Queen's Wish: A Portmortem Of Mixed Success

So first, the news. Our Queen’s Wish Series, started in 2019, has just been finished! We have released the epilogue, Queen’s Wish: The Judgment, as free DLC for Queen’s Wish 2: The Tormentor.

If you like my games but always bounced off this series, you can give it a try knowing it properly ends. If you want some really unique turn-based RPGs, the whole series is here. (If you played Queen’s Wish 2, lost your saved games, and want to just to the epilogue, instructions are here.)

I wanted to postmortem Queen’s Wish a bit. It was a big success for us overall, yet it contained our biggest failure. While I’m super proud of it, I never want to think about it again.

What Is Queen’s Wish?

In 2019, the end of my career was slowly coming into distant view. I felt I had it in me to make one more big new series. I always make turn-based RPGs, but I wanted to make one that felt different from any other.

(I get accused sometimes of just coasting and making the same game again and again. When someone accuses me of that, I just ignore them forever.)

I wanted a new look, new graphics, new graphics engine, new game engine, new system, and a world and story that was fresh, sincere, emotional, and hopefully engaging. Also, for the first time, we would try to fund a game on Kickstarter.

The Kickstarter for Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror, succeeded far beyond our expectations. I wrote what I found to be a really fun game to play. It sold well and still sells pretty good. We were optimistic about making a whole trilogy.

So we Kickstartered Queen’s Wish 2: The Tormentor, and it BOMBED. It died like a dog.

Writing a full third game became not feasible for us, so we did a couple remasters to get the business back on a solid financial footing. Then I wrote Queen’s Wish: The Judgment, out now. It’s a several hour epilogue tucked at the end of Queen’s Wish 2 that gives the series a nice ending.

It’s a lot of pro bono work, but I can’t stand the thought of being yet another fantasy author who can’t finish stories.

What Is Unique About These Stories?

I did several things with these games that I think are really innovative and tie together as a unified whole to make Queen’s Wish a unique experience.

Royalty, Empire, and Family - In Queen’s Wish, you play a young prince or princess who is being forced to learn to administer the family’s empire. As always, I give you a ton of choice about how much you want to play along. Then I do everything I can to make you question your choices.

A lot of this game is interacting with your relatives, who I tried to make as interesting as I could. I wanted conversations in this game to be a reward and a pleasure to read. Perhaps sometimes I succeeded.

It’s a really sincere game. (Though some find this “cringe.”) Your family both loves and are eternally frustrated with each other. I have developed a huge affection for these characters over the years, and your relationships with them are the focus of the epilogue.

Intense, Mission-Based Battle Style - Raiding dungeons in my games has always been really chill. You dip into a dungeon, kill a few things, then go back to town to rest. They are at the more relaxing end of the RPG spectrum.

Queen’s Wish is inspired a lot more by X-Com and Darkest Dungeon. Most missions need to be done in one trip, which means you need to focus a lot more on tweaking your build and conserving your resources. I think it plays very well. It’s a sort of game I really like to play sometimes. It’s also not what my fans have come to expect.

Empire Simulator - In each Queen’s Wish game, you are reclaiming a lost, or neglected colony. You lead warriors to reach and rebuild your old forts. Then what you do with the forts has an immediate, considerable effect on your resources.

Most of the best equipment in the game you make yourself, which makes sense. You’re royalty in a mighty empire. You shouldn’t be rooting around in caves to get your swords. You have fine craftsmen for that, once you build up the infrastructure to support them.

But What Went Wrong?

Because everything in Queen’s Wish was so new and I’m just one guy, I really rode the ragged edge of a nervous breakdown getting it finished. Something had to give. That thing was graphics, never my strong suit to begin with.

People asked me for years and years for a simple tile game like my earliest titles. I wanted to do this too, because it also made it possible to release the games for iPhone. I thought doing an iPhone game would be fun.

I didn’t do a good job. My highly skilled freelancers did great work for me, but the game just doesn’t look good. Not even to me. All blame lays with me.

These are the games that taught me that I really needed to start focusing on giving my games a more unified appearance. I worked hard on that with Avernum 4: Greed and Glory, and I think that game looks better than anything we’ve done. Too late for Queen’s Wish, though.

Why Did Queen’s Wish 2 Fail?

Our marketer was going out of business when the game shipped, and it basically got no exposure. But I can’t really blame that.

Here is a hard truth of a long career in this business: You need to change your designs up sometimes to keep things feeling fresh. However, whenever you change anything, you will lose a bunch of fans. You need to earn new ones to make up for it. Alas, these games were launched into a phenomenal indie game glut, and new fans just were too hard for us to find. This is where the graphics problems hit us the hardest.

The Queen’s Wish games were a lot different from what we did before, and a lot of people drifted away. I failed to replace those customers. Simple as.

I do really hope people give these games another try, though. Perhaps, one day, they will think, “I wish I had another Jeff Vogel game. Those were fun. I’d even take a so-so one.” If you ever think that, try Queen’s Wish.

The Beginning of the End

I have now reached a point where I can retire with honor. I’ve been at this for 32 years. I’m ancient, and I’ve done a lot of good work.

I’m not going to retire yet. Honestly, I may never retire. What else would I do? Making games is a compulsion for me. I can’t stop. Even after all the remasters I have to do, there are a few games I could freshen up in a really satisfying way.

Anyway, Queen’s Wish is done. I celebrated by, the day after I finished it, starting a new game.

To everyone who supported me in this grand experiment, thank you! On to the next.

Spiderweb Software has been creating turn-based, indie, old-school fantasy role-playing games since 1994. They are low-budget, but they’re full of good stories and fun.

This newsletter is free, but paying me to subscribe guilts me into writing more. If you would like to support us, you could also buy a game that sold very well, Avernum 4: Greed and Glory, and leaving us a nice review.