There's not much to say about battles, really. Well, other than fleeing not being guaranteed. That's... something I don't really expect from a 'casual' mobile game. At least it doesn't take energy, right?! (Wait, hang on, if you flee from a battle, does the Figmon you were fighting disappear from the room or do you still have to fight it? I'd assume the former, because there doesn't seem to be much of a point to running away otherwise. Or maybe it just takes you out of the dungeon entirely?) I also assume that if all skillstones break in battle, that forced flee is guaranteed to work, otherwise, that sounds really... not fun. If losing a single battle brings about the death of a Figmon, that also seems awfully harsh for someone just starting. I'd imagine that it'd take like a day or two off the lifespan of the Figmon and you'd have to nurse it back to health by feeding it or something after retreating from the dungeon would serve as a fairly strong punishment for losing, while not entirely putting off someone from playing.
When Figmon die, do they take the skillstones equipped on them to the grave? I imagine not, though it might be neat to see the kinds of skill setups you used in the past. A log of past Figmon would be neat, though I wonder if there'd be some sort of limit on it, like, only the Figmon that died in the past year are shown, otherwise it might become an absurdly large log of dead thoughts.
Having a different daily shopkeeper with different quests/personality would be neat. I would indeed want buy sum crap from all of them, I bet. Without knowing how costly things are in relation to how quickly stuff is gained, there's not much else to say about this, really. I guess the question is how grindy you want to make the game for people that are playing it as a free game.
Ah yes, the different currencies... regular Gold, and premium issues of Goblin Erotica... A brilliant idea, Tobias, your genius is unmatched.
How to monetize a primarily single-player game is probably the thing to figure out with this. I can't imagine you'd make it a gacha game. It's slow paced enough that people might be willing to pay to speed things along, though that could also be seen as artificially extending how long people need to wait in order to actually play the game. Most other mobile games I've seen (though really almost all I've seen are gacha games) monetize themselves through either catering to people's tastes in anime waifus, nostalgia, or both. I can't really imagine you going down the anime route, and the nostalgia people have for your works is primarily for MARDEK... which probably isn't as strong as it is for people's nostalgia or outright fandom for bigger IPs like Final Fantasy, Marvel, or what have you.
Clearly this means the market is ripe for you to create a himbo gacha featuring Rare Shirtless Clarences, Sindrels, and Dream Savitr in a swimsuit. Yes. Things to think about would be daily login rewards and probably seasonal events to keep people coming back... like a Christmas Goblin with a Santa Hat, I guess. A Halloween goblin that has Mardek's helmet. A Valentines Goblin that's covering its nudity with nothing but lacy ribbons and chocolate. An Easter Goblin that's emerging from a stone tomb.
Fan design contests are a fine idea, though I've never taken part in them. I wonder how many entries you'd get!
What you've described has interested me! I hope I haven't come across as too strongly or anything, though I guess I'm also probably not someone that generally spends just a few minutes on mobile games. When I have the time, I know I've spent entire evenings on them. That being said the whole constant restarting thing... I imagine the only thing 'carried' over to further Figmon would be your inventory and gold. Roguelikes tend to have some sort of permanent progression system to them so even if your run doesn't amount to much, it still makes some progress to your overall goal or makes the next run easier by improving your skills in some way. Having more money, the skillstones, and I suppose any eggs found would be something, though without anything but this to go on, I don't know if that'd be enough to spur on people to continue if they had a bad run and suddenly lost a bunch of stuff.
(...Though, once you complete the encyclopedia, wouldn't that count as reaching the peak and then having nowhere left to go? At least until the next update that adds more evolutions, I suppose.)
I do have ideas for where this game could go, but those are my ideas, and they probably aren't the way you want to make your game. I don't want to just throw my ideas out there as if they're somehow a guide for making a mobile game, since it's not something I've done before. I will say though that the way mobile games got me to pay was in having relatively good value 'sales' compared to the normal price of doing pulls with paid currency. FFRK in particular has this set of "Dreams" gachas about once every two months it seems, where it's premium currency only, but you get to select the prize of your choice after you do the draw. You're always guaranteed to get something you've wanted, rather than just pulling endlessly to chase the dragon, so to speak. This worked on me, because when these sales started, I had almost completed every challenge the game had set in front of me, and was just missing a few things that'd let me complete everything else. Naturally, as the game went on, more and more challenges popped up as did these sales, and the cycle continued for a bit, until I saw the total pricetag. I'm no longer at or near the bleeding edge of content completion, and that's something I've come to accept.
Like Maniafig mentioned, I'd also like it if AFC was continued in some way, though I must admit I am a bit biased as one of the people that's taking part in that collaborative quest he mentioned. Know that if that ever became a thing on Steam, you'd probably have at least two sales in Maniafig and I.
(As an aside, I can't remember the password for the account I first made here, and there's no Retrieve Password form as far as I could see, so... here I am again. In a newer, shinier account.) (2/2)
When Figmon die, do they take the skillstones equipped on them to the grave? I imagine not, though it might be neat to see the kinds of skill setups you used in the past. A log of past Figmon would be neat, though I wonder if there'd be some sort of limit on it, like, only the Figmon that died in the past year are shown, otherwise it might become an absurdly large log of dead thoughts.
Having a different daily shopkeeper with different quests/personality would be neat. I would indeed want buy sum crap from all of them, I bet. Without knowing how costly things are in relation to how quickly stuff is gained, there's not much else to say about this, really. I guess the question is how grindy you want to make the game for people that are playing it as a free game.
Ah yes, the different currencies... regular Gold, and premium issues of Goblin Erotica... A brilliant idea, Tobias, your genius is unmatched.
How to monetize a primarily single-player game is probably the thing to figure out with this. I can't imagine you'd make it a gacha game. It's slow paced enough that people might be willing to pay to speed things along, though that could also be seen as artificially extending how long people need to wait in order to actually play the game. Most other mobile games I've seen (though really almost all I've seen are gacha games) monetize themselves through either catering to people's tastes in anime waifus, nostalgia, or both. I can't really imagine you going down the anime route, and the nostalgia people have for your works is primarily for MARDEK... which probably isn't as strong as it is for people's nostalgia or outright fandom for bigger IPs like Final Fantasy, Marvel, or what have you.
Clearly this means the market is ripe for you to create a himbo gacha featuring Rare Shirtless Clarences, Sindrels, and Dream Savitr in a swimsuit. Yes. Things to think about would be daily login rewards and probably seasonal events to keep people coming back... like a Christmas Goblin with a Santa Hat, I guess. A Halloween goblin that has Mardek's helmet. A Valentines Goblin that's covering its nudity with nothing but lacy ribbons and chocolate. An Easter Goblin that's emerging from a stone tomb.
Fan design contests are a fine idea, though I've never taken part in them. I wonder how many entries you'd get!
What you've described has interested me! I hope I haven't come across as too strongly or anything, though I guess I'm also probably not someone that generally spends just a few minutes on mobile games. When I have the time, I know I've spent entire evenings on them. That being said the whole constant restarting thing... I imagine the only thing 'carried' over to further Figmon would be your inventory and gold. Roguelikes tend to have some sort of permanent progression system to them so even if your run doesn't amount to much, it still makes some progress to your overall goal or makes the next run easier by improving your skills in some way. Having more money, the skillstones, and I suppose any eggs found would be something, though without anything but this to go on, I don't know if that'd be enough to spur on people to continue if they had a bad run and suddenly lost a bunch of stuff.
(...Though, once you complete the encyclopedia, wouldn't that count as reaching the peak and then having nowhere left to go? At least until the next update that adds more evolutions, I suppose.)
I do have ideas for where this game could go, but those are my ideas, and they probably aren't the way you want to make your game. I don't want to just throw my ideas out there as if they're somehow a guide for making a mobile game, since it's not something I've done before. I will say though that the way mobile games got me to pay was in having relatively good value 'sales' compared to the normal price of doing pulls with paid currency. FFRK in particular has this set of "Dreams" gachas about once every two months it seems, where it's premium currency only, but you get to select the prize of your choice after you do the draw. You're always guaranteed to get something you've wanted, rather than just pulling endlessly to chase the dragon, so to speak. This worked on me, because when these sales started, I had almost completed every challenge the game had set in front of me, and was just missing a few things that'd let me complete everything else. Naturally, as the game went on, more and more challenges popped up as did these sales, and the cycle continued for a bit, until I saw the total pricetag. I'm no longer at or near the bleeding edge of content completion, and that's something I've come to accept.
Like Maniafig mentioned, I'd also like it if AFC was continued in some way, though I must admit I am a bit biased as one of the people that's taking part in that collaborative quest he mentioned. Know that if that ever became a thing on Steam, you'd probably have at least two sales in Maniafig and I.
(As an aside, I can't remember the password for the account I first made here, and there's no Retrieve Password form as far as I could see, so... here I am again. In a newer, shinier account.) (2/2)