So, Black Sigil is in stores, and slowly reaching new territories (such as the foreign, frontier country of Canada), so it might be time to discuss what we’ve done recently and what’s next for Studio Archcraft.
1-Supporting Black Sigil’s sales
The bulk of the sales and marketing work is handled by Graffiti Entertainment. However, we’ve tried to help anyway we can (for instance, with this blog.) On this matter, if you haven’t purchased your copy of Black Sigil yet, I advise you to do so. And if you’ve pirated it or something, now would be a good time to have pangs of conscience and buy a copy.
2-Housework
One of the thing I spent much time on in the last couple of months is behind-the-scene administrative stuff. Running a business requires quite a bit of that, and getting that done was becoming fairly important. We still have some of that to do, but that bit of workload is shrinking daily.
3-Designing new projects
Obviously, as a game development studio, we have to design games. This particular task has progressed a lot - we have one game pretty much ready to move into full-scale development, and we’ve also laid the groundwork for additional projects as well.
4-Preparing for growth
In addition to doing maintenance work, we’ve laid down the groundwork for some real growth - getting real office space, building a larger core team, etc. The goal is to reduce our development time from one game every seven years to something like a game or two a year. We’re also planning a website redesign (for real, this time - the current design can’t handle two projects.)
So, the next step is getting our next project in development. We’re actually well on our way in this regard - enough that the next blog post will be about our new project.
The blog seems kinda dead lately, at least in terms of comments. That’s too bad.
I don’t own a DS. I just follow this blog because I find it interesting that we have a classic RPG game studio in Montreal. I can’t support you by buying the game but hey, I’m looking forward to the next post! lol
Can’t wait to see what’s next in line! I really enjoyed Black Sigil and I’m looking forward to what’s next.
Great news! I’m so glad that I bought Black Sigil. I have the good feeling of having supported an independant studio AND I got a great game to play.
I’m very curious about your next game projects.
Kinta
We’re really rooting for you. I’ve enjoyed my time with Black Sigil (so much so that I’m writing a walkthrough for it) and can’t wait to hear of your next project. Your growth and development goals sound ideal as well. Best of luck to you.
Hello Guys,
I finally buy Black Sigil despite critics said that this game is a mere copy of Square Enix’ Chrono Trigger. I don’t care, let it be a genre for this type of RPG, and all may follow it proudly. I’m also happy that finally there is a studio outside Japan that have great ideas out of usual western RPG system. Not to mention developed by an indie one and for DS system, which I think is great.
But, surely I want to point out there are many things you should work out with if you want to be successful on the next line of RPG products. Hopefully this thread is suitable for my explanation, otherwise it’s my bad. Let’s see:
1. Please provide confirmation on saving process, most importantly when players are about to overwrite a save slot. This can be fatal if players do it accidently.
2. Please provide transition screen on the beginning of a battle. When you’re close to a town, and desperately running from monsters, then the screen goes black, I don’t know if I’m make it to town safely or caught on a battle. Next screen always surprise me (not in good way mostly)
3. Extensive battles after a few seconds of walking, can be annoying, even if you’re on the way to leveling up the heroes. To this, I even try to stock up 99 blue herbs to safely wandering around caves and forest. Unless you guys don’t want players to wander around the geography of Black Sigil.
4. Please work on the manual, most of the screen shot are kinda blur, and the details provide minimal information about the game play (most importantly the rules about position in battle. In my case, I stucked and cannot hit enemy next to me, which is only a rat). Please, it’s player last resort to learn the game, before they go to hint pages on Internet.
I think that’s all. I hope this can be a constructive critic for the next development. I’m looking forward to your next project.
Hello
I would like to say the game is great up untill I reached a sequece where the game has a glitch. It`s about 1hours gameplay and the council in Isas homeland is meeting. We Kairu and aurora walk into the council room and there nothing happens - and the controls aren`t resonding as well. What to do? I replay the game from another save point but it`s no good. I bought it official too!
I really whould like to play along cause it`s the best game on the DS until now (suikoden is great too)!
Please any hints?
Thanks…
sorry about 10 hours gameplay - didn`t hit the 0