Articles - Qorena

Qorena has went through a lot of trial and error in the span of 4 years (+1 year of post-game support). From its original debut in 2018, to it's final release in 2022, and post-release support this year in 2023. Now, I finally announce my post-mortem for this game.

• Maze Qore Arena released commercially into early access on Itch - to an audience of crickets.
• The game has later switched to a non-commercial early access model.

• The multi-player build begins development.
• Single player build is updated and improved.

• The game releases in early access on Steam, for free - to an audience of crickets.
• Multi-player build is completed and released via the Version 0.5 update.
• Single player build is further improved.

• Multi-player build is further improved.
• Plans for a game overhaul were announced.

• Name change: Maze Qore Arena has now became Qorena.
• Single player version has been abandoned and archived for historical reasons.
• Competitive multi-player version has been abandoned and scrapped entirely.
• Competitive multi-player model has transformed into a cooperative multi-player model.
• Qorena Foresight has been introduced for playtests and feedback - to no avail.
• Weekly playtests were hosted - few players participated, but at least feedback somewhat materialized.
• Qorena finally left early access, releasing in full - to (you guess it) an audience of crickets.
• Bots (AKA player AI substitutes).

• Cooperative player build has been improved drastically.
• Campaign mode was introduced via the Version 0.9.2 Update.
• We (at the time, WAS we, now it's just me that is left.) began to lose all hope.
• The Major Campaign Update (AKA Version 0.9.3) has released, considerably marking the end of our post-release support. (No point wasting anymore time for an audience of crickets.)

• Never waste time working on a multi-player game unless you have a confirmed audience that gives a damn.
• Bots barely help matters.
• Try to garner an audience before the game is developed beyond the serious phase. Prototype first.
• Focus on single player games most often instead (if not exclusively).

If you make a marketplace template, ensure it does not share the same style and prototype scheme as the true game. Either make the game extremely different from the template, or just avoid making either that or the game entirely and let one of them sell on its own instead. I got a few complains some have mistook it for an asset flip. I wanted to kill two birds with one stone by using the template I created myself to speed development time and focus on expanding further the gameplay and improving the art, rather than do all of that from scratch. Little did I suspect many would accuse one's own creation of being an asset flip from the marketplace template they created themselves. I still made nearly this entire game by myself, with almost no outside aid, and it was all for naught. Developers use to fear using the marketplace under the pressure that gamers would accuse their game of being an asset flip. Suffice to say, I think this is partially true.

If you use marketplace assets such as art or environ packs, it may not be too much of a problem so long as you make a large effort to originate your game or at least turn it into a signature game.

Once you make a marketplace template however AND it is selling even decently, you may was well forfeit any plans to make a game out of it. Your task to originate because extraordinarily difficult.

In a way, the 2D Top Down Shooter Template unwittingly further sealed any chances of Qorena getting anywhere. Ironically I have created this template to raise funds to help me develop this very game. It helped to some degree at first, then little more beyond a year.

Ironically, this game was also developed as a means to develop funding for another project that is still in comatose to this day. That has also ultimately failed...

We planned user-mod support using Modularity's Mod.io, but that ultimately fell through for two reasons:

1. No audience means no point in wasting time. I already made that mistake thrice.
2. Mod community went to utter shit since 2021, causing me to lose faith and interest in modding. I will not explain why here. I will instead make a video on my personal YouTube channel about the decline of the modding community at a later time.
3. I am honestly tired of working on Qorena.

I considered making use of the competitive MP build and transforming it into an Android port of the game. I underestimated the difficulty and feasibility of mobile builds in Unreal Engine as well as trying to get it signed for Google Play, and ultimately gave up. I might consider a much simpler, yet fun version of the game for Android using Godot in the future, focusing solely on survival and infinite waves, however no promises that will ever happen.

Yes. I am done with this game. The 2nd developer that helped me with this game has given up on the project and left. The non-dev members of the team have also left the gaming industry for greener pastures. I am all that is left now, and much like a previous project I worked on, I have lost all motivation to work on this game anymore as well.

At this point, I am convinced that this project is cursed. It was cursed from the beginning. It is still cursed to the end.

If you want to see any other projects I am working on, you can check out this one instead. Hopefully it will fair better.

Last update, we released the Campaign Update, introducing the new game mode for mission scenario action with friends and/or bots. Now we brought 4 more missions into the fray!

• Aquamarine - Infiltrate the docks to steal plans for an experimental submarine.
• Scorch - Storm the beach, fight your way through an airfield, and liberate a suburban village.
• Valheim - March through a cold blizzard, destroy artillery, find an obscure base, and steal docs from a winter village town.
• Veritas - Storm through a moving train (be it from floor or top), slaughter your way to the engine room to hijack the train. Slog through a wet jungle marsh and rescue pinned down allies. Assault a castle with your comrades.

• Campaign: 4 new missions.
• Grenade perk icon now changes according to the perk collected.
• The Customizer now has background music and ambiance.
• The Score Streaker has been improved, allowing for multiple simulatenous streaks displayed on screen.
• The Navigation Marker system has been improved, allowing for multiple nav markers displayed on screen.
• The player's customizer sprites are now positioned properly even during online matches.
• The player's customizer sprites are now fully bright and almost fully colorable (sans weapons).
• Screen-space reflections and Global illumination are now being utilized.
• New Customer Headwear: Conical Hat
• New Customer Headwear: Imperial Helmet
• The original "Helmet" has been renamed to "Knight's Helmet".

• Level Editor - Create your own custom levels for survival mode, or mission packs for campaign mode!

The settings, map cycle, and customizer storage system has been updated. You may have to resave your respective content in order for the effects to properly apply. For instance, and as a result, chances are your mannequins will look brighter or paler than usual.

The Campaign game mode is finally here with Version 0.9.2! You can now fight against enemy forces in campaign mission packs alone or with bots offline, or with friends and strangers online. For now, only one mission pack exists - Operation Desert Storm. This will change in the future with 4 more mission packs.

The level editor will have to arrive later (likely in 0.9.4 earliest).

• Campaign Update - Play a series of mission packs alone or with friends in the new Campaign mode!

• The map cycle feature now switches to the appropriate game mode to accommodate for the
  selection accordingly.

• Cloud storage saves have been updated to save screenshots of your mannequins from the Customizer.

• Level Editor - Create your own custom levels for survival mode, or mission packs for campaign mode!

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We hope you will (at least someday) enjoy playing Qorena more than we ultimately did developing this game...

It has been a while since this game was updated. Important fixes to the game has been applied along with a major graphical revamp.

• The map cycle feature has been fixed completely. You can now add any maps you desire into the cycle and they will be played in the order of top to bottom (and rinse and repeat).
• You can now play levels in rotating fashion in Instant Action just as you can in online Multiplayer. Initially, you could only play the 1st level from the cycle which would restart that same level after each match.
• Restore Upgrades on Death finally works.
• Cloud storage saves are now properly functional for Qorena. The old Maze Qore Arena cloud storage is deprecated from this game.
  
  

• Campaign Update - Play a series of mission packs alone or with friends in the new Campaign mode!
• Level Editor - Create your own custom levels for survival mode, or mission packs for campaign mode!

We hope you will enjoy playing Qorena. There will be a sale coming soon in the Summer. Wishlist us on Steam for updates on sales and more updates like this.

Greetings!

The new 0.7 update for Maze Qore Arena is now available!

In this update, we have been hard at work to deliver yet another a new game mode, and a few more new levels!

Steal the ID card, escape the area or kill all the other players to win! Player with the fastest completion time wins!

• New game mode: Identity Theft.
• New map: Outdoors - Imperial Base.
• New map: Outdoors - Deserted Town.
• Introduced a PS1/PC-classic graphics aesthetic.
• Improved the AI to perform better with Flag Hustle, and the Riots.

Bot AI may still have a few hiccups with Identity Theft. We might work towards fixing it in a patch.

As this year comes to a close, we've been deciding long and hard with what to do with this game. Despite our efforts, nigh no one seems to care that this game even exists as it has languished for months with no online servers populated with players (let alone at least one server to join), and almost no activity. Either that, or they probably played the outdated singleplayer demo and forgot about the entire game afterwards. For all we know, we are unsure if anyone is probably even reading these update articles.

So considering this and the research on how competitive multiplayer games fare on this marketplace, we've concluded that competitive multiplayer is a fruitless endeavor. We really want to give players a reason to care for this game, and most importantly enjoy the game, for our success can only be achieved when players are enjoying this game.

Starting next year (and part of our resolution for 2022), Maze Qore Arena will be overhauled. It will no longer feature competitive gameplay as it currently stands. Instead, it shall live closer to it's name; an Arena; a coliseum of enemies to slay; a might and fight for survival. MQA is going cooperative.

Most of the pre-existing levels, sprites, and gameplay will remain intact. The game modes will be scrapped and replaced with only one; Survival.

NPCs from the old singleplayer demo will make their return to the overhaul.

Bots will be overhauled to specifically support this game mode, so hopefully you will not have to fight alone against waves offline.

This also means MQA might compete with the likes of Killing Floor when it comes to it's new gameplay direction (even though we're not trying to compete with them).

From the beginning of this game development, we wanted to provide a variety of gameplay options for players to enjoy including the Survival mode (eventually), however we've learned that MP games for the most part have gone nowhere, often dead-on arrival. We tried to rectify this with bot support, giving players an alternative to at least still enjoy the game offline should online disappoint.

We've learned that sometimes. it is better to keep it simple and straight-forward, rather than try to make an online game suite.

Hopefully all goes well. It will take a long time before an overhaul arrives.

(c) Néotl Empire
Establish, Explore, Expand.