*POST CONTAINS LOTS OF MARDEK 1-3 SPOILERS, IN CASE THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED IT*
I'm glad to see that you liked MARDEK after revisiting it. Going back and looking at your creations from 2007-2010 must have been difficult since you've grown so much since then. Most people I know who have done *creative* things as a hobby would be mortified to look back at the creations of their teenage/early-20s selves. It's nice to know that you're proud of MARDEK, because you really should be! MARDEK is a *really* good game; and a lot of it holds up ten years later. There are *very* few creators who can say that their work from so long ago holds up as well as MARDEK does.
The heavier plot stuff, particularly the character deaths at the end of Chapters 2 and 3, hit incredibly well. And the way Mardek and company grow as people over the course of Chapter 3 is very well written, especially if you read the P-Dialogue. Rohoph's character development and the enormous cliffhanger that ends the third chapter was something I would periodically think about for the last nine years. It's extremely understandable why you had the feelings about MARDEK you had for so long, since you toiled over the game for so long and it didn't earn the revenue it frankly deserved. Thanks a lot for giving MARDEK fans hope to see one of their favorite games redone.
While the comment section can nitpick the originals to eternity, I'd just like to say that the non-linearity of Chapter 3 was a huge feature in my opinion, not a bug. Yes, there could probably be a little more direction and less obscurity, but being told to just "explore the world" after the three-dungeon opening to MARDEK 3 was really nice. The game opened with a hyper-focused, three-dungeon mission that might have been a *little* bloated (I don't think MARDEK 3 was that bloated, and very little of it felt like filler), but made sense. But after that, the game gave the player a huge breather with the overarching mission of "find the Crystals, good luck!". It let players explore the realm without a huge sense of urgency, which worked very well IMO. Players found secrets, lore, and eventually information on the Crystals organically, all while traversing through a vast, open world. And once the plot started picking up and a few characters from Chapter 2 started reappearing, the urgency picked up and the game concluded on an extremely powerful moment.
But what really made me love MARDEK was the third chapter's tragic story. Though there's a lot of silliness and comic relief in the game, it's far more tragedy than comedy. It's heavily implied by the end that Rohoph is more of a villain than first imagined, and Qualna was truly looking out for everyone he cared about. Rohoph was driving Mardek away from his companions, and just about everything you did in all of MARDEK 3 was downright bad. Mystery Man got away with the Dark Crystal, Xantusia was ruled by a madman, you gave Evil Rock Thing to an evil priest, you stole 3 Elemental Crystals, and *killed your own king* just to be taught a lesson you refused to hear. And don't even get me started on the Dreamstones, which were an incredible look into the minds of important NPCs. At this point I'm just waxing poetic about the game, but the game deserves the praise!
And while MARDEK 3 took "3 years", it wasn't 3 years of development time, right? Like, M3 came out 2.5 years after M2, and you released two Raider games *plus* remakes of MARDEK 1 and 2 in that time. Not to mention all the webmastering you did back on Fig Hunter! And it seems like you're planning ahead to prevent "feature creep" like in M3 (although many of those features ended up working *really* well). MARDEK 3 may have been too titanic from a developer perspective, but I don't feel like it was that bloated from a player perspective. Maybe a few too many playable characters (I doubt anyone really explored all 11 characters in M3) and a couple dungeons (those darn Happy Johnnies in the Sandflow Caves) dragged on, but the overwhelming majority of M3's world felt like it belonged there. MARDEK 3 was a 40-hour epic, but it was 40 hours well-spent for a player. While I hope the next game you make isn't as draining or time-consuming as M3, the game you made did a great job of holding a player's attention for a long period of time.
Either way, I know you can take an already great game and turn it into something even better. Plus, given the comments you've made here already, it seems like we'll like it a lot more than what would have been MARDEK IV.
I'm glad to see that you liked MARDEK after revisiting it. Going back and looking at your creations from 2007-2010 must have been difficult since you've grown so much since then. Most people I know who have done *creative* things as a hobby would be mortified to look back at the creations of their teenage/early-20s selves. It's nice to know that you're proud of MARDEK, because you really should be! MARDEK is a *really* good game; and a lot of it holds up ten years later. There are *very* few creators who can say that their work from so long ago holds up as well as MARDEK does.
The heavier plot stuff, particularly the character deaths at the end of Chapters 2 and 3, hit incredibly well. And the way Mardek and company grow as people over the course of Chapter 3 is very well written, especially if you read the P-Dialogue. Rohoph's character development and the enormous cliffhanger that ends the third chapter was something I would periodically think about for the last nine years. It's extremely understandable why you had the feelings about MARDEK you had for so long, since you toiled over the game for so long and it didn't earn the revenue it frankly deserved. Thanks a lot for giving MARDEK fans hope to see one of their favorite games redone.
While the comment section can nitpick the originals to eternity, I'd just like to say that the non-linearity of Chapter 3 was a huge feature in my opinion, not a bug. Yes, there could probably be a little more direction and less obscurity, but being told to just "explore the world" after the three-dungeon opening to MARDEK 3 was really nice. The game opened with a hyper-focused, three-dungeon mission that might have been a *little* bloated (I don't think MARDEK 3 was that bloated, and very little of it felt like filler), but made sense. But after that, the game gave the player a huge breather with the overarching mission of "find the Crystals, good luck!". It let players explore the realm without a huge sense of urgency, which worked very well IMO. Players found secrets, lore, and eventually information on the Crystals organically, all while traversing through a vast, open world. And once the plot started picking up and a few characters from Chapter 2 started reappearing, the urgency picked up and the game concluded on an extremely powerful moment.
But what really made me love MARDEK was the third chapter's tragic story. Though there's a lot of silliness and comic relief in the game, it's far more tragedy than comedy. It's heavily implied by the end that Rohoph is more of a villain than first imagined, and Qualna was truly looking out for everyone he cared about. Rohoph was driving Mardek away from his companions, and just about everything you did in all of MARDEK 3 was downright bad. Mystery Man got away with the Dark Crystal, Xantusia was ruled by a madman, you gave Evil Rock Thing to an evil priest, you stole 3 Elemental Crystals, and *killed your own king* just to be taught a lesson you refused to hear. And don't even get me started on the Dreamstones, which were an incredible look into the minds of important NPCs. At this point I'm just waxing poetic about the game, but the game deserves the praise!
And while MARDEK 3 took "3 years", it wasn't 3 years of development time, right? Like, M3 came out 2.5 years after M2, and you released two Raider games *plus* remakes of MARDEK 1 and 2 in that time. Not to mention all the webmastering you did back on Fig Hunter! And it seems like you're planning ahead to prevent "feature creep" like in M3 (although many of those features ended up working *really* well). MARDEK 3 may have been too titanic from a developer perspective, but I don't feel like it was that bloated from a player perspective. Maybe a few too many playable characters (I doubt anyone really explored all 11 characters in M3) and a couple dungeons (those darn Happy Johnnies in the Sandflow Caves) dragged on, but the overwhelming majority of M3's world felt like it belonged there. MARDEK 3 was a 40-hour epic, but it was 40 hours well-spent for a player. While I hope the next game you make isn't as draining or time-consuming as M3, the game you made did a great job of holding a player's attention for a long period of time.
Either way, I know you can take an already great game and turn it into something even better. Plus, given the comments you've made here already, it seems like we'll like it a lot more than what would have been MARDEK IV.