Legends of Eisenwald - Indie or Not Indie?

Aterdux Entertainment next Developer Diary update for Legends of Eisenwald about the recent previews of the game, and they even metion the preview from Aubrielle.

Developers Diaries #17 – indie or not indie?

Hello everyone,

Lattely we have been talking to a few journalists, from IGN Russia and rpgwatch.com in particular. IGN Russia had a discussion what is an indie game which was presented in several developers answers to four questions: what is an indie game; do you think Journey for PS3 or Valiant Hearts are indie games; if Banner Saga went to a publisher, they would have gotten more money and have done a better game – what do you think of this statement; are you an indie developer yourself. Many answered that it’s a game where a process of its creation is not controlled by a publisher or an investor, we added that it’s a game that is doing something new and it’s also creative splash of the people making this game. Even some games of big studios could be considered indie, in our opinion. The whole article is here (in Russian).

rpgwatch.com wrote a preview. Alexander met with an editor from this site in Cologne during GamesCom and this preview is a result of this even though a preview is written by someone else.

In the beginning of the summer we applied with our game to IndieCade. We didn’t have many hopes to start with. Looking at the screenshots that are published on Facebook page of this festival one could think that indie games for them are almost exclusively pixel art, simple mechanics and other attributes of modern pop-culture. So, the response we were not selected for the final part did not surprise us. To the standard response there were attached a few sentences of a juror or a few of them:

"I kind of don’t get it… When the game is defined as a “classic old school RPG with tactical turn-based battles, simple economic model” why would you enter it in indiecade?"

" It seems weird to me, with no hook, no novelty and no tutorial, the game feels… Well, like a 90s game. It’s a “classic, yes, but “old school” doesn’t have to mean “old”."

"This game is an impressive technical achievement! Indiecade however looks for games that innovate in design or other categories, and Legends of Eisenwald is largely a worthy but loyal recreation of a well-trodden category.

We are grateful for a personal response and understand that everyone has different opinions. The only details that is not quite clear is a “no tutorial” part. Tutorial (while not the greatest) have been on Early Access since the very beginning and it seems that jurors simply didn’t have enough time to check for a tutorial option in the settings. We started playing games in 90s and even the end of 80s, so in most cases when some people say our game looks like from the 90s, it sounds rather surprising to us and brings us to the conclusion that most likely they didn’t play anything back then.

What do you think? Do we describe our game well? Maybe some moments are really unclear for the people who look at our game for the first time and has only 10 minutes to look at the game? We would really love to hear your opinions!