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[Gantolandon]

I think the main problem was the "oh look now this unit can shoot fireballs out of his arm, let's make 10 videos and tell the world about it" approach to the development. Basically they developed some really nice elements and focused on them while totally ignoring other key elements.

But seriously, this is a problem with many indie game developers - they think ambitious, but their design sucks and they tend to not care about QA very much. Large companies also do this sometimes, but their games are usually somewhat simpler and they usually concentrate on elements which are not so easy to fail.

I used to be really enthusiastic about every complicated strategy game I heard about. Now I just shrug, because usually I can be sure that those great, revolutionary functionalities will be halfway implemented and riddled with bugs on the day of launch.

[Neonivek]

Other indie developers are quite the opposite. They have stupidly simple gameplay and just flash "We're indie" infront of you until you buy it. I've already lived through the days of very simple games.

Then there are others with ravenous fans who like the game despite its faults and will absolutely unfairly advertise it to people. Often giving it qualities, or not telling you its faults, until you buy it.

Better yet, say ONE bad thing about that game... and the fanbase will eat you alive even if it was fair.

As for "Ambitous with sucky design" I think Overgrowth may very well fall under that.

MIND YOU Indie is a worthless statement anyway when it comes to game quality.

[RF]

It's really sad because both aspects of Elemental that I view as leading to the complete destruction of it (they were trying to do "Crusader Kings in a fantasy setting" and "updated Master of Magic" at the same time) would've been awesome on their own. Seriously, I would buy both of those games.

Most people are just going to write it off as "worthless" now, though, and they'll never get made.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's incredibly sad they couldn't even remake Master of Magic. I mean I was actually sad about this, and I don't get that way about games.

[LoSboccacc]

it is not a easy task to remake master of magic at today standards.

the game by itself was huge, with many corner case rules and special units and kind of out of rule events to accommodate spells and such, and then it had an extremely quirky interface with almost random commands to do stuff and to get information and to select units and to set mana levels.

the complexity of the rules itself ported to a modern engine is already a mess on it's own, as we gamer of today expect a full res graphics, and that means effects can not just be shown with a colorized contour to units and some glitter and the background generic effect for area spell like lightening and such.

add on that the necessity of cleaning up the interface to modern point and click standards and the recipe for an extremely painful and long development is done.

and that's probably why a MoM clone is better of as an indie*: make the first release at indie level and then work your way up to civilization 4 interface.

* and by indie I don't mean bug ridden, I mean a game full of content and fun but with that somewhat quirky control and wonky animations that are the result of tight budget and shortcuts.

cutting content and quality for graphics left fans disenhearted and buyers skeptic. the first reviews were extremely negative for the overall quality of the finished product and in a age where game polish is very high even mediocre to good production suffers, let alone rushed and pushed releases as this one.   

[Fikes]

All of those things are simply part of the development process, LoSBoccac, regardless of if you are remaking an old game or making a brand new one. It isn't like they would go through the code line by line and change things, they would create a new engine (or use an old one) and drop the stats in place.

As for the whole indie studio debate, obviously there is no cut and dried rule for how indie companies go. Bay12 has probably the largest project overgrowth and is still getting along fine. Derek Yu on the other hand, created probably one of the simpliest indy projects I play regularly and he... did fine.

[LoSboccacc]

sure, but those are the usual suspect when it comes to bad cost estimation.

[nenjin]

It wasn't about cost estimation. It was just about over estimation, period. Brad wanted a new game, new engine, he wanted a game that incorporated the best of other games like MoM and Dom 3.....but it's like he executed as a puppet master, pulling his team's strings to get what he wanted done without a ton of direct involvement. (Read his dev logs, it's all "Working on AI today. Oh look at this shiny thing my art guys made!"

The thing about the old games is this: the teams were tiny. There was communication. Everyone was on the same page and good ideas flourished and became great game play. Elemental, on the other hand, had all the problems of a modern, major dev team. Lack of communication, compartmentalization, half-assed things getting green lighted because of time and pressure....topped off with a CEO who had dreams equal to his lack of executive oversight.

Saying Elemental failed because of bad cost evaluation is like saying the Iraq War was difficult because of all the damn sand. I'm in the middle of a 4 day Dominions 3 bender and after two games I still can't get enough. That's the level of fun and quality (jesus, just compare the lore of the civilizations between the two) that Elemental aped and failed to execute.

[lordcooper]

There's been an update or two since this thread died.  Does anyone know if it's actually worth playing yet?

[nenjin]

I haven't played it with any of the updates since I posted. They overhauled the population/specialist thing again, along with more memory leak and crash fixes. I think the game is almost completely stable now. Gameplay hasn't made a sizable leap forward though. Nor will it, not with half of their attention on Fallen Enchantress. They're still largely re-arranging Elemental with what's there trying to get balance to a satisfactory point.

[lordcooper]

I'm yet to actually play this, mainly because I see a lot of potential in it and want to experience the game at it's best.  Do you think I'd be better off getting it now, waiting for Fallen Enchantress, or simply writing it off?

[nenjin]

FE will be a different game than Elemental. In FE you're going to get much less 4x goodness, and more "party of heroes doing stuff" action. So, if you want to play the 4x game of Elemental at its best, now is probably as good any time. It's not going too much farther in the long term I think.

When FE goes gold, Elemental might be cheaper then. I'm actually getting a free copy of it for having bought Elemental....but I find it hard to get excited about that.

[SeaBee]

I'm actually getting a free copy of it for having bought Elemental....but I find it hard to get excited about that.

You aren't alone.

[RF]

Hey, guys, guess who I learnt never to buy games off again?

[lordcooper]

Hey, guys, guess who I learnt never to buy games off again?

That old bloke in the trenchcoat?