Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner

[Acrux]

I came across this today. It's one of the more recent Final Fantasy Tactics-like RPGs. Visual design is so-so. It's not a port, so the controls are apparently pretty good. Gameplay is also said to be pretty good, with the rough spots being worked out. Also, no romances!

I was on the fence, but then I saw a review that said the game features "every flavor of war crime", which obviously pushed it into the must purchase category.

[Acrux]

Ha ha ha, okay. Stay away from this. Apart from QoL issues, this game seemed pretty good. However, today the devs decided that the game is getting to long for what they are charging, so now what's done is the complete version (releasing tomorrow).

Preparing for Full Release
Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner Early Access was launched with around 25 hours of story content at $30 (and equivalent Steam regional pricing). The original plan was to make the campaign around 50 hours long and raise the price to $40 (and equivalent Steam regional pricing).

However, as we approached the 40 hour mark, it quickly became evident that the story of Wendalle simply cannot be told in a mere 50 hours. We haven't even explored the other Dukedoms yet. If we were to fit the entire story in a single game, it would easily reach 100 hours+ which is simply insane.

This is why we are finishing this game at around the 40 hour mark which serves as the end of Act 1 in the Wendalle Saga. This is the perfect jumping off point and we plan to continue the story in the form of sequel/s. Moreover, we will not be raising the price of the game and keep it at $30 (and equivalent Steam regional pricing).

Another bit of good news is that we are ahead of schedule for our Full Release Content and therefore we will be releasing the full game on 5th September, 2023, 10am PST.

[Luckmann]

Another bit of good news

Are they for real? How the **** is that "good news"?

[Acrux]

(There are so many places this post would fit, but I'm putting it here so that the context is easier to see.)

Ha ha ha ha ha! Most of you won't remember this game from a year ago that released to some dev incompetence drama. Well, they posted a retrospective of what went wrong earlier today: turns out they were pajeets all along!


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... ?l=english

It’s coming up to a year since we launched Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner and we would like to take a moment to retrospect the development of our first title. We are also eternally grateful to all the players that tried our game despite its many glaring faults.

We would like to give a brief overview of what really happened. This is the story from our perspective.

Development

Crimson Tactics was our studios’ first title. We are based in India, a country where you can count the number of shipped PC/Console Games on both hands (as of writing this). Needless to say, pretty much everyone on the team was new to developing these kinds of games. To say that we did not know what we were doing would be an understatement. We were pretty much figuring stuff out as we go in regards to both development and production. This led to a massive over-scoping of this project and our inexperience led us to underestimate the time required to ship all the features.

We want to stress that we are not some high profile developer with years of experience under our belt. Pretty much everyone on our team was new to this.

This resulted in us taking too long to launch the game into Early Access. We had to delay the game thrice because it was not ready. Moreover, the systems in the game were developed in a very amateurish and inefficient manner which led to a huge problem that comes into context a bit later.

What Happened at EA Launch

On the launch day of Early Access (25th July, 2023), we were actually getting positive reviews for the game but the sales were extremely weak. We had also exhausted most of our funds trying to push the game into Early Access as we had to delay the game thrice to get it to a polished state. The poor sales and low remaining funds put us in a pretty bad spot after the launch.

Over the month of July, we waited to see if sales would improve but to no vail and after evaluating the situation in August, we realized that we had the funds to run the studio at its current state for just 1 more month.

Early Access Content

Early Access was essentially Feature Complete. What that means is that all the features we hoped to have in the final game were already complete. What remained was adding additional Story and Gameplay Content.

Early Access launched with the following things:

- 10+ Classes.
- 75+ Abilities.
- 3+ Mounts.
- 25+ Hour Story Campaign.
- 30+ Levels.

In our Early Access messaging, we were very clear and said that we planned the following things for Full Release:

- 20+ Classes.
- 200+ Special Abilities.
- 5+ Mounts.
- 50+ Hour Story Campaign.
- 75+ Levels.

Moreover, we planned to gradually increase the price of the game (from $30 to $40).

This information can be found on this Web Archive Page.

This snapshot was taken on 20th July, 2023, 5 days before our Early Access Release and has the most up to date information up to that point in time.

In our messaging, we stress that we have planned the things and we hope to develop these things.

Internally, these were just rough plans that we hoped to realize during Early Access. Nothing more than Early Access content was even conceptualized up until then.

We were naïve and inexperienced. In our understanding, plans are not hard promises and hoping to develop something is not a hardened promise of delivery.

We never thought that these plans and hopes would be interpreted as hard bound promises that we absolutely must deliver on. This led to a lot of misinformation and baseless accusations being spread on the Steam Forums. We will be much more careful moving forward on how we communicate our plans and promises.

Post Early Access

After Early Access Launch, the game was actually getting positive reviews but the sales were extremely poor. And as mentioned before, we had about 1 month of runway left for the team.

Instead of abandoning the game at Early Access and letting it stay in Early Access forever, we decided to get as much work done as possible and push for a Full Release.

Since Early Access was already Feature Complete, we decided that the best we could do was:

- 15+ Classes.
- 150+ Abilities.
- 5+ Mounts.
- 40+ Hour Story Campaign.
- 50+ Levels.

in the month of time we had left.

We worked hard to get this done and released the Full Release on 5th September, 2023. We did the best we could with the resources we had left.

Communication Woes

Behind the scenes, things were hectic as we worked hard to get the things done for Full Release. We got accused of lying and communicating our new plans just 1 day before release.

Heck, even we were not sure what we could get done in that short period of time for Full Release. We had already failed on delivering our plans once.

And yes, we handled communications for this title in a very amateurish manner which could have been handled much better. We apologize for this and we will strive to do better next time.

Post Full Release

Needless to say, people were not satisfied with our Full Release as the reviews turned from Mostly Positive to Mixed and justifiably so.

Revenue from the game did not improve and there was no way to keep the same team and we had to disband.

We got in touch with all our industry contacts to see if anyone was hiring and fortunately, a lot of studios were. Thankfully, we managed to get most developers a new job at other studios.

State of Crimson Tactics

The game is complete from our end. We have implemented what we could for this game and have pushed out a Full Release.

We understand that it’s not perfect and the story ends very very abruptly but we are also getting feedback that the game is fun though mounts are useless.

We actually agree with most of the recent feedback we are getting on the game.

A lot of users are asking why can’t we just develop this game further and make this game better?

The reason is quite simple. Due to our inexperience, the game was developed in an extremely inefficient manner. This was highlighted earlier. Making just one change to a system can cause multiple other systems to come toppling down. Our Technical Debt is really high. This funny comic elucidates this further:



Moreover, pretty much all the original developers of Crimson Tactics have left Black March Studios to work elsewhere and it’s pretty much impossible for a new developer to comprehend the mess that is Crimson Tactics’ codebase.

What’s Next?

If you are a customer of Crimson Tactics and feel hoodwinked by our first title where we faltered heavily, we understand and apologize profusely.

If this experience makes you never want to try any of our future games, we completely understand and again apologize profusely for making you experience this.

That said, we plan to keep making more games. Now we know what to do and what not to do. We refuse to let one setback disrupt our dreams and ambitions.

As for the future of Crimson Tactics, we are not quite sure. Given sufficient interest, we might consider making a sequel. We still want to make more tactics games in general even if they are not related to Crimson Tactics.

Thanks again,
Black March Studio

[WhiteShark]

In our messaging, we stress that we have planned the things and we hope to develop these things.

Internally, these were just rough plans that we hoped to realize during Early Access. Nothing more than Early Access content was even conceptualized up until then.

We were naïve and inexperienced. In our understanding, plans are not hard promises and hoping to develop something is not a hardened promise of delivery.

We never thought that these plans and hopes would be interpreted as hard bound promises that we absolutely must deliver on.

Suddenly I feel like I understand places like India.

[Magick]

In our messaging, we stress that we have planned the things and we hope to develop these things.

Arrrgh I can hear that in the ****** accent. Exactly how they always talk.

We were naïve and inexperienced. In our understanding, plans are not hard promises and hoping to develop something is not a hardened promise of delivery.

We never thought that these plans and hopes would be interpreted as hard bound promises that we absolutely must deliver on.
Suddenly I feel like I understand places like India.

Indeed. To Indians, payment is just a bribe, the initial expected transaction to initiate an interaction. Nothing more or less.
Getting what you want / are actually paying for, is another matter. And they reserve "the right to cheat".

[maidenhaver]

[rusty_shackleford]

In our messaging, we stress that we have planned the things and we hope to develop these things.

Internally, these were just rough plans that we hoped to realize during Early Access. Nothing more than Early Access content was even conceptualized up until then.

We were naïve and inexperienced. In our understanding, plans are not hard promises and hoping to develop something is not a hardened promise of delivery.

We never thought that these plans and hopes would be interpreted as hard bound promises that we absolutely must deliver on.

Suddenly I feel like I understand places like India.

Wish I could remember the quote now, but it's definitely not a joke. Indians don't treat promises as something they have to actually fulfill.

[1998]

In our messaging, we stress that we have planned the things and we hope to develop these things.

Internally, these were just rough plans that we hoped to realize during Early Access. Nothing more than Early Access content was even conceptualized up until then.

We were naïve and inexperienced. In our understanding, plans are not hard promises and hoping to develop something is not a hardened promise of delivery.

We never thought that these plans and hopes would be interpreted as hard bound promises that we absolutely must deliver on.

Suddenly I feel like I understand places like India.

Wish I could remember the quote now, but it's definitely not a joke. Indians don't treat promises as something they have to actually fulfill.

I think they mostly just don't understand or even listen. It's a nightmare to work with them, they say "yes, sir" to everything, do mostly nothing and if you ask about it it becomes pretty clear that they didn't even understand the original instructions.