Aveyond 2 Released

[amaranth]

Well, I've finally finished Aveyond 2. Now I'm going to sleep for a month. :)

The Story
Snow has fallen on a magical vale where it has never snowed before. A beautiful young elf is missing, and no one remembers her existence. That is, no one except for her best friend, Ean.

To solve the mystery of his lost friend, Ean leaves the vale and travels to the dangerous Land of Man. Ean’s adventure takes him through dark forests, arid deserts, and finally to a great mountain of ice where the answers to all of his questions await. And that is just the beginning…

New Features
-Mouse support
-Shapeshift Ean
-Buy Grimm’s Farm and raise pets
-Karma system
-Attraction system
-Secret goodie caves (can you find them?)

Links
Download Aveyond 2 (http://www.amaranthia.com/downloads/Aveyond-II.exe)
Screenshots & More Info (http://www.amaranthia.com/modules/aveyond2)

[jcottier]

I wish you all the success you deserve with this great game.

JC

[Matt2East]

Congratulations!

[BIGZIPZ]

Congratulations on the release - your website s being hammered!

[amaranth]

I know, it's been crazy since last night. I *seriously* need to get my web administration problems worked out. I suppose Guru.com is a good place to go to find an IT person to manage a server or set up another one?

[Cartman]

Congrats on this!

[Indiepath]

I can give you some free bandwidth at pjio.com

[GolfHacker]

Congrats, Amanda! I'm looking forward to checking out this game, once I can get to your web site. Too bad you're having problems with your site, but on the other hand, it does demonstrate how successful your games are. Everybody wants it! Awesome!

[lakibuk]

Amanda's ability to keep deadlines is really astonishing.

[Leon]

Congrats! I looking forward to seeing the improvements you've made with all you learned from your first RPG and what you've done with the UMS, which is a kick ass script.

[amaranth]

Congrats! I looking forward to seeing the improvements you've made with all you learned from your first RPG and what you've done with the UMS, which is a kick ass script.

Yeah, ccoa did an outstanding job on that script and she gave me a really great deal on it. I wish I knew where she's gone off to... But I suppose that is for another thread.

[Musenik]

Congratulations!

I wish I could try it, but my PC is acting up. (darn method actors... :-)

[jankoM]

played it... if aveyond 1 was succsesfull on casual market then this will be 10x more.. really good tutorial and intro that brought me right into enjoing the game. No. 1 didn't do this to me as I couldn't make myself start really playing it. The point is ... you perfected the start of the game to the max this time and it's really good even for people that don't know much about rpgs.

[ZuluBoy]

Congratulations on the release, and good luck with the game! :)

[amaranth]

played it... if aveyond 1 was succsesfull on casual market then this will be 10x more.. really good tutorial and intro that brought me right into enjoing the game. No. 1 didn't do this to me as I couldn't make myself start really playing it. The point is ... you perfected the start of the game to the max this time and it's really good even for people that don't know much about rpgs.

Yeah, I know how you feel. I like AV1, but I honestly felt that it wasn't what I wanted it to be. When I finished the design doc for AV2, I was much happier about the overall flow of the game. It felt... I don't know... more complete... solid, yada yada. To date this AV2 is my favorite and AP is my second favorite game. I'm a little sad that my critter is finished. Now if I can just get that darn website up again. This is silly.

[Pkeod]

Congratulations!
I can't help but admire your work :D

[lennard]

Looks great. I'm an old guy so it isn't exactly my kind of RPG but I will try and get our 6 year old daughter on it (she's busy playing Diablo II and Wizardry for PS II) as it seems like something that I could feel good about her playing.

Hope you sell a ton of copies. Will it be on Reflexive? I'd like to carry it as an affiliate.

[mrkwang]

Congrats!

I'd like to review it, as I did for [Aveyond 1], when review copy is ready.

Please let me know at then. Thanks!

[Aisle5]

Congrats and Happy Sales!!! I'm sure it will be another hugh success! :)

[Dan MacDonald]

Website looks nice to me!

What technology / engine did you use this time amanda? It's not totally obvious to me just looking at it.... (a good thing!)

[BIGZIPZ]

The engine is RPG Maker XP, I believe I read in some interview somewhere. Aveyond is the only series of games to be successfully sold which was developed by the RPGMaker's engine it seems.

The new version is due out this month, called RPG Maker VX (English translation to follow afterwards). Looks interesting, the game window has changed from 640x480 to 1024x768 it seems, for bigger areas. According to the system requirements posted anyway (1024x768 or better video resolution).

[SteveZ]

Just played the demo, I'm liking this game alot (The part when the beast was chasing me was great!). Congrats on your release and best of luck to your sales and growing community!

-Steve Z.

[Maupin]

Just finally managed to load the page. ;)

Downloaded it and can't wait to try it out tomorrow. But my soothsaying abilities tell me it will be another hit!

EDIT: Tried it for 30 minutes or so and really enjoyed it. The only criticism I have is that the pathfinding is odd. If I exit an area onto the world map, then click on or nearby another doorway to another area, I go back into the area I just emerged from. And if a NPC (or cute little rabbit ;) ) is blocking the path to where I click, my character doesn't move at all. Might be nicer if he moved as far as he could and then stopped. For all I know these are limitations in the engine... not sure. Otherwise everything looked nice.

[Polycount Productions]

Excellent. Thumbs Up!

[Adrian Cummings]

Looks great!

[sillytuna]

Best of luck with everything :)

[mrkwang]

Tried 50 minutes.

It is...

GREAT!!!

[Midnight Synergy]

This looks very nice, Amanda!

Congratulations on what I'm sure will be a great hit for you.

[Greg Squire]

Congratulations! Looks awesome! Should be another successful release. ;)

[Pluvious]

I didn't play the original (although I was tempted to) but I downloaded this one and am trying it out. Very nicely done. Takes me back to the types of games I played most when I was younger. Great work. Keep it up.

[moose6912]

Excellent work, I finished the 1 hour demo and Aveyond 2 will be my Christmas treat for myself. I am looking forward to completing it over the holidays. Anyway, which file holds my saved data as I need to transfer it over to another laptop?

[Jack Norton]

Congrats on the release!
I'm not really into japanese RPG but is obvious that you spent lot of time and efforts on this one. Good luck with sales :)

[wazoo]

Looks fantastical Amanda!

Grats on the release and hope it does well for you as well. :)

[dma]

Very nice, I like this a lot so far. Hope you have great sales from it. :D

[BantamCityGames]

Looks great! and I wish you all the success of the first and then some! Was this one written in Torque? (I remember you talking about it some time ago).

[moose6912]

Looks great! and I wish you all the success of the first and then some! Was this one written in Torque? (I remember you talking about it some time ago).

I think Grimm's Hatchery was written in Torque while Aveyond was developed using RPG Maker.

[Sakura Games]

As of today still there isn't a mac version out of Grimm's Hatchery. Torque isn't really cross-platform it seems... :rolleyes:

[Grey Alien]

Ooh I look forward to trying this out as I love RPGs and I've recently become addicted again.

[Laralyn]

Congrats! I've just started playing it, but it looks great!

So here's the question of the hour: did you enjoy using RPG Maker, and if you were starting Aveyond 3 today, would you use RPG Maker again? :)

[Roman Budzowski]

I haven't played the game yet, though I'd like to comment one thing:
Aren't you surprised that Aveyond 2 struggles so much to get into top 10 on BFG? It is no. 12 in Top 100, but I would expect it to do much better considering Aveyond 1 success and so big promotion on BFG.

best
Roman

[berserker]

Aren't you surprised that Aveyond 2 struggles so much to get into top 10 on BFG? It is no. 12 in Top 100, but I would expect it to do much better considering Aveyond 1 success and so big promotion on BFG.


Because it's Christmas time and it is very swamped with daily hot releases. Our Svetlograd game didn't hit top 10 on BFG despite being in top 10 on Real Arcade and released simultaneously in both places. No wonder - Real releases only 2 games per week and even considering they promote their 1st party/published stuff better, you still have way less games to compete with.

[Grey Alien]

Yeah someone at BFG told me it's a lot harder to get into the top 10 now than it was in the past, especially at Christmas I guess.

[Elder]

Hey I haven't noticed this thread until today!

Good luck with Aveyond 2!

So, any plans for Aveyond 3 now???? :D

[amaranth]

Because it's Christmas time and it is very swamped with daily hot releases. Our Svetlograd game didn't hit top 10 on BFG despite being in top 10 on Real Arcade and released simultaneously in both places. No wonder - Real releases only 2 games per week and even considering they promote their 1st party/published stuff better, you still have way less games to compete with.


I think I made a pretty large newbie mistake when I released the game. I thought that mouse support, good graphics, and good music would sell that first hour. I didn't realize that the story was the key.

Honestly, I got lucky with AV1... sort of like a blind person accidentally hitting a target.

I never had my beta testers test the first hour of AV2. I gave them all full-version keys. Most of them liked AV2 more than AV1, but I didn't know that it took them longer than an hour to like the game. When I released AV2, the sales results were very confusing to me. It did awesome on my site (return users), but on BFG... it wasn't on fire, and they pushed it hard. I knew I'd messed up. Then I found a really helpful comment on The Game Fairy (http://gamefairy.blogspot.com/) that pretty much threw the answer in my face:

"I have to say the demo does not do this game justice. I wasn't going to buy it afterward just because it didn't (I don't know)reel me in as tightly as the 1st one did,but of course I was talked into it(bad daughter..lol)and now I am extremely hooked."

Ouch, that hurt! But wow, it was a great lesson to learn.

Because the game had only been released on BFG, I decided to re-create the beginning before the game was sent out to any other portals. Now it is a couple of weeks later, and I've got a new version of the game with a much more exciting first hour. In the old first hour, you left Elfwood to find Iya and got a canoe. In the new first hour, you leave Elfwood, find Iya in the snow castle, escape through the castle sewers, and meet the oracle who "shoves" you into your mission to unite the kingdoms against the Snow Queen.

Even the harshest critics on my site seem to like it.

"The dramatic sceces that have been added that occur already during the first half an hour of playing are amazing. Adding the feeling of danger and seriousness and making the player get involved in the story quickly. ^_^ The dialogue between Iya and Snow Queen in Dreamworld is amazingly done. Also the dramatic scene with escaping from the castle and Iya finding her magic. Much better than the first version of Aveyond (2) where things were getting rather slowly and it took so long to get Iya into the party"

If I'm right and I fumbled at BFG because of the story, the game should do a lot better on the other portals it is about to go out on. If my experiment works, and the game does well, I'll post my findings on the forum for everyone.

:)

[moose6912]

Thanks a lot for that tip, Amanda. The part about the 1st hour being crucial will be extremely helpful.

[AnthemAudio]

Are you saying I should download the demo again with the new additions? Because frankly, I wasn't pulled in. I liked some of the mechanics, being able to use a mouse in a console-type rpg was refreshing. The sound mix was way off (some sounds too loud, some too soft) and yeah...the story grabbed me not. I wanted to move forward to see more of this apparently amazing game but I didn't have much reason to go off of.

Yes?

[chanon]

Thanks for sharing!
Also shows that when self publishing, releasing one portal at a time could be a smart move. (If you are patient enough.)