Neofeud - A Dystopic Cyberpunk Adventure / Visual Novel

[Silverspook]

Hi all! I'm Chris AKA Silver Spook, a one-person indie developer from Hawaii. I have recently released my game, "Neofeud", a dystopian cyberpunk point-and-click adventure game in the vein of Blade Runner, but with an overlay of Game of Thrones-like political intrigue, and hand-painted, stylized visuals.

The art, stories and gameplay of Neofeud are a reflection of my experiences as a STEM teacher for the underserved youth of Honolulu's inner city. Teaching robotics, programming, and sustainability is an often difficult, stressful, and even Kafka-esque endeavor -- being in one of the richest, most beautiful places on Earth, yet dealing with families with working parents, who are living out of a van, or sleeping on the street. It is hard trying to keep the kids out of gangs, off of drugs, and on a path towards better opportunities, such as the ones I had growing up in a slum area of paradise while going to an upscale private school.

Here is the trialer:

Features

-15+ hours of gameplay in an original dystopic sci-fi world and story
-Fully voice-acted with an over 76,000 word script
-Tricky yet satisfying, point-and-click detective work, interspersed with tense action shootouts.
-Handpainted, surrealist cyber-noir futurescape.

Reviews

"A Diamond Of Storytelling In The Scrap Pile... Past endless conspiracies and a spiraling story, the characters of Neofeud are developed so much more than characters in nearly any other game I've recently played."

--Sprites And Dice

"An ambitious, atmospheric cyberpunk scenario and essentially the work of a single person (voice acting excluded). Oh, and it might also be one of the best adventure games I have played in a while... The world building is something else. It has a thickness, a density to it."

--Indie Games

"The conspiracy runs deep and is quite massive in scope. Politics meet technology, philosophy meets madness. But even beyond the intrigue itself the world of Neofeud is quite a detailed and intriguing construct, with its own history and lore."

--Indie Game News

Neofeud is on Steam now (and on sale till the end of November) http://store.steampowered.com/app/673850/Neofeud/

It was initially released to Itch.io on March 25 this year. https://silverspook.itch.io/neofeud

Platforms

-Windows, Linux at the moment. I currently have a Mac port in the works, but needs further testing.

Price

$15 (33% off on Steam now)


More About Silver Spook Games

Silver Spook Games is a one-person-team consisting of Christian Miller, a Hawaiian writer, artist, and game developer with a passion for creating works of depth and relevance. Growing up Native Hawaiian in Honolulu, Hawaii, he experienced a somewhat 'postmodern' and dissonant existence of clashing cultures, peoples, and extreme inequality. Inspired by games like Fallout, System Shock, and films like Aliens, The Matrix, Bladerunner, District 9, and Elysium, he has gone on to write stories and create games in the tradition of dark, cautionary, and (hopefully) groundbreaking science fiction. Neofeud is an adventure-puzzle game that aspires to be complex, compelling, and challenging. Christian now lives on the Big Island of Hawaii with his loving, geeky, cosplaying Canadian wife, and two kids.

Neofeud was also recently featured in the native Hawaiian print publication the Ka Wai Ola: https://twitter.com/SilvrSpookGames/status/918766258077581312

I am currently working on a sequel to Neofeud along with other projects, which you can support through my Patreon. Buying Neofeud or the soundtrack would also help me keep working on these indie projects!

I am also doing a weekly podcast where I talk to to creators mostly in the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre, though not exclusively, to connect with the community and help promote other indie projects. I also stream live every Saturday where I hang out, do Q&A and game dev live with whoever wants to come hang out. You can get these podcasts and streams through my Youtube channel.

I'm also fairly active on Twitter.

Thanks for your time!

[Jubal]

Hi, welcome to Exilian! Neofeud looks exciting, I'll try and actually get a copy and take a look sometime soon - I'm very much a fan of adventure games of all kinds, I'm developing a (rather more light-hearted) text-parser game myself. The personal aspect and background to it is really interesting as well, I love discovering how different people ended up making their particular creations.

[Silverspook]

Thanks for the welcome, Jubal, and for the kind feedback.  I have a friend who likes to make text-parser games, and I used to play some of the multi-user type ones back in the day. Neofeud itself was made using Adventure Game Studio.

[Jubal]

Well, if you know anyone who likes text-parser games and would like to playtest a new one, throw them my way

How did you find AGS to use? I've heard of it, but I don't think I've ever chatted to anyone who actually used it much.

[Silverspook]

I'm friends with the creator of this online sci-fi/fantasy zine, and he is definitely into the text-parser games. http://www.mythaxis.co.uk/ I think his contact details are up there.

AGS is basically the best possible engine to use to make classic LucasArts / Sierra style point-and-click adventure games. Better even than Unity (I started Neofeud in Unity and switched later). The only issue at present is it doesn't build to as wide a variety of operating systems as Unity. AGS only builds by default to Windows and Linux, although if you have some programming skills you can get it to work for Mac, iOS, Android, etc.. I'm currently working on a Mac version for Neofeud, which I can confirm has at least run on a Mac machine, although it's not quite ready to be rolled out, yet. (If I could afford to get a Mac, it would speed up the process!)

Oh, and if you were thinking about it, today is the last day to get Neofeud on sale on Steam. There will be future sales of course.

[Jubal]

I've now got a copy May be a while before I get time to play it, though - I've been ill recently so a lot of work to catch up on

Thanks for the link - the zine looks really interesting, and I know a lot of good amateur sff writers who might be interested in it...

[Silverspook]

Hey thanks for buying Neofeud! Hope you like it when you get a chance to play. Sorry to hear about the illness and hope you get better soon!

[Jubal]

Thankyou! Mostly recovered now

[Silverspook]

You probably didn't yet have time to check out Neofeud, but if you have by any chance, please consider voting for it for "Indie of the Year" on IndieDB!



Also, I think I read somewhere that you made a point-and-click adventure somewhere, Jubal. Is it up somewhere, by any chance?

[Jubal]

I think the only ones I ever got actually released are text adventures, excluding an HTML based point & click I made when I was about twelve and of which the less said the better - I've got a lot of plans for point-and-clicks, but I've never got so far with them as my parser-based ones unfortunately.

Voted for Neofeud, anyhow

[Silverspook]

Thanks a lot! And yes point & clicks are a bit more to bite off.

So here's some news:



NEOFEUD MADE IT TO THE TOP 100 INDIES OF THE YEAR! Thanks for your votes and support! Neofeud can now use your vote again in the final round for ultimate indie of the year on IndieDB!

http://www.indiedb.com/games/neofeud

[Jubal]

Voted again - good luck!

[Silverspook]

Thanks!

Neofeud is now on sale on Steam, if anyone was waiting for that.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/673850/Neofeud/

[Jubal]

Thanks for the heads up I'm hoping I'll be able to finally carve out some playing time and get some feedback to you on the game over the next week or so!

[Silverspook]

First up, Neofeud is still 40% off in the Steam Winter Sale for one more week! If you haven't picked it up yet, you've got until the New Years firework retina-burn wears off and the red firecracker paper biodegrades.

Funhaus, a Youtube comedy channel with over *1.3 million subscribers* just did a short play / comedy video with Neofeud! The video has only been out for a few days and it's already got over 200,000 views! It's mostly sillyness, but as a one-guy team with zero budget this is a huge Christmas present, especially considering a bunch of those 200,000 viewers commented "This looks awesome!", "I just bought Neofeud" or "Why haven't I heard of this before!?" so thanks for that, Sir Lawrence!

I also spoke to Lawrence Sonntag (the guy playing the game) briefly on Twitter and he gave it a thumbs up. A very cool guy that you might consider following to spot indie gems.



Here's another review by Steam User Luigi From Fiji:



"Neofeud is on par with Technobabylon and Primordia," I doubt it, but it is neutron star-dense with technobabble and primordial Kabbalah mysticism!

I will be doing some livestreaming gamedev and hanging out Friday 12/29 at 2 PM EDT on my Youtube channel. (I usually stream on Saturday but I'm having a belated holiday family-invasion at our place this weekend!) Here's the latest stream, where I play a bit of Neofeud and do some developer commentary.

While Neofeud didn't quite beat Cuphead in the Indie Game of the Year competition, Neofeud did make it to the Top 100 Indie Games of 2017 (out of over 10,000)![/http://www.indiedb.com/groups/2017-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100]  And in the top 3 point-and-click games!



Finally, check out [url=https://twitter.com/SteamShovelers]Steam Shovellers a great game journalism site that does an excellent job spotting the hidden gems in the massive steaming piles of Steam... releases. Steam Shovellers will be playing Neofeud on Twitch on New Years Eve afternoon, Eastern Time. Here's their comment on the game:

"We'll also be doing a special block of time for Neofeud in the late afternoon/early evening Eastern US time. Given 2017's political climate, it's a game everyone should experience."