Avencast: Rise of the Mage Wrap Report

Areas for Improvement

Tri Do Dinh: Adding multiplayer to the game. Having people going toe to toe against each other with their mages or fighting hordes of demons cooperatively sounds like a lot of fun, but unfortunately, that's something we couldn't manage to get into the final product. The idea of adding multiplayer through a patch or an expansion is floating around, but that's not certain, so we'd rather not make a promise we may not keep.

As a part of the development process that we'd like to improve, I think there's still the possibility of making our work more focused. It got better in the end, but in the beginning, we had the terrible habit of working without really knowing what we actually wanted to achieve, which resulted in us wasting a lot of precious time going in wrong directions. Having a clear idea of what goals you want to achieve during development and constantly keeping your eye on those goals is really important for developing a game, but it's so easy to get distracted or feel lazy.

Lessons Learned

Tri Do Dinh: Developing a game is way, way, way more work than you'd initially think. As a gamer you can neglect a lot of the details, but as a developer you pretty much have to conquer every single bit all by yourself. There's simply nothing that you can just leave out and forget about; you're the one who's making it after all. So next time around, we had better make sure to treat time schedules with the proper respect. :)

Quality assurance, quality assurance, quality assurance. It's important, don't forget about it, period.

The game industry is a tough place, and you simply have to be realistic enough about it. Unless you are really lucky, money isn't going to rain down from the sky, and no matter how romantic your conception of development is, it's a business, and decisions are made accordingly.

Audience Response

Tri Do Dinh: At the beginning, there was plenty of healthy skepticism. Avencast was quickly labeled as just another Diablo clone, only not as good. Once the details about the gameplay emerged, attention rose, but the opinions were still quite reserved. I think it started to change once the first footage was released and people were able to get an impression what it was actually like.

There were plenty of positive surprises when they finally got hands-on experience through the demo or play tests. It's still a little bit early, but the feedback after release has been pretty positive so far - one reviewer was even willing to say it's the best action RPG he has played so far - and we sort of slipped into the role of the small underdog that came out of nowhere to mingle with the other big budget games.

But of course, Avencast is nowhere near perfect, and we acknowledge all the criticisms that have been made. We certainly want to improve if we ever get to make another game like this. As for expansions or sequels, the idea is floating around, but nothing is decided, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Personal Thoughts

Tri Do Dinh: There's actually an old so-called "alpha-demo" of Avencast floating around somewhere in the infinite depths of the internet. It's a small one we released early on, not knowing it would haunt us for the rest of our lives. It's old, it's horrible and as unrepresentative of the final game as it gets, but if you want to have a chuckle and see the progress we made, you might want to dig it up for a comparison. Thinking about it, I hope it doesn't get downloaded too much and people start mistaking it as current...

For me personally, developing the game was one of the defining experiences of my working life. To see where we started and where we ended up after four years seems like a journey that would rival climbing Mount Everest equipped only in underpants. We laughed a lot, cursed a lot, and learned a lot. Plenty of stories to tell, but unfortunately, you wouldn't understand any of them unless you where actually there, so I'll leave it at that and thank RPG Vault for its support and attention. :)

Also, keep an eye out for our player contest. People who have played the most recent demo will have the chance to submit their player scores from the Hall of Fame to win some really awesome prizes sponsored by Creative. There will also be a random draw for those players who didn't score the highest, but tried their best.

Tri Do Dinh

Game Designer and Lead Animator, Avencast: Rise of the Mage

ClockStone Software

Michael Schiestl

Lead Programmer, Avencast: Rise of the Mage

CEO, ClockStone Software

Wrap Reports are intended to complement reviews by providing a post-release viewpoint we seldom see, that of the developer and/or publisher. Since introducing this format in November of 2003, we have had the pleasure to publish quite a few, primarily within the RPG and online world categories, with selected action and strategy games also represented. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.