Inside Conscript, Australia’s latest shot at solo developer success story
It’s nominated for six awards and is critically acclaimed, but creator Jordan Mochi is left wondering why his game isn’t flying off the shelf.
Jordan Mochi is perplexed. The history student turned solo game developer ticked all the boxes.
His survival horror war game Conscript had a healthy wish list of over 165,000 users on Steam — meaning that many gamers intended to buy the title on release. A successful Kickstarter, dozens of global press reviews — all largely positive. That's been mirrored by hundreds of positive user reviews on Steam. The game is also up for six separate awards at the Australian Game Developer Awards next week, competing against much larger studios.
Yet, since its launch in July, its sales have fallen slightly short of expectations. Critically, Conscript is a success by all measures. Commercially, however, a couple of months out from launch and there's room for improvement. "It's difficult to comprehend," Mochi says.
Conscript is one of the Australian game industry's latest bets at staking its own claim in the solo development space. The success of a couple of solo-developed games, Balatro and Animal Well, have been a bright spot in a year that's been mired by mass redundancies and game launch failures.
Both defied gravity with their success, launching in a year which has seen both gamers spend less on titles and broadly spend their time in decade-old live-service games. Conscript has all the hallmarks of a title that could accomplish the same feat, given the fandom it generated on its lead up to launch and the unique story behind the game.
The creation of Conscript
Conscript began in 2017 as a loose side project for Mochi while studying history at university. As a fan of the Resident Evil series, he began planning out a game that honoured its puzzle box roots. Mochi couldn't write code, so he downloaded Game Maker — a free game development tool — and started toying around with the software and learning along the way.
It wasn't until two years later, in 2019, that those ideas formed the basis of what Conscript is today. It was also the year he committed to seeing his game become a reality. Pulling together some early marketing material for the game, he launched a Kickstarter raising just under $40,000. Mochi went on to secure two grants from Screen Australia and Screen Victoria to help bring Conscript to life.
Most of the game's development process was a learning experience for Mochi. A few other points of the game were outsourced. While Mochi handled the sound design, his friend Sonny Igusti composed and produced the music for the game. Some of the propaganda posters strewn throughout the game were also created by local artists.
Deciding on a publisher to launch and promote the game was a challenge. He spent two years discussing the game with over 40 game publishers and ultimately landed on Team17, a British publisher specialising in indie games. They took Mochi under their wing, providing weekly guidance on marketing, localisation, and the rules and requirements for launching a game globally.
The whole process took a bit longer than Mochi expected.
"I thought it would take two or three years," he said. A reasonable assumption, given some solo-made games such as Lucas Pope's 2013 title Papers Please took as little as nine months to create. But Papers Please wasn't Pope's first game. Mochi added: "Every Christmas I would have my family ask me 'how's the game going' and I'd tell them that I'm still working on it."
Even with the launch of AI-based tools that are slowly making their way into game development, Mochi says that nothing can replace the experiences that he's had and the lessons he's learned from building Conscript. Those lessons, he said, would help him shortcut the time it would take to produce another game.
The path ahead
Much like the outcome of its source material, World War I, Conscript's launch hasn't been a clear or clean victory. "It's a bloody hard time to sell games," Mochi says. "People are a lot less willing to part with their money now than they were 10 years ago."
Though, Conscript's march is also far from over. Reviews from global outlets like Forbes continue to pour in, and any wins at Australian Game Developer Awards could add more fuel to its marketing fire.
Mochi's keen to continue work on Conscript too, and sees a future where it could become a series. While there are no formal plans, he's hopeful that he will have a chance to develop more content for the game, and continues to patch it based on feedback from its players.
Mochi adds: "Perhaps the only box I didn't tick is luck."
You can read my review of Conscript — it’s great — in my last edition here.
What do you think? Will Conscript’s launch gain momentum? Will it have a second wind? And are wishlists still good indicators of success? Let me know in the comments.
UPDATE: Since this story went live, Conscript went on to win three out of six awards it was up for at the Game Developer Awards. It took home Game of The Year, Excellence in Art and Excellence in Emerging.
What I'm playing: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Nintendo can be somewhat of a predictable publisher. Every console, we know to expect a new Mario game, maybe a new Zelda every few years. Don't forget Pokémon.
But every so often, the Big N releases a title that catches everyone off guard. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, is one of those games. For the first time in nearly four decades of Zelda history, you play as Princess Zelda, who is tasked with saving her usual saviour, the sword fighter, Link. Departing from Link's typical arsenal of boomerangs, bows and bombs, Zelda's toolkit revolves around summoning objects and enemies — known as 'echoes' in-game — to defeat enemies and solve in-game puzzles.
As a result, there's no one solution to the obstacles put in front of you. The fact the game is so flexible, yet doesn't break or frustrate despite the plethora of choices it offers players is remarkable and a testament to strong game design.
Unlike Tears of The Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, this Zelda is a top-down action adventure platformer, similar to the older Zelda games on the classic Nintendo console. The amount of exploration on offer is capped compared to its full 3D counterparts, but there's still plenty to see.
The developers did introduce one crutch, in the form of a temporary 'sword fighter mode' that Zelda can toggle on and off during fights or exploration. It essentially turns her into a carbon copy of Link. It's useful while progressing through the game, but more often than not feels like a cop-out to using the vast arsenal of enemies and objects at your disposal. You primarily use this for burst damage against bosses, and it's metered to ensure you can't abuse it. But I can't help but wonder if there was a more unique workaround that leveraged the character's innate magical abilities.
Interestingly, Zelda, assuming the role of the silent protagonist, has less character in this game than in prior renditions of the series. This perhaps speaks as to why it's taken so long for Zelda to have her own game, as her personality has often served as a key driver and point of interest in many of the prior game's plots.
I'm about three-quarters through Echoes of Wisdom, and I am absolutely loving it. However, having collected what seems like over 100 echoes along the way, it's getting pretty tough to sort through them on the fly. It conjures similar frustrations to when I recently replayed Majora's Mask, where you have to pause and re-equip Link every time you hit a new puzzle or obstacle. Something I'd tolerate with an older game, but not with one released today. Players had similar complaints about all the parts and pieces you collected in Tears of The Kingdom. While it is a very minor quibble, inventory bloat detracting from the action is something that I hope Nintendo will address in future titles.
This latest release from Nintendo sets the stage for more games starring its better-known woman leads. Unlike Princess Peach Showtime, released earlier this year, this game has not been designed for children. It has both spikes in difficulty and also an added difficulty setting for those really looking to take combat up a notch. If diversity in Nintendo titles leads to more imaginative games like this, we should all be advocating for more of it.
Worth trying if you like: The Legend of Zelda series, Portal, Minecraft, Luigi’s Mansion.
Available on: Nintendo Switch
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It's a pity that Conscript is lagging in sales. But I guess it shows how tough a market it is out there. Hopefully, it will catch on and grow an audience over time.