2nd November 2021
NOMAD MONTHLY MAILBAG - NOVEMBER 2021 EDITION
Hello everyone!
October was a busy month for us, with the release of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition onto consoles. So our Halloween mainly consisted of us running around making sure everything was doing what it should do, and that everything got releases properly!
Now that things have died down a bit, we’re here to go through the questions we’ve been sent in by the community over the past month. We didn’t get a huge amount of questions in this month, so make sure you send anything you want to ask us about over to questions@nomadgames.co.uk if you want yours answered!
From ‘highlander4ever’
“First off, thank you very much for publishing a quality product. I loved the Talisman board game and your port is pretty much spot on. I have 2 main questions:
I liked the Legendary Decks that you have made. I’ve noticed a pause in the release. Are they still coming? Or were they not financially viable? Or you can’t say due to internal policy?
Is it possible to add single selectable player characters (like we can with endings) instead of “all or nothing” from each expansion? Some characters are under par without their expansion (ex: Engineer without Clockwork Kingdom), but the others work fine with anything (ex: Artificer, Swindler). Being able to remove specific characters would avoid either having a “sub-par” character or having to miss out the others when banning them all.
Sadly, unlike myself, some of my fellow players are very picky with which expansions they want to play. (I’m a “gotta play them all” type)”
While we can’t say much about more Legendary Decks just now, the ones we’ve already released did very well and we’ll be very happy to make more of them, as people have shown that they have an appetite for it!
This is something that crops up now and again as a request, and we can see why people who use random pools for character selection would want it. Also being able to ‘veto’ some characters that people don’t like would be a nice option. We’ll pass on the request to our talented Talisman team and see if it’s something they could do in a future update.
From Theo
“I have been playing and enjoying Talisman on my Xbox One. In addition to the base game I also purchased the city expansion. My problem is with some achievements of the game.
Initially they tracked my progress just fine. But lately I don't see any progression, the progress percentages do not go up any more. I have tried different setting in the game like; no respawn, runestones, city enabled.
This occurs for the following achievements:
Battle Master, 55%
Spirit Destroyer, 40%
Hag Deliverer, 40%
Poltergeist Exorcist, 30%
Spell Master, 20%
Could you look into this?”
From Jethro, our resident Talisman expert: “These are things that only happen at the end of a game. Achievements are also only increased if 'player1' has done them, so it could be that you're playing as player 2/3/4 etc?”
This is something that we’ve seen crop up on our Steam forums over the years, and the timing window in which these track your progress isn’t fully clear to players. We’re going to have a look into how easily we can make it so the progress gets tracked how most players expect it to, as that would clear up a lot of the confusion!
From Darren
“What are the best and worst things about working at Nomad?”
We opened this up to the Nomad staff, and this is what they said:
Mat: Maybe both the best and worst things are that we mostly work from home - it's great to be flexible and not have to commute, but a shame not to spend more time together.
Rob: Yeah I agree with Mat on that.
Michael: Agreed. Also I feel one of the best parts is we feel more like a team than just a company.
Jethro: In a similar vein (not necessarily best & worst);
+ working in the picturesque village of Lymm
- working in the almost unreachable by public transport village of Lymm.
Tom: The infinite spiders and bugs in the Nomad bathroom is pretty high up there.
Michael: They pay rent just like everyone else.
Carl: One of the best things used to be the amount of cakes that were brought in.
Mat: And the worst.
Hopefully that answers your question a bit!
From Mat
“Why do you only bring some of your games to console? A lot of your games come to mobile and PC, but I’ve noticed that only a few come to console. Would love to play Cat Lady on my Switch.”
There are a number of factors that come into whether or not we bring a game to a platform. Each time we make a game, we take a look at where we should bring it and factor in the following:
Our existing player base on the platform
How well our earlier games have done on the platform
How much time it’ll take for us to set up the store pages
How experienced we are already with that platform
How long it’ll take our development team to make a new version
For example, when we were looking at bringing Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to console, we already knew that we’d had success with Talisman: Digital Edition on both of them. We also had the help of our friends over at Dovetail when it came to setting up the store pages and getting things set up, which massively cuts down on the time it takes to do.
They also had much more experience than us on console, which again was a massive help! So factors like that can make a difference in our decision process.
For a game like Cat Lady: The Card Game, we looked at how long it would take to develop a PC version and bring it to Steam. We then estimate how long it would take for us to make our money back on the PC version verses how much it’ll cost to do, and if it works out we’ll do it! We also need to consider what our team is working on, as we’re only a small team too. We obviously can’t promise anything, as we need to make sure that everything lines up… if it ever does!
And that’s the end of this edition of the Nomad monthly mailbag! Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and don’t forget to send your questions to questions@nomadgames.co.uk if you want us to answer your burning questions next month!