February News and PAX East!

Lots of exciting stuff happening at Burrito Studio this month!

First of all we'd like to introduce our brand new web-site for Highlands (http://www.highlandsvideogame.com/), make sure to follow us there or on Facebook or Twitter to get the latest news as we are getting closer to the release!

Next in line: BurritoJo just released a new gameplay video, we invite you to watch Part 3 of our dev coverage here!

But the biggest news of all is that we will brave the snow and present Highlands at PAX East Boston on the weekend of March 6-to-8!  Come have fun and play the game if you are in the area, we'll even have a few surprises in store!  More info here.

And if you are in the Montreal area, come visit us at cinema Excentris next Saturday during the Nuit Blanche, where we will showcase the game on the big screen!

 - TeamBurrito

ETA: March

Hi guys,

Well big news today, Highlands development is going well and we are confident we can head for a release in March, more info here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439704341/highlands/posts/1121596

Stay tuned and please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest developments!

Happy New Year!

Some of our Kickstarter backers had an early Christmas present last year with our release of Highlands beta 1 access!  This has been sent to more than 160 backers, thank you all for the feedback!  After a first week back from the holidays we are now working hard on beta 2 that will be released January 19th.  Also with most of the core mechanics and gameplay aspects of the game integrated, we are now ready to go full steam finishing all the in-game content we need.

Creating New Maps!

Since Monday, BurritoLo and BurritoFrank have been working full time on the production of new maps for Highlands. We brainstormed multiple ideas for the specific types of maps we want to develop and came up with several interesting designs:

By playing with the placement of the sectors, the number of enemies and the abundance of resources, we are able to make really cool scenarios. For example, some maps will encourage the player to make full scale assaults while others will force him to stretch his forces and defend multiple sectors. We’re also having great fun designing maps that force a player to rethink his strategy and his play style. Scenarios where recruitment will be limited and you will lead only a small squad and others where your forces will be separated at the beginning of the game and you will try to reunite them are challenges that awaits you in the game.

Those are only examples within the myriad of scenarios we thought of. There’s more where that came from!

Wokshop and Items

BurritoAl has been working feverishly into programming what will become the crafting system that will be available in private beta 2. This addition to the game will give the player an extra layer of strategy and complexity when it comes to managing his characters.

In-game, you will be able to craft your own items, find new blueprints, unlocking new items and assign them to your characters.

Polishing What We Have

Along with all those tasks, we are still going to work on all the elements we already have in our game and polish them as much as we can. With the last beta release we have been gaining valuable feedback from different players to make the most kickass game possible!

As always, thanks everyone and stay tuned: 2015 will be the year of Highlands!

Kickstarter Post-Mortem

Hi everyone! Last month's Kickstarter was a resounding success due in no small part to our amazing community! In the spirit of self-improvement and to give everyone feedback on our experience, we decided to organize a little post-mortem of our Kickstarter adventure. It's our way of showing more of the inner workings that are going into making Highlands, and hopefully this will help other indie developers go through the challenges of a Kickstarter campaign.

How did we live through the kickstarter experience?

The Kickstarter experience is quite an ordeal. As a whole, we lived in a constant state of love/hate with it. Not only is it wholly invasive in everyone's life, but it's also incredibly rewarding. Allow me to clarify. On one side, when we got into the crowdfunding process, we had no idea how much work it was going to be. It's non-stop action. The back and forth with the community, the promotion and the constant checking and refreshing of the main page to see new stats and backers! It followed us everywhere and for a whole month we were on edge. At the same time, it is one of the most rewarding things we could've done! Every pledge we received was met with cheers and when we hit the goal, it was such a relief! When you get in a crowdfunding process, you have to adapt and learn new skills very quickly. It was, overall, a very positive learning experience for everyone involved on the team.

What did we do good?

The Kickstarter went through, so obviously we did something good. But what? On the whole, the preparation we put into it was satisfying for a first experience.  We have spent about 2 weeks of half-time research from a single team member, reading articles such as the one I'm posting and gathering various facts and best-practices on Kickstarter.  Then at the beginning of September when we decided to go for it, there was about 3 weeks of full preparation from the whole team.

The Kickstarter page and the image of the game were quite strong. We had many positive comments about our page, that it looked professionnal and had a good direction. We had a great message we wanted to send about the game, and with the help of the community we managed to narrow the description enough so that it was clear what players would be getting into. Speaking of players, we feel like we handled the community quite well, trying to answer everyone quickly and giving as much information and feedback as possible. Of course, you are all in a better position to judge that!

What did we do that wasn't so good?

Obviously, we can't do everything right. While the preparation time we had was satisfying, you can never have too much prep time. Seriously, be like batman, plan for the impossible. We also didn't expect the level of time and efforts it took us to run this successful campaign. We planned a lot of production time during the campaign but it took us so much efforts, we couldn't put more than 30-40% of our time into actual game production, at best. Of course, without funding, we simply couldn't go on with the game, so it was a good trade-off. In the research we did, we found out that there was a lull in the middle of the campaign, which we expected. But when faced with that downtime, we were actually panicking. Even if we knew that it would shoot back up, we had all hands on deck trying to reverse the direction.

What if we had to do it again?

There's plenty of things that we could've done better and that we'd do differently if we were to do it again. The marketing strategy would be one of those. While we had plenty of luck with the marketing we had, it could've been more thought-out. The reception we had from the media was great but if we planned it better? We're confident that it could have been glorious. One of the things that caused us pain was the pledges and stretch goals. The pledges were good, but the description wasn't as good as it could've been, same thing with the stretch goals. While we had good ideas for the goals, the money objective now seems too high. It looked logical at the time, but not so much now. Of course,  they say hindsight is 20/20 but it still is something that bears some thought. One last thing, we mentioned earlier that the message we tried to give of the game was good. It was, but looking back there was a lot that we needed to clarify mid-campaign.  The community feedback helped us a lot to refine our branding and better express our gameplay ideas and we could probably have planned it a little better.

And now, a word of advice!

We're an indie studio and we feel like the world of gaming could benefit from more indie games. Often, the step to take is a big one and that's why everyone at Burrito Studio has a little advice for every developer out there:

"Make sure your branding is rock-solid yet stay flexible and refine it on the way. " -BurritoJo

"Don't underestimate the workload!" -BurritoFrank

"Don't think Kickstarter will bring you views, you will bring views to Kickstarter" -BurritoLo

"Prepare yourself in advance, learn to use self-promotion tools, learn from others, more preparation." -BurritoAl

Thank you all again for all the love and support during the Kickstarter campaign.  We've been hard at work for more than three weeks now and we'll keep on working until the game is ready in all its glory. Beta is still on track for this December so stay tuned!  In the meantime, you are all awesome!

If you feel curious and want more insights on the Kickstarter experience, please feel free to comment and ask away!

Let Me Tell You a Story

Hi everyone!

I’m BurritoSim the 3^rd story writer at Burrito Studio.  Today I’ll try to give you an insight about how random events will work in Highlands. They’ve not been advertised much to this date, but they’ll help a lot to give you a feel of where we want to go with Highlands’ narrative.

Random Events

Since I started working on those random events, the concept behind them has evolved a lot. At first, the term designated mini-events that happen at the start of each turn. They were pretty sketchy, with no backstory and were only a way to bring a little randomness in the game. In parallel, we had the idea of integrating short encounters in which the player had to take a decision between two equally appealing options. Since they seemed much more interesting and could be a good support to drive the story onward, we decided to put the first idea in a closet to concentrate our efforts on the second.

This change of orientation was also fueled by a change in our map designing. We changed our initial idea of corridors fighting for independent outdoor sectors with unique features. In this kind of map, it was very easy to write interesting short encounters that could happen almost anywhere. To trigger these events, we thought that the player would have to put a character in a slot near a building that we called a hot spot. At first, we didn’t think much about the number, frequency or relative importance of the random events in the gameplay. We just began writing some of them and planned to do a lot more. But recently, we did a big brainstorm to decide what we wanted to do with these events and here is the result of our reflections.

The Two Categories

First of all, we decided to bring back our short random events, but with a different twist. We now call them bad news and they happen once in a while at the start of your turn. As their name implies, they are short random events that will present a setback to your war efforts, disrupt your current strategy and force you to reassess your short-term objectives. They are designed to give you the feeling that even with the best strategies, you can’t plan everything beforehand. But don’t worry, most of these events won’t be world-shattering… at least not much. J

But we also kept our short encounter events and called them hot spots events. They will happen when you send a character to investigate a special location in a sector you own. Most of the time, your character will experience a small event that can be qualified as positive, negative, or neutral, depending on its outcome. You won’t have to take any decision in these ones. But at times, your character will get a story event that will affect his capabilities and/or the progression of your war effort. Those events are much more elaborate in their design and will have a profound impact on your gameplay.

The Story Events

Basically, the story events will all have the same pattern: after a short description of the initial situation, you will have to choose between two or three options. Some of these choices will highlight ethical motivations, while the others will be much more straightforward in their approach. Depending on the option you choose, your character will have to deal with the consequences, positive or negative, of your decision. Those events will help strongly to make your characters unique. In them, your character will experience their own mini-story that will give them a little time under the spotlight. Even more, the decisions you make might change their progression path and give them an edge that will make them invaluable in your eyes.

The impact of the story events won’t be only for the character that will trigger them or for the gameplay, they will also give you a glimpse into Highlands back story. They can bring the spotlight on any of your characters, but you can also learn much about your favorite main characters in them. Also, their value doesn’t reside only in their randomness, they’re designed to support the main story and help to express the general emotions of the game.

In short, even if you only have a modicum of control over how they will play, the random events will help to shape your Highlands experience and might even incite you to play the game again!

If you have any suggestions or ideas about any of this, please tell us about it!

BurritoSim the 3^rd