rules are not rocket science. Sorry, Elon!
1) Join our Discord channel - https://discordapp.com/invite/MJJvvgW
2) Send us your photo and a short description (as in the example of one of our games characters, Rena) and we will choose one and magically create YOUR OWN ID CARD (with the hands of our unpaid interns).
Ready? Set. GO! 🔫🏁