Aldorlea Games - Inteview @ IndieRPGs
IndieRPGs.com interviews Indinera Falls the founder of Aldorlea Games. They talk about his RPGMaker games, and Steam Greenlight.
You’re a longtime linchpin of the RPG Maker community. Have you ever thought about switching to your own engine, or do you find you can accomplish everything you want just using RPG Maker?
Not everything I want, but certainly everything I want within a certain genre (JRPG). I’m not a programmer so RM suits my needs. I wish they would come up with a tactical-RPG Maker – I’ve always loved these. Plenty of my “paper games” were actually tactical.
Do you see yourself sticking with making JRPGs for the foreseeable future?
I like JRPG but also all kind of RPGs. Might and Magic VI as well as Daggerfall rank among my favorite gaming experience ever. So I’ll see what kind of opportunities arise.
How have your games evolved over time?
I think mostly production values and quality of the script are the two things that have evolved the most. I was never big on graphics, nor too talented in the field to be honest, so I can’t say this is where the games really evolved.
From my perspective, it seems like you’re getting much higher quality original art than you used to. Do you find yourself investing more time and/or money in your visuals as time goes on?
Yes, definitely. This is what I called “production values” just above. Art is something I treasure in my games and I try to make sure the bar is always high.
You’re one of a few developers that have managed to make a living off of selling games directly to players. What did you do to make that work? (Affiliate sales, selling game walkthroughs, etc.)
Probably a bit of these two: having great success with my freeware offerings, and releasing games of consistent quality. A lot of my fans actually purchase most of my catalog. If you like one game of mine, it is likely that you will like them all. I never overlook depth and replay value in my games, and I always make sure the storyline is interesting and full of twists.