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Oceanhorn Comes To PS4 And Xbox One!

Soon, console gamers around the world get to start their adventures in Arcadia as Oceanhorn is coming to PS4 and Xbox One!

The console version is based on the remastered PC version and porting is handled by extremely talented Engine Software (Terraria, Mighty No.9) and FDG Entertainment. The console version of the game actually runs on PC's Ultra settings, targeting Full HD and 60 frames per second. That is a true testament to the involved team's skills!

The game features the outstanding soundtrack from Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and Seiken Densetsu composer Kenji Ito, without forgetting our own Kalle Ylitalo ofcourse.

The port is handled by the talented Engine Software and FDG Entertainment

If you're more familiar with Oceanhorn's mobile version, here is a citation of the remastered version's features:

Oceanhorn's PC version is a completely remastered version of the game, a huge graphical and technical overhaul, that makes the game more suitable for bigger screens and more powerful hardware.

The game has been redesigned for physical controls and it plays great on your gamepad!

All of the game's graphical assets have been tweaked for the powerful platform. We added four times more polygons, sharper textures, normal maps, detail objects and new lighting effects such as dynamic ambient occlusion, soft shadows and realtime reflections to make Oceanhorn look stunning when played in Full HD resolution

We have also read every review and feedback out there to improve the original game all around. We have remastered puzzles and taken care of spots that felt confusing or unfair for the players.

There are some new items in the shop that will hit the nail with people's demands. Second Chance Potion might be expensive, but you will be lucky to have it in a boss fight and Mana Refill Potion will be a priceless possession in Frozen Palace. What could be the function of the Ancient Arcadian Radar, though?

Oceanhorn console version will be released this summer on Playstation Store and Xbox Games Store. We will make sure to tell you more closer to the release date!

Press Release: FIVE24 LABS REBRANDS TO POKETTO

Support me on Patreon!

FIVE24 LABS REBRANDS TO POKETTO

"We are elated to present a new brand identity that represents the vibrant and dynamic nature of our products."

- Rachael Blaske, CEO  

Five24Labs, publisher of the Mint Series (Mint Works, Mint Delivery, etc.) is excited to announce their new name and brand identity.

The new Poketto brand maintains the company's focus on fun, portable games, while opening the door for new products outside the Mint Series branding and design structure. The new branding showcases how our games are easy to travel with and how they take gamers on a journey by providing big gameplay in small packages.

####

Did you like this press release?  Show your support: Support me on Patreon!Also, click the heart at Board Game Links , like GJJ Games on Facebook , or follow on Twitter .  And be sure to check out my games on  Tabletop Generation.

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Storium Theory: Get Emotionally Invested

I've finished up my Storium Basics articles, so now, I'd like to take a little time to write about one more thing. This is something that I think is important for anyone playing Storium, or indeed any sort of RPG or storytelling system. Heck, it's important for general writing as well.

You have to let yourself feel.

If you want to tell powerful stories, you have to let yourself feel.

If you want to truly portray your character, you have to let yourself feel.

If you just want to have the best time you can roleplaying, to have an experience you'll remember and look back on fondly, you have to let yourself feel.

Some people can do this really easily. Others, myself included, have a tougher time with it.

I have a tendency to get pretty mechanical when I'm writing, particularly in RPGs, storytelling games, or the like. I find that I distance myself from the events of the story, from the emotional impact of what goes on, in a way that I don't if I'm just watching a movie or reading a book or playing a video game. When I'm not participating in the writing, I can get involved in the emotion of a story easily. But when I'm participating...

When I'm participating, I spend more time thinking about what should happen next, or what I'm going to do, or what cards I'm going to play, or what my strategy should be for the next step, what abilities I want to use, how my tactics will affect my dice rolls...any or all of that, depending on what sort of writing or gaming we're talking about. It's really easy to distance myself from feeling what's happening in the story, and look at things as the basic exercise of writing or gaming rather than the full-fledged emotional experience of a tale.

There's a social aspect, too, though that's less of a concern in a play-by-post sort of game like Storium. But still...I'm not a guy who likes to have his emotions on full display. I'm not that open, really, and so I tend to consciously or unconsciously resist letting myself react to story events emotionally when I'm writing or playing with others.

I've learned that I have to try to break out of that shell.

The best moments I've had in Storium, in tabletop gaming, in online roleplaying, in MUXes, in any kind of collaborative writing experience...those moments have all been when I let my walls drop. Those are the moments I remember most fondly.

The moments when I let the tears come while I read and wrote.

The moments when I felt anger at the deeds of a villain.

The moments when I worried for a hero who had disappeared.

The moments when I dove into my character's mindset and felt the fear he would about the monster lurking in the dark.

It's so very easy to separate ourselves from the tale. Sometimes we do it because we'd be uncomfortable otherwise. In a horror game, for instance, we'll crack jokes or make table talk about the real world, reemphasizing the unreality of the horror. In the midst of a tragedy, we'll have our heroes stand bold and proud, brushing off the sorrow and just going on being heroes. We can't have them break, because someone might think we've broken too.

But I've learned that when I allow myself to feel, when I allow that fear or horror or sadness or pain or joy or hope or dream or love to affect me, and then allow it to affect my writing, I get an experience I can remember, and an experience others can remember as well.

I've learned that I can best write a character who has gone through struggles and pain when I let myself feel the sadness, just as I would if I weren't participating in the writing. I've learned to force myself to treat roleplaying and collaborative storytelling just like watching a movie or reading a book or playing a video game with a great tale - I've learned to drop my guard and let things hit me.

Because when I let things hit me, I let them hit my character, and when I let them hit my character, my character's reactions are more honest, more powerful, more raw and pure. It makes the character feel like a full-fledged person, with hopes and dreams and fears and pain, who is affected by the tale, driven by the tale, pushed to react and to experience emotion and to be changed by those experiences.

For me, it's hard. It's honestly hard. It's so easy to slip back into just thinking, "Well, what should happen next?" or "What card should I use here?" or "What tactic seems best?" or "What would be a cool thing to do?" or "What's my next one-liner?" And look - all of those questions can be, frequently are good things to ask. But not if they separate you from actually feeling. And for me, they can, unless I force myself to into the right mindset. For me, they can, unless I specifically connect myself with the heart of the tale.

This isn't something I can tell you how to do. Everybody's different. Everybody reacts to a story differently. For some of you, this isn't even something you'll have to think about. Some of you are reading this article and thinking, "Wow, I mean, I just get in my character's head and I feel this stuff anyway." And that's great! There are people who can just do that, who can just feel like a character, get in their head, think like they do, and feel like they do. It's something you hear about from great actors all the time, and it's something I've heard from great roleplayers as well.

But if you're like me, and you find yourself thinking clinically about stories, thinking about plot designs, thinking about cards or dice or what-have-you, thinking about character motivations from a distance...I can't tell you how to do it, but I encourage you to try to break that. Think like a reader, think like someone who is experiencing the tale. Don't think what your character should do, feel what your character will do.

If you're like me, that isn't going to be easy, and you aren't going to succeed all the time. But those moments where you do succeed? Those are going to be the moments you remember, the moments you deeply treasure, the moments you look back on years from now and relive in your mind.

When that happens...you see the true treasure that roleplaying, that collaborative storytelling, that writing in general can be. You leave a part of yourself in that story. You become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you. It is a beautiful, wonderful experience.

So...let yourself feel. Open yourself to that experience. Let the story in.

---

This will be the final weekly article of Storium Theory. I'm not going to say that I'm solidly done, that there will never be another article, but I've said just about everything I can think of to say at present. I've written one hundred and thirty-three articles about Storium, counting this one, and I've written about it since November 2015. That's...probably more than I've written about anything else in my life, ever. And that's not counting my participation in Storium Arc, where I've spent many hours talking about this great system and community as well.

It's amazing to me the level of depth that a system like Storium has turned out to have...the fact that I could find so much to write about it, the fact that I could write for such a long time on it and it alone...that honestly surprised me. When I started this out, I didn't initially set it up on my blog. I was just going to have four or five little articles on a webpage somewhere, just a quick little guide of sorts for new Storium players or narrators.

But Storium was deeper than that. Storium was more than that. Exploring Storium took longer, took more thought, became more interesting to me. I found myself exploring the ways the system could be used, the ways you could use challenges to do interesting things, and that got me thinking about how things could work in my own games or with my own characters, and those fed back into articles here.

Now...again, I can't say I'm done. I'm still playing Storium, and topics will still likely arise. But for now, this is the end of weekly articles, of regularly scheduled articles.

I hope that those of you who have read these have found them useful. I hope that I've helped you get more comfortable with the Storium system, and to learn to use it in creative ways, ways that can enhance your stories and lead to memorable and fun games. I hope that I've helped you get into your characters and explore them more deeply.

But now, as ever, I want to emphasize something: My way to play Storium is not the only way to play Storium. My way to write is not the only way to write. As I close up this post, and with it, the regular Storium Theory articles, I want to encourage you to look not just here, but to the community in general, to other Storium games, to other resources. If you need help, ask for it - the community is willing. If you need examples, look for them among the other games out there. See how things have worked. Explore. And come up with your own methods, your own interesting ways to use the system, your own house rules.

Storium is a simple system in concept, but a deep one at heart. Take the time to get to know it and it will reward you.

May the future bring you friendship, great stories, and treasured memories.

Coordinate Transforms, Again

Back in 2015, I had attempted to explain coordinate transforms in terms of matrices. In 2016, I started over, trying to focus on coordinate transforms without matrices. That didn't work the way I wanted either, and I wrote a blog post about that, saying that I was going to focus on game cameras. I started that, but lost motivation. The last line of that blog post is: Well, I failed. I lost motivation to work on this so I've put it on hold … again. I think I may take a long break from tutorials.

I did take a long break. I joined a game company as a consultant, mentored people making interactive articles, improved my existing pages, and also worked on lots of other things (2017, 2018). I'm reasonably happy with how things went. I've continued doing these things, but my attempts at making new tutorials have failed. Several times I tried to make a tutorial about differential heuristics for A*, but lost motivation. I tried to make a tutorial about common heuristics for A*, but lost motivation. In both those cases, I realized that it's hard to write a tutorial when I don't really understand the topic nearly as well as I thought I did. I also run into scope creep: I start with an idea but keep adding more topics to the page faster than I can actually write them.

I don't know where that leaves me. Will I ever write a comprehensive tutorial again? I don't know.

For the past few weeks I've been revisiting coordinate transforms. What am I doing differently this time? I'm keeping the scope small. Instead of all topics related to coordinate transforms, I've picked a style of game and limiting myself to the transforms that make sense for that style of game. All other topics I can tackle later.

Here's the rough outline:

1. Show a side scrolling game with some cool camera effects.
2. Introduce world coordinates vs screen coordinates.
3. Solve the problem of scrolling: subtract an offset.
4. Introduce transforms. (may need to be later)
5. Introduce inverse transforms, for mouse clicks. (may need to be later)
6. Introduce cameras. More complicated than offsets, but can do more.
7. Show some cool effects with cameras. (may need to be earlier)
8. Introduce chaining transforms.
9. Show some cool effects with chaining.
10. Demo showing all concepts together.

In parallel with implementing the interactive diagrams, I'm working on the narrative structure. The standard textbook style is to start with definitions and then give examples. I think that can be unmotivating. But it's also hard to talk about an example without knowing what the concept is. I'm still trying to figure out how to best arrange these sections. This part is often harder than implementing the diagrams.

If this page works, I can then add another style of game to introduce vertical scrolling, and then another style of game to introduce rotation or zooming. With enough examples, I think I'll understand the topic well enough to be able to write a reference that covers translate, scale, rotate, skew, etc. But even if I don't get that far, the first page can be useful on its own.

The "first page can be useful on its own" also served me well for the A* page and the hexagon page. The A* page was originally intended to be one part of a much longer series about pathfinding. The hexagon page was originally intended to be one part of a set of pages that covers all grid types. Those pages became useful on their own, and I haven't written the rest.

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THE STATE OF DFG AS A BUSINESS

Let's start this by having a rather upfront look at the miniatures industry, the customer base and expectations.

My rather unique perspective:

I have the benefit of looking at this not only from my personal company (A crumb gathering niche within a niche) but also for watching WGF, who I think most would agree had a solid seat at the mid-tier table, with a rather large product offering spanning quite a few interests.

I have worked, not only the creative side designing miniatures, but in my previous life as a buyer/planner, which gives me some ability to understand product reorder points and the financial aspect of just in time ordering, supply chain logistics and the implementation of contracts. Add to this, experience with the manufacturing aspect, working closely with WGF and even producing my own resin releases… I understand soft and hard tool molds, direction of pull and release draft angles. Well at least enough to be dangerous: P The only reason I went over this is to illustrate although I am a fresh new business man, and likely NOT a very good one, I do possess a wide skill base that assists me every day.

The Industry:

The industry, is a niche industry, with most companies either finding their niche within a niche market or attempting to gather the crumbs off the table form some of the larger players in the industry. Volume wise, its not a great industry for those not sitting in the top positions within their niche.

It has been said, you are only as good as your last release and only as memorable as your next tease. I find this to be a true if not slightly jaded view. The 'new shinny' is what drives this market from a sales standpoint. You need to remain in the publics eye as there is always a new 'something' from some other company that will be released just around the corner. 

This is where plastic is king and curse all at the same time. Plastic is a fantastic medium for the end user, light durable, infinitely modifiable and highly desirable. There is no doubt that for a miniature line a plastic release adds desirability and a certain legitimacy that those dealing in lesser materials, metal and resin have a hard time competing with….

But why Mark, why would that be a curse when plastic is King, you ask.

(THE LONG ANSWER)

Most would say the upfront costs, which is the correct answer but only part of the answer, the other part is time to market with plastic. Companies that are in plastic need to be looking about 18 months in advance to have any form of steady release schedule. (Remember the new shiny is what matters) Once again, I know that sounds jaded, but it is not… Your supply chain can back you up and help you drive sales if you have a proven history of delivery.

You need to have the capitol to pay upfront for 6 or so releases to be worked on at any one time. Let's say they are frugal with their kits and two molds for each kit will be required. That would be 12 Molds in the works, 50% down for a total of $60,000 investment tied up for a minimum of 6-12 moths -AND- They need to have available enough capitol to finalize payment on two of those kits, their production run, box/packaging and shipping to their distribution center. So, let's say you plan an average release to have enough stock to get you through a quarter. 3000 is a fairly good number for the first quarter release from a smaller manufacturer without a huge marketing budget to drive sales. i.e. me or WGF. That would be about $55,000 to get two releases to your dock, paying off four molds and the production run for two kits @ 3000ea volume.

Total outlay of capitol required, around $115,000 with another $55,000 needed in another month or two for the next two releases… and this cycle goes on and on as long as you keep the plastic flowing.

Looking at plastic production from a single project or set of molds is only half the answer… Heaven forbid you have a slow release in there that never grabs like it should. If you are not sitting on $100,000 of 'problem solving extra cash', you then do not have the capitol for the next releases and the entire production aspect gets thrown out of whack. Your customers are upset, your supply chain is upset, and the money spent on marketing to tease the next release is pretty much cash in a dumpster fire.

The moral to this story, if you are looking to run a plastic kit line and want to continue doing so, plan 18 months in advance, have 6 kits ready to go to the mold maker from your end at any one time and be sitting on about $250.000 in a cash reserve that is not required for other aspects of your business or its overhead. 

A smarter move would be choosing a format that is kinder on the mold count and margin returned for each kit. KD and Mallifaux are a couple of examples, (Hero models) a single figure sells for nearly as much as a boxed set and requires 1/10 the mold space. Unfortunately, this is not the format that DFG embarked on and I am not sure it is one I would have chosen even knowing what I know now, primarily because the character model scheme is just not that appealing to me…. Let's just say I would need to give it some thought.

So, I think we have established that 'properly' running a plastic miniatures business is expensive….

So you had a flop:

Let's talk about the inevitable soft release. So, you had a flop… bound to happen and you have a release coming shortly behind to help punch back up those numbers. You need to get it out of your head that that slow release will ever pay for its self. The first quarter is the make or break for that kit, flub up the release or have shipping issues and miss the restock or short your initial release, you WILL NOT be getting those sales back, they are gone, your customers and supply chain have moved on to the next release. Sure, they will continue to sell in some small manner, but you missed the boat and the return on investment will likely never come. You can chalk the $15-20K loss up to a learning experience and move on…. Assuming you still have the capitol to do so.

After the first quarter, the product sales will decrease each end every quarter until you hit the products base line. Historicals burn the slowest and lowest but they are steady. Sci-fi is one of the better formats for that initial bump. Fantasy? Not sure…. I do not have any insider information on that. If you have a strong line with distinctive style such as KD, I think you would be fine but that is an uneducated guess on my part.

So, we all are on the same page? Miniatures are expensive, risky, and from an artists stand point a hell of a lot of fun, from a businessman's standpoint, perhaps not the best investment without an eye for the long game and certainly not without a rather large bank account doing nothing but gathering interest.

The customer base:

What a nefarious gathering. Truly, a hive of scum and villainy.

Creative, imaginative, supportive, geeks, nerds, artist, and general loons….. I could not be prouder of all of you!

Seriously though a great community and one that I am proud to be a part of. I think that they key to my success has always been the relationship with my customer base. I can honestly say I miss being a part of that as much or more than I enjoy the creative sculpting aspects.

As was stated in the beginning of this long rambling thread, the shiny new thing drives the business, that is not to say that quality and the feeling of a fair exchange price vs return is not important, because it is. We all need to feel like we received value from our purchase. If any one aspect fails, quality, value, time to market. You as a manufacturer will feel the effects, not just in that sale but in future transactions.

The supply chain is a customer as well. If you are part of the supply chain, you had better be firing up your customer base. The supply chain directly reacts to demand, they my or may not like your product but if it sells, they will bump the next order and if it is flat, they will pull back. For you the customer/end user its about scratching that creative itch with something cool. For the retailers and wholesalers (who are likely geeks like the rest of us) its still about stock movement and fast returns on investment.

Remember your first few months of any release will make or break that release. This all comes back to time to market… Loose that race and you have lost sales, it is an extremely important aspect that every manufacture frets about and that many of us never think about as we wander store shelves or click through retailer's websites.

Expectations:

IT'S A TRAP! (Admiral Akbar, Battle of Endor) 

Also a fun drinking game for this post.

Wipe the sleep from your eyes, this next part is important and although my ramblings may have put you into a stupor, this is meat and potatoes time!

If you have been on this side of the table for any length of time, you will know the manufactures rarely meet deadlines.

This is not just a 'China thing'.

Every vendor I have worked with on the manufacturing end comes in late.

PERIOD, NO EXCEPTIONS.

So how do you manage expectations? How can you guesstimate when something will arrive once the order has been placed? Honest answer, you can't, the delay will range from reasonable, two weeks to mind numbing 1+ years. Best advice is not to even tease a release until it is in your warehouse… let it simmer for a couple of weeks and then release.

The problem for me is that I truly enjoy bringing all of you in on the creative process. I am likely shooting myself in the foot by doing so, but some of the feedback ends in changes or insights that effect the final product. This (for me) is a difficult decision. Do I open the doors and show all while destroying the OOOOOH NEW SHINY! Or pray that the ends justify the means. I still do not have an answer for this problem, I just know that I prefer active participation.

I am not sure how the supply chain felt about that, but I imagine they would prefer an unveiling and big initial hype just before release.

Quality:

Based on your past purchases, we know WGF delivered quality, late, but quality. This in its own way is a trap. I have no doubt that Wai Kee (WGF) knows the value of quality and what that means for retention. He is a brilliant engineer and can be a perfectionist when his attention is fully on a project. Should my next release not rise to the same level, there will be comparisons and expectations will be met or not. I will never knowingly produce crap but not every manufacturer is able to meet that standard to the same level.

Price:

I have always priced with an eye to value for money spent. I tried to keep the kits slightly below some of the 'big boys' so that my customers could view them as a quality alternative that may be slightly more reasonable. This is also a trap. Slaving your price structure to a larger more capable manufacturer means that you may be running at a loss if all things do not go as planned. The pull back from distribution and rising costs to ship outside the US have made it impossible to look at new releases with the same pricing structure, certainly not while staying within distribution.

Kit contents:

When we started this path together, WGF was manufacturing, shipping in full container load to their warehouse and pushing those product up the supply chain that had been in existence for some time. The discount they received by shipping full container loads is substantial, the cost to manufacture, insignificant by comparisons to what a customer needs to pay. Having these large multi sprue kits was not a real concern aside from their volume in the container. When I took over distribution, it became very clear that the kit contents (sheer size) and number of shots per kit would indeed be an issue and A TRAP!  How do you pull back from that or cut a new course once expectations have been set?

Means of production:

As I stated very early in all this, plastic is king, but now that you see the monetary requirements, the delays in time to market, the lost revenue associated with these delays…. Where do you go with all of that? How as a manufacture can you justify any move towards plastic? And if the expectation is that all my releases are to be plastic, well….. IT"S A TRAP!

I will lay out a single example here to help clarify the financial issues with plastic kits. You ready for this? Where ell's will a manufacturer open his books with a real-world example of pricing? (queue cheesy used car salesman commercial music)

One of my best-selling kits, the 20-man Stormtrooper set.

20-man stormtrooper set, cost to manufacture $5.00, not bad, not great but folks in China got to eat too.

Cost to deliver $3.00 (shipping and initial warehousing, would be substantially less if I could fill containers, but the sales volume does not allow for that)

Total cost of kit delivered $8.00

Retail $44.00

Buy at $8.00 sell at $44.00?! Where do I sign up, right? Hang on folks, it's a bumpy ride.

What does it take to run a miniature line and keep the doors open? It's simple really, you need to have a 4-5 X mark-up from the manufacturing costs MINIMUM (kit delivered to warehouse) returning to you on most sales. It may seem crazy high to require 4-5X the cost but when you break it down it becomes clear. Now granted this is simplistic but a good estimate. If you can get it 6X cost delivered is much better, as it allows for some breathing room that may be desperately needed.

1X For cost to re order the kit you just sold

1-1.5X For the associated overhead (Warehousing, utilities Labor) Assuming that you turn the product over every 2-3 months, if it goes longer, it will eat further into the profit margin.

1X Tax…. No way around the tax man.

1X Back into business to fund that next sweet release.

.5-1X Personal profit, a man must eat after all….

$8.00 X 5 =$40.00 all is good! Well, sort of… If I sell direct only, at full MSRP, then I have met my margin. If I sell into distribution, I net $16.00-$17.60 per kit, which works ONLY if your turnover is very fast and you are able to restock with a container load of product.

I tend(ed) to sell 60/40 split 40% direct (at less than retail many times) and 60% into distribution with a 6 to 12-month turnover (sell through last shipment) depending on the SKU.

What does all this mean? It means that there is simply no way to sell into distribution without jacking the kit price so high that it would cripple sales. Retail for a 20-man set would need to be $80-$85 for this kit to make sense from a business perspective. If all of you are confident that and $85 retail is reasonable, and you would snatch them up…. Please say so, but I think I know the answer to that question already.

So, Wholesale is clearly not an option based on the financial realities, but wholesale is consistent. They move product every month like clockwork down to the retailers, they pay the operating expenses by being reliable in a way that my customers cannot be, through no fault of their own. Wholesalers are pushing out to multiple retailers and pushing to a much larger and willing base.

All of the expectations listed above have been on my mind from the first day I took over, reflecting, trying various things, contemplating every month on the direction of the company and how or IF it should move forward. Seriously, I LOVE this stuff, but every month I examine if there is a future or not.

All doom and gloom, right? May as well just call it a day? 

Nope, not yet. There are several paths forward, but they are untested, and the results may or may not net the desired result. I have started the process by removing myself from distribution and reopening a dialog with my customers. I will lay out a few options as I see them and see if any of you have input that might assist in steering the boat. Not to worry, this is not 'on you' DFG will move forward in perhaps some rather unconventional ways that may break some of the 'expectations' but I am more than happy to plot the course and see where it leads.

NEXT UP WHERE TO GO

I will be going over what I have planned so far and possible ways to deal with production and releases.