Laura Bow 3 (was Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex)

[Tawmis]

No real LB update, so I am too lazy to post and bb code all the links. So here's a pdf of it.

[Rath Darkblade]

Let's cut to the chase. I'm guessing there won't be much of an LB update until NineZyme can find a sponsor to make them more financially secure, hm? "Tile Tales: Pirate" seems like it's a less financially risky venture.

(Of course, I know nothing at all about the gaming industry - backing, finance, development etc... but it seems less risky to me, because there's a bigger market for it, perhaps? Much as it might pain us to admit it, LB and adventure games in general are a niche market, and have been for some time. "Tile Tales" and similar have a bigger slice of the pie.

I may be wrong, of course, and if I am, please feel free to correct me!)

[Tawmis]

I am assuming in order to keep the "company" and their "employees" paid and afloat - they need to work on other games, and sell them while they wait on Laura Bow 3 to become closer to reality.

[Tawmis]

Spooktacular Holiday Season

Hello again NineZymer's... It's time for another monthly status update! The holiday season is upon us, and things are moving fast (too fast, some days). We hope that everyone is doing well out there, and that you all have some exciting, fun, or just relaxing things planned for the remainer of the year.

We've got some exciting and interesting things to chat about today, so let's not waste any time, and get straight into it...
The GamerFest Reveal!

If you recall from last month, our big event for October was that we attended GamerFest Dublin, and brought along both games with us for their first significant public viewings... Tile Tales: Pirate and Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex.

This was our first proper conference appearance, with a tiny but cozy booth to show off what we've been working on since we started this thing. The event, overall, attracted about 25-30k people... which isn't huge as far as gaming conferences go, but still quite substantial for the tiny island of Ireland.

We were there for two full days, and overall we'd say that it was really successful! The reception to both games was very positive. We received a lot of supportive words and feedback, and people seem to be really looking forward to playing them move extensively! We definitely made some new fans, friends, and acquaintances during our time there... and we hope that those people will share in the vision of what we're building, and help us spread the word to other gamers out there.

One of the most interesting take-aways from the event was that there was very little overlap in audience between our games. Almost everyone strongly preferred one or the other, sharing little interest in both. I mean, they are very different experiences... but they do both share a narrative style to them, with a bright and appealing art style (which seems rare these days, if compared with the other games on display at the event). Regardless, we view this as a good sign! As a super tiny indie developer... putting all of our eggs into a single basket is a risky proposition. So if we can have a broader range of products out there, then we are more likely to be able to survive long term, if any particular one doesn't do as well as the others. At least, that's the theory.

The two ladies playing, in the picture above, both had their distinct preferences. The lady on the left played through nearly the entire first environment of Tile Tales: Pirate, and previewed a couple of the further areas. And the one on the right sat at our booth for 2 straight hours playing Laura Bow, and absolutely loved it. She wasn't even a classic point-and-click gamer - and said that she would have stayed longer, except that she encountered a bug which prevented her from continuing longer, unfortunately. That bodes well for both games!

Anyway, we could go on about the fantastic people who stopped to play or chat for a while, but we've probably said enough on the topic at this point. So let's move on to some EVEN BIGGER NEWS!
Big Booty Alert!!

Want to play Tile Tales: Pirate!? Well... you're in luck! We are planning to release the game in November on Apple and Android devices.

That's right! The game is releasing THIS MONTH!

We have fully wrapped up the swamp set of puzzles! This gives us six entire environments to guide our little pirate through... and we are planning to do an additional three more areas which we will periodically release over the next six-ish months (for no additional cost), to continue the Pirate's adventure.

Also, during that time... we will be preparing the releases on other platforms. The Steam (page here) release will be next (perhaps by the end of the year), followed by Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Playstation. We will also try to get onto GOG (if they ever respond to us), and perhaps a few other smaller stores/platforms.

As soon as the game is ready to go on the various platforms, we will send out a "special notice" newsletter to make a short announcement and provide a purchase link. So keep an eye out for it! We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it. It's a very unique game, and we really believe in it!
Yet Another Mystery

Not much movement on Laura Bow lately... We're still in touch with Microsoft, and trying to push our partnership with them over the line - but it's very slow going. Might have to pull out the big guns again soon. We'll see. Anyway, if there is any real official news, it will likely come from Microsoft first (not from us here)... so keep an eye on their press releases. However, we'll of course share a link to it, if/when it happens.

Regardless, we are hoping to jump back into the project for a while after getting Tile Tales: Pirate out the door this month - we need a little break from tile puzzle brainstorming, haha! So we plan to do some script work, fix a bunch of bugs that appeared in our GamerFest demo, upgrade things, incorporate some new systems that we made for Tile Tales: Pirate, publish the Steam page, and just generally make more progress on getting an official demo up for people to play.

We're very much looking forward to building more of the mystery!

[Rath Darkblade]

Tile Tales is on Steam! Go grab it!

Hopefully we'll hear more about Laura Bow from Microsoft soon.

I really hope that Microsoft isn't waiting for Ninezyme to run out of cash, whereupon they'll swoop on the studio and buy them out, and then re-do Laura Bow in their own way, and it turns out completely abominable and hateful.

Am I being paranoid again? Maybe?

[Tawmis]

I really hope that Microsoft isn't waiting for Ninezyme to run out of cash, whereupon they'll swoop on the studio and buy them out, and then re-do Laura Bow in their own way, and it turns out completely abominable and hateful.
Am I being paranoid again? Maybe?

There's no need for Microsoft to wait. They could hand them a cease and desist now.
They wouldn't get any of Nine's resources, because Nine could simply re-label the game as something else and change the character names and make it their own game.

[Tawmis]

~~ snip out the pirate game info ~~

Another Mystery?

Regarding our Laura Bow project... After a some very promising progress with Microsoft over the Summer, things have died (ironically?) down to a near standstill. We'll be doing our best to get the ball rolling again, in the new year.

That said, we're excited enough to get back to this project that we plan to do a bit of work on the side in order to upgrade things, fix bugs, and do some additional writing and recording on the parts that we have in progress so far. This is partially for us, so that we have a fully functional demo that we can show off and distribute to people. We're not 100% sure if we'll make it public or not, however. Time will tell.

Also, due to some over-sharing and assumptions of past newsletters, which may have affected our progress... we'll be keeping any additional news a bit more low-key, until there's something more official to say. It's not because we don't love all of you Laura Bow fans out there... it's because after years of hard work, we were so close to our ultimate goal, that we don't want anything to potentially put it at risk.

Thanks for the understanding.

[Rath Darkblade]

OK. Hopefully things will pick up for NineZyme after the Christmas/New Year holiday!

[Tawmis]

Cropping everything else about the pirate game from the latest newsletter.....

and...

The Reason You're Here

Aaaand, yes. Most of you started reading this newsletter for information on our Laura Bow 3 project.

Well, we're happy to say that we plan to start spending time on the game again this year. To what extent, and exactly when, we're not quite sure just yet. But we do plan to get back to it, and with any luck, perhaps even finally release that demo which we've been touting for so long!

And regarding the whole Microsoft thing... we're still "mum's the word" for now. However, we will certainly have some more official news on it this year, positive or negative. So stay tuned for that!

[notbobsmith]

Cropping everything else about the pirate game from the latest newsletter.....

and...

The Reason You're Here

Aaaand, yes. Most of you started reading this newsletter for information on our Laura Bow 3 project.

Well, we're happy to say that we plan to start spending time on the game again this year. To what extent, and exactly when, we're not quite sure just yet. But we do plan to get back to it, and with any luck, perhaps even finally release that demo which we've been touting for so long!

And regarding the whole Microsoft thing... we're still "mum's the word" for now. However, we will certainly have some more official news on it this year, positive or negative. So stay tuned for that!

Well, fingers crossed.

[Rath Darkblade]

Cropping everything else about the pirate game from the latest newsletter.....

and...

The Reason You're Here

Aaaand, yes. Most of you started reading this newsletter for information on our Laura Bow 3 project.

Well, we're happy to say that we plan to start spending time on the game again this year. To what extent, and exactly when, we're not quite sure just yet. But we do plan to get back to it, and with any luck, perhaps even finally release that demo which we've been touting for so long!

And regarding the whole Microsoft thing... we're still "mum's the word" for now. However, we will certainly have some more official news on it this year, positive or negative. So stay tuned for that!

Well, fingers crossed.

Very much so. Seconded.

[BBP]

Tile Tales is out now on Steam, price 2,99 USD.

[Tawmis]

Grim news...

Spring Sunshines

If April showers bring May flowers... then what do April sunshines bring? I guess we'll find out soon enough! If you are anywhere similar to us, then you might be experiencing some very warm and sunny weather this Spring so far. It's lovely! But it's also a continuing sign of change in the world.

So, just as a casual reminder - everyone take care of yourselves out there. We know that a lot of people are running into difficult time these days, NineZyme included. But we can always take a step back and evaluate what's most important, then refocus our energies toward making strides in something new (and hopefully better).

Maybe that's what April sunshines are all about.

Tile Tales: Steaming Ahead!

Last month, we released the Steam version of Tile Tales: Pirate! You can find the link here, if you were waiting on this particular version of the game. This was a significant moment for us, since it was our first new platform since the Apple and Google versions got released back in December.

Initial sales have been ok. Not great - but still an improvement over the mobile versions for sure. We've also had some additional good press for this release - and placement on some more high profile lists! That being said, we've come to the very unfortunate conclusion that this game will never break even for us - and is extremely far from being able to sustain us as a company. It may not even cover the basic monthly bills, honestly - which could result in a complete shutdown of the company, if that continues too long.

So, we're at a bit of a pass now. Do we bother putting any more effort at all behind it? Anything we continue to put in has a high chance of just adding to the overall loss. However, we are proud of the game we've made - and we'd still really like to finish the Pirate's story by completing the DLC chapters that we intended to add to the game throughout the year. Also the Switch, Playstation, and Xbox versions would be great to see finished.

No formal decisions have been made yet. However, everyone on the team has had to take up additional work outside of NineZyme in order to pay the bills - so it'll just be that much more difficult to keep working on things.

Anyway, these are life's big pondering questions lately. As always, we'll let you all know how things go, once we figure it out.

The Grim Statistics Of Game Dev

With that news in mind, some of you may be asking...

- Where did things go wrong?
- Why can't you figure out a way to make it work?
- Isn't there anything else you can try?

Well, the reality is... it's just really tough out there these days for game developers. The big conglomerates are monopolizing gamers' attentions in their billion dollar ecosystems. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of indie developers are flooding the markets with [mostly mediocre] games - causing lower consumer sentiment and increasing confusion about what's actually worth playing.

On Steam (PC/Mac/Linux desktops), nearly 2000 new games get released every month. Just 10 years ago, this same amount came out over the course of an entire year. On mobile, it's even worse, at nearly 5000 new games every month. Only about 2-3% of indie developers actually survive to make a 2nd game. And only about 1% of indie games makes more than $10k in sales. That's not a monthly figure - or even a yearly figure - it's a lifetime figure! That's pretty brutal.

So... if we had to do it all over again, would we do things differently (or at all)? Yes, of course! We definitely would have still given it a go - because we would have always regretted not trying. And there are certainly things about the game itself that we would have changed. But, in hindsight it's always easy to see various things that you -should- have done. Would it have made any difference? The numbers say... likely not.

We knew that Tile Tales would be for a niche audience - and we were ok with that. We never needed it to be a huge hit. It just needed to find a small group of supportive gamers out there who enjoy what we made. There still might be this opportunity. We will be taking part in the Sokoban Festival on Steam this month - and it will probably be one of our more successful campaigns. But, at this point, we just can't count on it making a substantial enough difference to our bottom line.

Motives For Murder

So, I'm sure most of you are wondering what this all means for the Laura Bow 3 project. Well, it's unsure, to be honest. If we didn't have the budget to finish it before - then we certainly don't have it now! So that's not good. I'm sure there are options we could explore for funding, but even many of those avenues have likely dried up, given the state of the industry (and world).

Also, with the whole team taking up other work - it may take longer to spin the project back up - maybe even involve finding a new team, if the existing one is unavailable to come back and help out.

At the very least, we may just focus on finishing the demo and putting it up on Xbox and Steam for people to play. Then maybe that could drum up some additional demand, if successful enough, and help us find the resources we need. We'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out. Making an adventure is an adventure in and of itself, ha!

Regardless, we'll be sure to keep you posted! Wish us luck!

[notbobsmith]

This is really unfortunate. There have been a few high profile disasters from big game studios the last year or so. Lots of money put into the project and a huge loss when it doesn't sell. Movies make the same mistake too. It's a shame that they can't throw some of that money in the direction of these indie developers. The game probably won't be a blockbuster, but smaller budget, better margins if successful, less loss if unsuccessful.

[Qbix]

Thanks for posting Tawm, I bought the game as well.