General information:
Isekaing is a parody musical adventure\vn mix, with some RPG elements. Project originally started as a bunch of comedic sketches within the game engine, and slowly evolved, gaining story, better visuals and original songs (because I always liked musicals and wanted to make a musical game).
Unfortunately, this game is not for everyone. There are no combat except two scenes needed for the story. Most of the time you will listen to dialogues or songs, and sometimes – look for stuff or solve a few easy puzzles. So people who require a lot of action to enjoy the game should probably avoid it.
No money or not sure if it's worth it? Do not worry, because you will have the ability to play my game anyway. Alongside Steam release I prepared a special "Black Flag edition" version of the game that you can find on ITCH and certain torrents. And since i am the game's creator, then it should not count as unauthorized use and not break this subreddit's rules. It is exactly the same as the base game, except for a little surprise (nothing malicious, just a bit of extra content).
Why I am doing this? I was pirating games since I were a kid due to my mother being poor. Now I am even more poor than she was, and rarely can afford to buy a game. But gaming always was one of the few good things in my life, and probably one of the reasons why I am still living. Also, I have a strong belief that every person on this planet should have access to art regardless of their financial situation.
This is why I made all my previous games completely free, and why I am making a free version of my first commercial game today. You have no money, or not sure if it’s worth it? Go ahead and try it for free, you can always buy it later in case if you like it. And if you will help spread it on other torrent sites (since I mostly use local ones and hardly know global ones) so more people will be able to try it out – I will be very grateful for that, since my main goal is not to earn, but to make people laugh and have a good time. And if some of them will decide to pay me back – they know where to look.
Good stuff:
So what makes this game special? Humor. Here, you can expect to find unrelentless satire similar to South Park, where everything and anything can and will be made fun of, mixed with absurd humor similar to Deponia, where no logic or reason will stand in the way of our heroes, and spiced up with a bit of dark humor on top. Majority of the jokes are aimed at RPG games (both pc and tabletop), but other genres present as well as movies, anime, books, and even some of the real-world events. I tried to keep the main story funny without any additional knowledge, but there are a TON of easter eggs for the keen eye to notice. Be warned, though - jokes here don't walk on eggshells, and are not for easily offended people.
On top of that there will be music. There are 53 total tracks in game’s soundtrack, 18 of them have lyrics (others are BGM), and 11 of them are in the game (7 remaining ones are either bonus tracks or alternative versions). Funny, sad, epic, melancholic or lively – I did not focus on specific mood or genre and tried to give each character a unique song that would reflect the personality. Was I successful with that? It’s up for you to decide. Also you can use soundtrack for your projects without asking me, just don’t forget to credit.
It’s not all sunshine and giggles though. There are… moderately dark moments in the game. Nothing extreme or gory, but the "grimdark" tag are there for a reason. For me it just felt that I reached good level of contrast between game not taking itself seriously and suddenly adding the heat to the drama boiler. Also I am really sick of "sterile" characters that plagued modern gamedev, when even villains can't have certain personality traits because they considered taboo. Overall, the game's atmosphere kinda reflects my current realities, when I just wave my hand towards another shahed drone flying over my house, and resuming development process because game will not make itself. I feel like if things are bad - it's a lot better to joke about it instead of being consumed by sadness, and that drama goes well along with comedy.
Bad stuff:
The game is short, and, while I tried my best to avoid that – sometimes not very impressive visually. I am a writer, without ability to program or draw, so I focused my skills on parts where it made the biggest difference. It does not mean that I ignored the rest – I spent weeks on creating certain scenes, months to make songs sound perfectly, and once even entire day just to make elevator doors open, and close after character walks in.
VA in certain places is less than ideal and there might be typos (the ones that evaded many tests) and sometimes – unusual phrase structure due to my imperfect English skill.
Since game were originally just a bunch of comedy sketches, story here is a bit of afterthought. It should be entertaining enough for it's genre, but do not expect some kind of masterpiece from it. As a writer, it makes me a bit sad, but i had only enough resourses to focus on one thing, and since i already did serious stories before - this time i chose the humor to challenge my limits.
Considering all that I decided to focus on quality instead of quantity, reducing game’s total length in order to make it look and sound better. Removing the combat was also a difficult decision, but default combat are probably bored everyone to death already, and since I could not make a better one – I decided that having no combat is better than bad combat, and have less characters and songs, but make them sound good.
Overall, it’s still an indie game with lots of stuff that could be better, but you can expect a certain level of quality that places it above majority of RM games. But quantity suffered because of that.
About development:
I started making those sketches years ago – mostly as an effort to force myself to do at least something positive and not give into depression deeper. When my country were attacked and everything became even more of a shitshow than it usually is, I felt bad and completely forgot about the project (well, only few scenes with mostly placeholder assets), as well as temporarily lost interest to creation. Then I was busy making deeply personal project that nobody would care about because I felt like I will not make another game anymore.
But nearly year ago, during the previous autumn I finally found antidepressants that had a bit of effect on me, and felt desire to create again. Even more – I dared to step into the parody genre that I have zero experience with, even despite the fact that my sense of humor was often considered weird by people I interacted with, and that games of this genre are considered as extreme niche.
Somewhere in the middle of the development I thought "hey, I like the musicals, and always wanted to make one… so why not do it now? ". And just like that I switched to writing and implementing songs – one of the cool aspects of solo dev is that you can dramatically alter your project because you want to. And that made my game even more niche because musicals are a genre that are as much rare as parody. People told me that I am crazy to even considering doing something like that. And I agreed with them, but it’s not the first time I swim against the current.
While i developed this game solo, i were not alone. With help of my friend I once again learned basic photoshopping to increase quality of the visuals. Then, kind person from reddit offered help with Steam publishing, and another person from steam forum helped solve technical problems i faced. Also, I am really grateful for all people from official RM forum who helped me with code, resources and advise. This game would not be made without help of all of those people.
This year were also crazy so far. At the start of it I had to give up on playing anything or development of this game would be very, very long, and considering what’s going on around me I wasn’t sure that I have a lot of time. Only once I made a day off for myself to visit the beach and swim for a while. I went through remaking some of the locations and songs from scratch because I was not satisfied with the output. Got new illnesses, lost some of my cats, faced lots of legal issues regarding Steam publishing, and failed even promotional attempt that I tried, yet here I am… releasing the game only a few months later than planned. At least i still can get things done.
And I had a lot of fun bringing this world to life, once again seeing how scenes that previously existed only in my mind are taking shape, sometimes even exactly as I wanted them to be.
I think this is everything you should know about my game, but if you have any other questions – you can ask here. And if not, I hope that you will have as much fun as I had while making this game for you.