Hello! : Witching Hour Studios

Hello!

And welcome to Witching Hour Studios!

We make games. Games that we’d like to play.

We are motivated by the idea that a game is not so much to make a quick buck, but a platform to tell stories and build worlds. We know it’s a dirty word by now, but hell, we want to tell epic stories… Stories that’ll suck you right in and punch you in the gut. Why? Because we’re just hurtful people. At least Ian is.

Right now we’re working on an asynchronous multiplayer version of Ravenmark where players lead companies of mercenaries across Eclisse in search of riches!

RAVENMARK: Scourge of Estellion has been out for a while and has been a critical hit! You can find the full version here and the Episodic version here.

Sam

Dear witching-hour development team,

I would like to congratulate you for crafting a superb game with such originality and substance in all aspects. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and it’s charismatic characters, the scripts and dialogues with their use of the language are especially impressive and distinguish this game apart from most of the shallow child plays on the market. I look forward to its sequel and wish you best in maintaining such high standard.

A couple of suggestions:

- An in-game page of explanations for the units’ statistics would come handy. We don’t need mathematical equations but clarification on what melae and range skills do and how damage and chance to hit is calculated will proof useful. Especially considering tha values may being affected by certain characters.

- Given the interesting dialogues and twists of plots, I would appreciate it when a shortcut to the end of each played battle is naturally introduced to facilitate revisiting of some key moments of storytelling without having to go through the battle again. The lore of events certainly helps to serve as a reminder yet it’s certainly appealing to have the option of revising these engaging conversations again.

- A world map accompanying the lore would supplement it nicely.

Happy new year

Sam
- kevin
  
  Hi Sam – thanks for the words of encouragement! It means a lot to us As for your suggestions, I can tell you right now that at least one of them is already being looked in to and that we will add the other 2 suggestions to our meetings and see the general reaction of the team before deciding what to do
  
  And a happy new year to you too!Cheers
  
  -Kev
Jim

Firstly I’ve only played the Lite version but I’m impressed.

However I have 2 suggestions to resolve quite fundamental issues that I think will lessen the appeal to most turn based strategy gamers:

1) I can see a lot of work has gone into formations, movement, wheeling, etc but all of this unwravels because units can just ‘slide’ past each other. What is really lacking are zones of control. What I mean by this is as soon as a unit enters the hex adjacent to an enemy unit that it is facing it should be forced to stop and engage in melee.

It’s very frustrating to manoeuvre your Trine into a good position and in the opponents turn they simply walk right in front of your Trine, around the side and then hit it in the flank or rear.

Following on from that once 2 units are engaged they should be locked in melee. Again similar to the point above it’s frustrating to hit an enemy unit and then see it wander around your flank in its turn. Then you perform the same flanking manoeuvre to it on your next turn and you get what is essentially a circling dogfight which is more representative of WWI aerial combat.

Once 2 units are locked in melee they should be forced to fight until 1 unit is eliminated or 1 of the units performs a ‘Retreat’ move which is a move directly away from the opposing unit. If you want to make it even more realistic if the opposing unit is able to catch the retreating unit on its next move then it should get a bonus pursuit attack with no counter attack for example to punish the retreating unit. This creates an incentive to stay engaged unless the retreating unit has greater movement then its opponent which gives light / cavalry units more movement advantages.

2) The initiative system (although good in theory) really detracts from the game as it turns it from a Turn Based Strategy into more of a Puzzle game. Far more time is spent trying to assess which unit will move before every other unit and all the combinations and permutations rather than actual battle tactics. As a result it really bogs the game down and makes it less enjoyable.

It also creates silly situations where if a unit will move after an opposing enemy unit, you have to guess where that enemy unit might end up and more often than not, you see your unit walk straight past the enemy it was trying to engage.

My suggestion would simply be to have alternating turns between players like any conventional wargame. Initiative based systems tend to work better for Role Playing Games.

I appreciate it’s quite a departure from the existing system but it’s one that is tried and tested and has worked well for decades for table top miniature wargames such as this and would improve the game tenfold.

I hope my comments aren’t viewed as criticisms as I think Ravenmark has the potential to be a very good system and if you consider the changes above, you will have a loyal follower for this and any further releases of the franchise.

If you have any questions regarding the above please let me know as I’d be happy to discuss.

Regards,

Jim.
- Ian
  
  Hi Jim,
  
  Ian here, the creative director. Both issues that you’ve brought up was on my mind long before we launched Ravenmark and there are underlying reasons why we took the path we did. As a table-top gamer myself, I’m aware of ZoC and how it’s a fundamental part of strategy games – in fact, it was originally in the game. I decided to take it out because the concept, while easy to understand, can be extremely frustrating to new players in the genre. So I took it out for the sake of streamlining and simplifying the game. One of my goals was to introduce TBS games to people who always thought it was a genre too difficult to get into and from the response we’ve been getting, I think we’ve nearly accomplished that.
  
  On the other had, I can understand the frustration from actions happening within the same battle phase and I’ll be looking into a solution for that. I’m thinking of having it such that if an Element is attacked, its movement points for that battle phase is reduced (giving an advantage to high initiative Elements) such that it can only move one tile that turn. Lemme stew on this and speak to my team. I can’t promise this feature being added but I want you to know I’m taking an active stance on making the game more enjoyable for you.
  
  With regards to your second point, I’m sorry, but that will not change. Mostly because the system was built for multiplayer – the current format of the game is very much a proof of concept for how to implement asynchronous multiplayer. While it might seem like a puzzle game to you right now, when it’s played with another person, the dynamics change drastically. If you’re patient with us, we will be releasing a skirmish mode that lets you square off with AI and human opponents around end February or beginning of March. You might change your mind about the battle phase then.
  
  Also, you can toggle the banners to see the initiative to see the turn order. That might help with planning your strategy.
  
  All in all, thanks for taking the time to get in contact with us. It’s people like you that make indie games better. =)
  
  Cheers,
  Ian
kKagari

Hi Witching Hour.
Great game guys, was stoked to revisit it after finishing the first campaign a few months ago. Some suggestions and thoughts:

1) Like the poster above me, I do find the initiative system a bit awkward. Not so much that I’m not willing to work around it, because I do think it is fun and innovative, but my main quarrels lie in the opening turns of battle, where the game situates your army for the first time. It continues to nag me that a lot of the times, the fastest units are stuck at the back of army and cannot be positioned effectively until you move the front ranks. This, however, is still ok, but when unit commands are restricted to 6 per turn, AND with a turn requirement in place in order to get the 3rd medal, this becomes very stressful. Which leads me to my next point.

2) ‘Complete before turn X’ objectives. I liked the first Ravenmark campaign because of its somewhat steep difficulty because I enjoy a good challenge. I’ve achieved all of the 3rd medals for all campaigns now, so this in no way a whinge because I couldn’t get them. However, when the game objective requires you to make precise decisions in order to meet an objective (in particular, the 8 turn ones) the randomness of the battle system can become a bit of a dice-roll farce. I think even more hours would have been wasted on some missions if I didn’t use the app-shutdown-reload-app-redo-turn-hope-for-better-rolls exploit, just trying to not have my Swordstaff Braves do ZERO damage to Windswepts at a crucial moment. In the past campaign, I was a lot more willing to deal with a bad roll and have the battle progress out into a more epic, nail bitingly close moment, but I can’t afford to have these situations anymore because of turn requirement objectives.

IMO, a better suited 3rd objective could be ‘kill a target element before completing the level’ – a situation where the game forces the player to divert more forces to optionally go out of their way to destroy an element, which may potentially cause them to lose the battle afterwards. Or perhaps ‘win the battle without using X’ – this could perhaps be an environmental element that is intended to aid the player, but can now be optionally disregarded to create a harder challenge.

Great game though guys, really looking forward to the next campaign!
kKagari
- http://www.ravenmark-saga.com Ian (Tebius)
  
  Heya Karagi,
  
  I’m glad you’re enjoying the game!
  
  1) We’ve decided not to mess with the initiative system already since it’s a fundamental part of balancing. Sorry dude. I have, however, redesigned it for our upcoming multiplayer version of Ravenmark.
  
  2) A valid point, I’ll look into it when our guys have some free time.
  
  We’re all working hard to get you a new campaign and multiplayer!
  
  Cheers,
  Ian
- kevin
  
  Hmmm – I have to add .. I like suggestion #2 as well! Really great suggestions, and something I too think we can take a look at
Brandon

Ive already mentioned this to you guys via email, but thought I’d publicly voice my support for the initiative system here as well. Love the system! Could use a few tweaks, but the fundamentals are rock solid. Really enjoying the game. Thanks!
- kevin
  
  You’ve definitely given us some good suggestions to think about Brandon! We will definitely put a lot of thought into your suggestions and see if there’s a scope (and time) to implement them
Mike

Hey guys! Just wanted to drop by and say that this is easily one of the best apps if not one of the best games I’ve ever played, period. . You guys have crafted a genius world that I absolutely love! Have any of your team read George R.R Martins a song of ice and fire series? But, I do agree with the person before me however who stated there should be a way to access cutscenes directly from the campaign menu without fighting through the entire scenario… But barring that I absolutely love it and can’t wait for the sotran expansion!
- kevin
  
  Dear Mike – thanks for writing in! Always glad to hear from fans We are also equally glad you feel that way about Ravenmark! I’m pretty sure almost all of our team has read George R.R Martin’s books. Brian, our resident dialogue writer, draws a lot of inspiration from the tons of books he reads (like George R.R Martin’s series). I’ll inform the team about the cutscenes and let’s see what we can do about it!
  - Mike
    
    Aha! I thought so! The way the Sotran government was drawn up reminded me strongly of how the Iron Throne had its king and hand! Very cool! Anyways keep up the awesome job guys, I’m eagerly waiting for the next campaign!
    - kevin
      
      Yup you caught us. But as you can tell, both Brian and Ian inject a lot of originality into their designs and ideas. But inspiration never hurts! And if you ever get the chance – remember to drop us a review on the app store! Every rating helps us tiny indies cheers man!