Hi Everyone, I've been been silent for a long time. But it's because me and Mark Levin have been working on a new game. For those of you who don't know me and Mark, we are former Freeverse guys who did such games as Top Gun and Warpgate. Merchant to the Stars is our all new game. You are a simple merchant where all the RPG heroes come to your shop to buy new weapons and sell what they find in dungeons. Buy all their loot (of different rarities), upgrade it and try to sell it back to the right hero so he can find better loot. Wash rinse repeat! The entire game is procedurally generated, with Millions of items in the game. The game is Universal, has Game Center and you can post the procedurally generated stories of the heroes to Facebook. (Video says available now, but it's a sneak preview, goes live on Thursday) Oh one last thing. The game is $.99 and has NO IAP. Hit me up with questions, comments, etc... And you can follow me on twitter @hippiemanx
I'll grab a copy, for sure. Looks cool and I actually was waiting for this. Wish it were Thursday already.
I'm really glad we can finally break cover on this; it's exciting to release a finished, focused game. No roadblocks, no tricks, no clever strategy to drip-feed more money out of the player, just a fun idea and all the variations I could build on top of that. Can't wait until everyone can play it!
Very original plot! Didn't know you're an ex-Freeverse. Jared FTW! (Used to have it in my old Mac, and even transcripted the letter!). Waiting for this game.
Glad to see a Jared fan! I did the Jared app for iPhone also. I love the reviews on it in the App Store. Its either a 5 star or a 1 star, nothing in between.
I always wondered what happened to all that loot that I sold off in RPGs. Cool idea guys - best wishes on a great launch for the game. Do you have a release day ritual?
The president of the Merchant's Guild will appear in front of the App Store and cut the ribbon with a Barbed Steel Rapier.
I like to curl up into a ball in the corner and cry to myself. For the most part it's just cross fingers and hope for the best.
If anyone would find it interesting, it is really different releasing a new app when you are a 2 man shop vs when Freeverse was around. There's a lot of freedom in doing it on your own like this. Mark and I just were able to work on the game as long as it took. We didn't have to conform the game to fit any kind of marketing research data. I"m sure some focus group would hate the name, or the 1990s 3DO look we gave the UI. But we set out to make the game we wanted. It started with Mark's brilliance, and I just stepped in where I could to help, without hurting the gameplay.
Ah, looking at this makes me wish there were plans to bring the iconic RPG-item-store-owner-sim Recettear to iOS.
We were already working on this when we found out about Recettear. We are very different in design and how our systems work. That said, Recettear is an awesome game.
There's only a few hours until Merchant to the Stars is released. I'm so excited. I haven't done a paid indie game in a long long time. I hope at 99 cents it won't turn some people away.
You never know what's going to happen, but I hope other people like it. I'm very intrigued by it. The idea is really cool! Good luck with the launch! I'll let you know my impressions when I play it.
