It's Been A Long Time...
A New Hope
Hi, people! I'm Sam, Onima's game designer and I want to tell you about the story of Onima. So please bare with me. It has been a long time since you last heard from Onima. But the game is still a thing. We just have some problems.
It all started after I played EVE Online and that game hooked me up for good. After days of flying and doing missions so I could buy a Titan one day, I became a bit bored of waiting the moment where I could start really engaging with people and being a pain in the ass for someone. So after a few more weeks, I quit Eve and never returned. And don't get me wrong there, I do love the game but it's just not for me.
So I started thinking of moving to a new game called Fractured Space and man... I was good at it. Maybe I killed you a couple of dozen times under the nickname of "THE_LAW"(VGHS fans will get it😉). I reached a point when I had bought all the ships, and money from battles just kept rolling in, and that's when it got boring. Every crew member was bought and I had the skill to fly every ship. So I only logged in when devs were adding new ships or modules, to check them out. After a while, the game started to slowly die because of greedy devs and I never returned to it.
After months on no good space-sim to play, i had lost fate in it will ever come out. A game where I will have everything I ever framed of for a space-sim, a game with a huge fan base, a game with devs who care... But did. Star Citizen, was love at first sight. I didn't even think about not buying it, I bought a bad ass Avenger from Aegis and went straight into action! IT WAS REAL. Even being in early stages of development Star Citizen offered me a lot more than other space-sims, but the problem with it was - it wasn't ready. I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited even more until i have decided to leave it until it's done.
So here where it all started. After months of thinking I wanted to create an ultimate space-sim, that will have everything I wanted in it. Onima I called it, which means "They" on some language I don't remember. And started working on early concepts for it. Won't lie... they were bad: ​​
But it was something. My friends could even understand what they are seeing and that made me wonder. If people can't understand the game by looking at a picture then how will they understand all the potentiality it has. I hire a cool 2D artist and he helped me big time. He was into Sci-Fi stuff to and we both wanted to play a game like Onima for a long time. We started thinking about the lore, ships, game objects and more cool stuff. Every day we were exchanging with hundreds of letters of cool ideas for Onima. In a small amount of time, we had so many ideas that we just kept losing due to the lack of organization, and that's when he said that we need a Design Document.
WTF? I never heard of such things. Why do we need it? Is it like a prepared file that big companies do? He explained. He said:
"Listen to Sam. Making a game is not an easy task and making a space MMO is 10 times harder than that. We will never make it together. We will need a bunch of support. So I want you to learn about the role of a Game Designer as I think that it will suit you. You should create a document that describes every part of Onima, make it so that it would be understandable both to artists and programmers. That will make the developing processes easier"
After his words, i started to learn about the world of game development and the more I learned the more I understood that Onima is not a month long processes and not even a year one. I understood everything that had to be done in order for Onima to succeed. With time my work became more and more solid and it was starting to like like something that could be used in a game studio. But something was still wrong and that was the lack of a fan base. We had no followers and because of that, no progress was made. That's why I had to come up with something. I thought that if I could show what Onima will be like - people will get it right away. So i started paying and paying for 2D assets, animations, logos, UI elements and more. After everything was done I started an Indiegogo campaign and it failed. Why do you ask? Well because of stupidity. And no I don't think because I started with the graphic aspect of the game, but because I never shared out progress with other people. And that was something I realized very late...
But my dream is still with me and after 3 failed campaigns on Indiegogo, I still believe in Onima. And I still believe I can make a game.
So why am I writing this right now? Am desperate and have no ideas? No. The opposite of that. This 3-year long journey has taught me a lot, and even if(very unlikely) Onima will never be finished, I will still be thankful to it for all the knowledge I got in the processes. The reason why I am writing is to inform you all(whoever sees this) that I am starting to start this Onima project all over one more time. But this time I hope to do it with you.
What's The Plan, Cap?
The plan is simple! We will start all over together. I will do my level best to attract newcomers to Onima and make it recognizable. And when that is done I will search for help from an enthusiast, people who will like to participate in creating this game.
- Yeah... right that never happened before...
Yes, i agree it did and most of the times those projects ended up in the trash with old people leaving or taking a "break" from the project. That I hope I can fix. You see the biggest motivation or people is? You guessed it. Money! And that, we will have.
I plan to set up two main money sources. Here they are:
1) My Personal Pocket - it will be a monthly prize to the most active dev in our team. The minimal sum for that will be $100 and it could reach up to 500$. As the project develops we will increase the minimum numbers.
- Not fair! You could simply find yourself a favorite team member and give all the money to him!
True that. But I won't. In fact, each month we will have a vote among devs on who really deserves the prize.
2) Community Donations - I'm sure we will gather a huge community with people that would love to help us! That's why we will give them an option of donating money to our cause. The money will be split among the most active participants at the end of each month.
- Man... you are a fuckin WIZARD!!
Yeah, i know.
Anyone can join our Dev Team and our Community no matter what your nationality or religion is you are welcomed here all day every day... as long as you can speak English... and you have a good internet connection... and a good sense of humor... and you like starships... and blowing them up...
What's next?
Well, now I will start spreading the word around via Twitter, Steam and maybe Facebook(i hate this thing). I will create a nice page for us on IndieDB. I will also start sharing some cool stuff that we already have for Onima, so stay tuned and invite your friends to the party... coz it's going to be awesome!
Thank you in advance! Sam.
P.S: We have to come up with some sort of cool phrase we say at the end like "Fly Safe" or "See you in the verse" from Star Citizen. What do you think about "Avoid Space Chickens" or something less dumb like "Safe Warping"? Suggest your ideas in the comments!
