Fallen Enchantress at two weeks

Fallen Enchantress has now been out two weeks. So far, we’ve sold about 50,000 units (give or take).  This is somewhat below Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion but, obviously, far far ahead of War of Magic during the same time frame. 

The biggest obstacle has been reviews.  It’s hard for niche titles (and make no mistake, fantasy turn-based PC games are niche) to get coverage. There’s only so many reviewers to go around and the last thing we want is a drive by (i.e. rushed) review.

Tomorrow or Thursday we expect to release v1.01 which has a long list of fixes and tweaks that we’ve found. Probably the most obvious change will be performance which dramatically improved.

The Map Pack

We will be releasing our first-ever DLC for a Stardock game.  It’ll be an interesting experiment to see what the demand is.  Paul Boyer and I have designed a series of hand crafted maps that will be going up for sale in a week or two for $4.99.  If sales of this are strong, we’ll look at doing additional DLC packs.  A game like Fallen Enchantress lends itself to content centric DLC and so we’re anxious to see what people are interested in.

The Expansion

We have an expansion planned for early next year. I won't spoil it except to say that it’s going to re-design the way champions are handled in the game. We want the game to generally move towards the power of your champions be a reflection of the power of your civilization.

After the expansion, Stardock will look at where things stand.  We have 3 game development teams at Stardock.  One is on “Game X”, One is FE related stuff, and one is on mobile game development.   Since we’re not likely to get as many reviews as we’d like, we’re going to be relying heavily on word of mouth.

Version 1.1

We very much want to do a pre-Christmas update to FE.  That version will be heavily AI and balance focused based on player feedback. We’ll have more details of that as we get closer. Right now, we’re focusing on getting v1.01 out the door.

What...do I do?

Despite only a handful of reviews (average review score 4/5), it is in the top list of games being played by Steam even though the people most likely to buy this type of game got it for free as a non-Steam game (so it won’t count). 

I think it’s safe to say that Fallen Enchantress is the start of a beautiful new fantasy game world.

I'm writing this with my brand-new Microsoft Surface.  The best way to describe it is that Surface is to tablets what the Zune was to music players. It's not terrible but the $500 device has nothing to recommend for it.

As a notebook device, it's certainly better than the iPad. It supports multiple users. It supports mice (and on-screen mouse cursors). In short, you could realistically use this device as a very very light work machine.  In theory. It comes with a Windows RT version of Office Preview which works adequately, if slowly.

Ironically, it's as a tablet where it falls down. I always assumed that the "Metro" experience would shine on a tablet. It doesn't. It's annoying and perplexing even there. Give me the option of having the charms bar up all the time and the specific app bar up all the time and it would be much more tolerable. I really don't like having to swipe at the screen in just the right way to get options to display. Getting around the Metro experience is a chore, even as a touch device.

It's very frustrating, at times, to navigate around Metro. I'm still new with I accidentally closed my editor because I was trying to switch to another tab (Which you do by swiping down from the top and selecting the tab). However, if you swipe too far down, it closes the app. Bam. Gone. 

What's worse is the app selection is pitiful. Don't even think about using Office apps as a pure tablet. It's very frustration trying to use what is clearly a Win32 port with a touch screen. It does much better once you've sat down, hooked up a mouse, and started working with a real keyboard. The situation with Modern UI apps (which I'm just going to keep calling Metro) is even worse. The included ones are slow. Very slow. I also couldn't find decent third party apps that I'd use. If there's a Pulse/Flipboard quality RSS reader for WinRT I haven't found it yet. There just isn't that much to do with it.

The form factor also makes it an awkward tablet. It's very long (or wide, depending on how you look at it). It's also quite heavy. Too heavy to want to use as a tablet for an extended period of time.

Getting more apps for it is also painful. The Windows Store is terrible. As anyone who has used Windows 8's store knows, it's an assault on the eyes. Lots of multi colored blocks that tell you nothing about the app. It's just very hard to find things.

The Unopening:

Here's my friend Paul (former guest on PowerUser.tv) trying it out.

Just a few points to take home from this from my notes:

The Bad:

1. Note Facebook app
2. No bundled Twitter app
3. No bundled RSS app
4. Apps load extremely slow
5. Very hard to navigate around
6. Too easy to unload things entirely
7. Too heavy to use for an extended period of time as a plain tablet
8. It's ergonomically inferior as a tablet
9. The Office port is embarrassingly half-assed
10. Lack of app selection makes it hard to justify using vs. an iPad or Android device.
11. UI usability lacks a lot of polish, awkward to use at times
12. You cannot use this as a laptop (the stand requires a desk)

The Good:

1. The mouse and on screen cursor is a huge win.
2. It's actually a pretty decent notebook PC if you buy the upgraded keyboard.
3. The screen isn't bad.

Overall, for $599 it's not a bad little notebook PC. But I can't imagine why anyone would want to use this as a tablet versus its competitors unless you have some specific enterprise need for multiple users and superior security.

Grade: 
  Hardware: B
  Software: D

Update:

I am really digging the form factor. It's replaced my MacBook Air for light computing. But it's pretty mediocre as a tablet. It's a light PC.

To help encourage modders, we should put up some links to modding resources and popular mods.

Use this post to make requests for what should be stickied.

Thanks!

If you have Windows 8 and want the Start menu back, the single best way is to use Start8.

www.stardock.com/products/start8

We've added a section on WinCustomize.zom where modders can upload and manage their FE mods.

If there's sufficient interest (i.e. sufficient content uploaded) we'll integrate the gallery into the game.

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/elemental_fallen_enchantress

It’s a mad house! A MAD HOUSE!

I can feel your anger.

Prince Ari, turns out to be, Aladin!

I…don’t know what this is. Journey?

You gotta find that paw print!

She is in charge of our health care insurance.

The marketing team is ready!

Awesome

This costume is so good that I actually don’t recognize who this is.

Just very disturbing.

Oh Kael. Why? WHY?

Eternal September refers to when the Internet became open to everyone to participate on (1993). Our communications capability has grown at an amazing rate since then. I marvel daily at all the things that are possible, just 20 years later, thanks to the Internet. At the same time, I cringe at the ugliness that the Internet has created in humans that was not previously possible.

There was a study, the link escapes me, that shows that the Internet allows like minded people to essentially isolate themselves from different points of view. A different study showed that people who discuss things that upset them with others end up becoming more upset.  The combination of these two factors result in people who are very angry and whose anger is reinforced by their isolated communities.

I purposely try to spend time on other communities – particularly ones where I don’t have any moderation power.  The Stardock and Neowin communities are very active, rich and fun places. But I make a point not to focus all my attention there because I don’t want to be lulled into a false sense that my opinions equate to some sort of universal truth.

But most people (i.e. normal people) don’t have the time to spread their activity across multiple Internet communities. The predictable result is that people are having their opinions reinforced by like minded participants and are increasing angry at those who don’t share their world views.

The problem I run into, one that wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago, is that people mistake their opinions as “truth”.  And it’s getting worse with no end in sight.

It does not bode well for the future.

At work I have an nVidia card which lets me set all kinds of goodies on the card for games.

At home I have an ATI card.  I have the ATI Control Center (which uses Stardock DirectSkin btw), but I can't tell where I can set up Vsync and such. Anyone know how to do this?

Thanks!