Strength Of The SWORD ULTIMATE no longer coming to Linux after the successful Kickstarter

Well I had not heard of this game and maybe its just me but this game doesnt seem it should of taken longer that 2 years to make as it doesnt look that complex from a design point of view. So am guessing four years was taking the piss judging by the publisher dropping them. That is the problem with inde projects if the main dev has poor health there is no plan B and invetitably game funding goes on funding care to get back to work.

While a person health is ultimately way more important that a project,Project management is something indie studios either need to invest in or hire someone what will kick ass if its needed to get the project on track. The mark of sucessful indie team is delivering on time and ideally under budget.

Really one of the reasons that when I develop a game, I won't go for crowdfunding. At least not for basic funding.
You'll just end up with responsibilities you might not be able to fulfill if things go south.

If you only put your own money in, at least you won't be wasting other people's money in the case of failure.

Well I had not heard of this game and maybe its just me but this game doesnt seem it should of taken longer that 2 years to make as it doesnt look that complex from a design point of view. So am guessing four years was taking the piss judging by the publisher dropping them. That is the problem with inde projects if the main dev has poor health there is no plan B and invetitably game funding goes on funding care to get back to work.

While a person health is ultimately way more important that a project,Project management is something indie studios either need to invest in or hire someone what will kick ass if its needed to get the project on track. The mark of sucessful indie team is delivering on time and ideally under budget.

Quite true.
Four years does seem off, even for a very small team.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 26 Aug 2019 at 11:13 am UTC

It's a case of a small two-person team biting off much more than they can chew. It goes over a bunch of issues they faced, along with funds getting low and a publisher leaving them "due to the delays", along with "personal and health issues" and so on. One of the developers is going to be moving onto other things too, so there will only be one person left to deal with everything.

I'm surprised this game got onto any OS. Ever.

... I advised them to be open and honest and make a proper announcement on it.

Thank you. At some point this will be developer common knowledge, though we might have to gag all the lawyers and marketing people in the business to make it happen.

Every time I read the title of a new game followed by the word "Kickstarter," it's like the second word hits a mental delete key and I forget all about whatever it was I just read. Did I know about this game? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I won't miss it.


Last edited by Nanobang on 26 Aug 2019 at 11:29 am UTC

I'd be surprised if this game got onto any OS. Ever.

It is being sold on Steam, so...

I'd be surprised if this game got onto any OS. Ever.

It is being sold on Steam, so...

Well damn, so it is. Ok I've edited myself to reflect this. Thanks for the info :)

Haven't we seen it a million times by now? Development drowning in feature bloat. Adding, adding, adding, adding... pushing an eventual finish line further and further into an obscure future.

While I'm sad they couldn't make good on the Linux version, I'm glad they did finish the game and release something that looks both appealing and friendly to low spec machines. <3

Wishlisted for now.

Unfortunately it's guys like this who pretty much destroy the entire crowdfunding model. I haven't funded a project in who knows how long now. And it's not because there hasn't been any who looked good on paper.

I'm surprised they released at all. Congrats for that to them.

They're not the only one who miscalculate, and even with way larger teams that happens. Shouldn't happen, but happens.

I've funded them with 10 $, which isn't too much afterall. I'll try to get it running on wine/dxvk (currently boreked according to protondb, which isn't really surprising since they use a home grown engine), and if I get it working properly won't refund.

I'm not really somebody who requires a native version, but it would have been nice to have it tested/working with wine. Afterall, I am spending quite some time playing with wine, even some games which do have native versions since they just run better in wine with dxvk/d9vk than the native versions do.

A lot of people go into game design with high attitudes, a lot of idealism and really just the best of intentions, unaware of the enormous amounts of planning, structure, strategy and sheer workloads they'll actually be facing. This isn't just true for game development, this happens with a lot of startups in all areas of society.

So kudos to these two for seeing it through and even offering refunds. Seems like they are very open about the situation, their intentions and everything. At least now. So they're ok in my book.

This is kind of sad. Indeed there are common issues about Kickstarter projects here, mainly financial and technical ones.
But here, there's an human issue too.

We started falling so far behind...running out of funds...lost our publisher due to the delays...personal and health issues started...stress mounted up to unbelievable levels...team relationships started deteriorating...depression mounted up...misery all around.

Absolutely nobody wants that sort of situation, but the game is available on Steam, that's sort of a miracle IMO.
I particularly hate the issue about the publisher, like "faster = better"... this has to stop (but yeah it's capitalism isn't it?).


Last edited by Cyril on 26 Aug 2019 at 4:09 pm UTC

Unfortunately it's guys like this who pretty much destroy the entire crowdfunding model. I haven't funded a project in who knows how long now. And it's not because there hasn't been any who looked good on paper.

Same. Well, technically -this- particular story wouldn't deter me all by itself. It looked like a perfect storm of bad things coming together to create this failure. It doesn't look malicious to me at all. These guys were apparently NOT like some devs on Kickstarter who promise supporting every single platform in the world to draw in more crowdfunding money, just to literally write some variant of "Nah, we don't care about you and never did, because you're not Windows" after taking their cash. It's THESE people that made me stop funding games.


Last edited by Kimyrielle on 26 Aug 2019 at 4:47 pm UTC

I particularly hate the issue about the publisher, like "faster = better"... this has to stop (but yeah it's capitalism isn't it?).

Why?
When I give someone money, agreeing to certain conditions, and then it becomes obvious that those conditions will not be met - and it seems increasingly unlikely that further investments would see any return... Well, then I just withdraw and cut my losses.
That's just common sense, which really could be a bit more common amongst some game developers.

Would you let yourself be screwed over?
This has nothing to do with demanding too much or "faster = better".


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 26 Aug 2019 at 7:54 pm UTC

Why?
When I give someone money, agreeing to certain conditions, and then it becomes obvious that those conditions will not be met - and it seems increasingly unlikely that further investments would see any return... Well, then I just withdraw and cut my losses.
That's just common sense capitalism, which really could be a bit more common amongst some game developers.

Would you let yourself be screwed over?
This has nothing to do with demanding too much or "faster = better".

Fixed. We can't really argue about that since we only (?) know this model in game industry and we don't know about what their agreement exactly was.
I just hate that model/system, so asking me this question is a nonsense.


Last edited by Cyril on 26 Aug 2019 at 8:15 pm UTC

It doesn't look malicious to me at all.

For me it doesn't really matter much as long as the result is the same. One might even argue it's worse when even projects with all good intentions fails.

Furthermore I'm not so sure if all of those other projects really are that malicious either - or just simply inexpereinced devs who are eager to take on the world, until the reality slaps them in the face with a big fat trout.

Why?
When I give someone money, agreeing to certain conditions, and then it becomes obvious that those conditions will not be met - and it seems increasingly unlikely that further investments would see any return... Well, then I just withdraw and cut my losses.
That's just common sense capitalism, which really could be a bit more common amongst some game developers.

Would you let yourself be screwed over?
This has nothing to do with demanding too much or "faster = better".

Fixed. We can't really argue about that since we only (?) know this model in game industry and we don't know about what their agreement exactly was.
I just hate that model/system, so asking me this question is a nonsense.

Do you have any reason for your attitude or is this just the usual "capitalism bad!" rhetoric with no logic behind it whatsoever?

Do you have any reason for your attitude or is this just the usual "capitalism bad!" rhetoric with no logic behind it whatsoever?

It would hardly be logical of him to waste his time replying to someone so explicitly dismissive of his views.

Do you have any reason for your attitude or is this just the usual "capitalism bad!" rhetoric with no logic behind it whatsoever?

It would hardly be logical of him to waste his time replying to someone so explicitly dismissive of his views.

Ohhh, I touched a sore spot there, it seems.

I am explicitly dismissive of attitudes without reason behind them, for sure.
And I asked if that was the case for him or if he maybe wanted to add some argument to his statement. Because "I just hate X" isn't much to go on, really. We aren't talking about someone not liking broccoli here.

It's called a discussion, in which further explanations are sometimes required and requested.
Are you new to this?


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 27 Aug 2019 at 10:11 am UTC

Do you have any reason for your attitude or is this just the usual "capitalism bad!" rhetoric with no logic behind it whatsoever?

It would hardly be logical of him to waste his time replying to someone so explicitly dismissive of his views.

Ohhh, I touched a sore spot there, it seems.

I am explicitly dismissive of attitudes without reason behind them, for sure.
And I asked if that was the case for him or if he maybe wanted to add some argument to his statement. Because "I just hate X" isn't much to go on, really. We aren't talking about someone not liking broccoli here.

It's called a discussion, in which further explanations are sometimes required and requested.
Are you new to this?

You're just itching for a fight, aren't you? :D

Just a tip: "Are you as stupid as everyone else who thinks that way?" isn't the invitation to civil discourse you think it is.


Last edited by tuubi on 27 Aug 2019 at 10:32 am UTC

Just a tip: "Are you as stupid as everyone else who thinks that way?" isn't the invitation to civil discourse you think it is.

Not what I said. But very interesting how you interpreted it.
And as I stated elsewhere, I really don't care about replies to me being "civil", I care more about having an honest discussion.
Nobody has to be extra nice and friendly towards me, I really don't give a damn about that. It's substance over form for me.

You're just itching for a fight, aren't you? :D

We live in interesting times, when asking someone to provide further reasoning for an "I just hate X" statement is considered asking for a fight.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 27 Aug 2019 at 11:25 am UTC

Do you have any reason for your attitude or is this just the usual "capitalism bad!" rhetoric with no logic behind it whatsoever?

Same question for you, with your attitude, so do you think capitalism is good?

I'm not really inclined to debate about this subject on this topic, maybe It's my fault, but I think that's off topic here.
But with your first description, you called it "common sense" and I really disagree with this, for me it's just a reaction of a system established, here the capitalism.
At this point it seems a debate would be difficult.

Capitalism is not a common sense, nor a logical system as it creates nothing good IMO.
But it's easy to be misinterpreted on Internet. If people can't think outside a system, it's complicated. And I don't saying that you're this kind, I just don't know but at least I think you like to debate on any subject.

It's indeed interesting, but It would take forever.