First, I would like to thank all people who were providing me the feedback (especially to all of you who don't play this kind of game and were just checking it as fellow designers).

In the first post there is a standard "release promo" and I will post the postmortem on the second post.

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Link: http://europe1300.eu
Description: Realistic historical medieval sim
Genre: simulation
Theme & period: medieval, year 1200-1400 (with focus on 1300)
Time needed: you should login 1-2 per day for full efficiency, generally (as most/all my games) it's designed for people who don't have much time to play.



How it works:
There are historical kingdoms, players join these. Then they elect a king (contrary to common belief in medieval tiems, and especially around year 1300, there was no such thing as absolute monarchy but a feudal system, where nobles were sometimes even more powerful than kings), the king wage wars, distribute royal offices and so on.
You can take a role of a commoner (merchant, craftsman) or a noble (knight, baron, bishop) and many special ones (minstrels, pilgrims, priests, monks, scholars). Commoners usually craft final goods and trade (there is a very nice market system, I'm very proud of it), nobles usually tend to their fiefdoms (produce food and raw resources), compete for Countial positions and control of provinces. And many more.




The main differences to other games (not that there are many in that genre):
* I went for historical accuracy, no magic, no imaginary kingdoms and no political correctness. The aim was to simulate the spirit (not necessarily the letter) of that era. There is a strong Church (just one, no "alternative" religions/churches) with the Pope (a player choosen via conclave), crusades against saracens (infidels shall die!), the mongols golden horde (which rampaged through eastern europe in that period).
* Low time commitment
* Interesting and balanced market system
* A lot of fighting between kingdoms with protections against "farming" the weak (the game was designed so very unbalanced kingdoms, in terms of number of citizens, can coexist). No way to eradicate a kingdom (but there is an option to vassalize weaker nations).

Link: http://europe1300.eu

"Postmortem" (I'm not sure it's the best name for a game that was just released, but well, that's how we call it so let it be :)

What went right

* Theme was a really good choice, I feel really comfortable in medieval setting and it was helping me a lot as a designer.

* Overall it turned out to be a good game (despite many of my worries on the way). In the end the players liked it (I'm not sure why :D).

* The marketing premise seem to worked out (preying on partiotism "join COUNTRYNAMEHERE to help in battle against ANOTHERCOUNTRYNAMEHERE")

* Market system (I love it, I can't believe no one implemented something like that before, I mean it's obvious it should work like that, I totally like it)

What went wrong

* Too long, it all took too long. 3 Years in development... compared to 2 weeks on my first game it clearly shows there was something very wrong in the process (and/or that I go down the drain as a designer :D)

* Too unique & original - you know, it's always good to be original but I REALLY went way overboard here. In the end I finished the game by removing some of the original stuff and put in place ideas I "stolen from others". I don't mean it's bad that it's original (no one would care about it if it was not) but... one or two or three original ideas are fine, not every single mechanic :D Besides, in the end I had to remove a lot of these original things so it was no point...

* My distrust in the design - I kind of abandoned it... overlooked that in its core it is a good game (I came to my senses when I noticed that after like a year of abandonement and no marketing at all there still are like 25 people who play it day after day after day). I definitley should not trusted my taste and acknowledge that players might have different tastes and that I, as a designer, will see flaws in my creation (even if these flawas are not that big of a problem for the players).

* Perfectionism - yeah, as always :D No matter how I try to kill it, perfectionism always raises his ugly head and try to devour my newborn games :D I'm glad it didn't consumed that one :)

* Insane number of rewrites (feature added, removed, new one add in that place, removed...)

What I would change if I were to start now

Overall I made it... and as I can see it that game will survive. So, no matter the flaws in the process it lead to a good product (yet, 3 years... I'm not sure if it was worth it). What would I do if I were to start now?

* Trust myself more (in the end I'm the designer and it's kind of my vision the players will follow - distrusting ones own taste makes no sense - in the end you can't design a game you can't understand...)

* Go for copy/paste of majority of the mechanics. I will NEVER AGAIN MAKE 100% MECHANICS ORIGINAL in any game ever. It's insane, it won't work. And in the end you look how feeble these are and replace them with some standard. And even if you make something original that works players find it confusing :D OK, I'm exaggerating, this game is an originality feast, but still, I'm not gonna go for 100% original ideas, more like 30% original and 70% standard, seems much more sane.

* Go for combat early. I had big ideals, simulation, roleplaying... OK, it works, but... The combat system (even through it's not the most important one) is the most exciting to players for sure.

You know... in reality I don't know how would I do it if I were to start that game now :D Maybe it was meant to be done this way... I simply know I don't want to go through a hell like that ever again :D

I created an account to check out your game.

First of all congrats! :D

And thanks for the post-mortem, it's always nice to know of other's experience. Especially your point about being too original.

Anyway I checked your game, and it seems huge and there is so much to do! Maybe I will try some more (even though this type of game is not really my prefered) :D

So once again good work, and see you in space for the next (probably?;) )

Hi there,

First, congratulations on the game, it shows that you have put great effort in it! Keep up the good work :)

And now my feedback. I am a huge fan of this kind of games, but I have found only few to be good enough to spend time for them. Unfortunately your game is not on the list. I created an account a few weeks back, logged in and ... I got lost. Tried to follow the tutorial hints but after a few they got really unclear. I had to discover on my own where are certain buildings and how to build them. It was not simple and not fun. Maybe I didn't get to the fun part, but I doubt that a casual gamer will pass my efforts. And yes, maybe if you get used to it, then it will be easy, but in the beginning is not :( And that is what drove me away.

Of course, building such a game is not easy and again I want to congratulate you on the efforts and I hope this game becomes really popular! :)

Anyway I checked your game, and it seems huge and there is so much to do!

So once again good work, and see you in space for the next (probably?;) )

I got lost. Tried to follow the tutorial hints but after a few they got really unclear. I had to discover on my own where are certain buildings and how to build them. It was not simple and not fun.

Maybe I didn't get to the fun part, but I doubt that a casual gamer will pass my efforts.

Created an account and have some suggestions.

List the items that would be gained like the forest Gather Clay.

As for the Tutorial could you add a green ring highlight for the buttons that need to be hit.

It seems like it would be fairly easy to put into effect if you are using PHP.

Wish list:

Fiefdoms - Would like to have a preset list of names.

Prompts - Especially, in the Feifdom window there are very few prompts to setup things.

MinMax - Wish there was more data on the stats and their effect

Questions:

Where does the products of the market go?

Could people sell bread and drink to the tavern?

P.S.

As a fellow PHP programer if you are looking for custom solutions to issue I would be more than happy to help.

List the items that would be gained like the forest Gather Clay.

Prompts - Especially, in the Feifdom window there are very few prompts to setup things.

MinMax - Wish there was more data on the stats and their effect

Where does the products of the market go?

Could people sell bread and drink to the tavern?

You had my upvote at the mere fact you've finished the game ;)

LOL. But it's tue, finishing a game is (almost) all that counts for a game designer. We can talk, plan and everything but... only when you see your game released and played by others, even if it's not a beauty and a bit crippled, you know why you were doing it in the first place. Not to mention an insane dosage of endorphins if produces :)