Double Fine (Tim Schafer ) - Crowd Source/Kickstarter adventure game project.

A post from Brian Fargo regarding a new flow of investment money.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts

 

Very interesting idea, would be nice to see that take off.

 

Thinking of Snuggle Truck, i wonder if Flash/Flex will be Unity's official Linux strategy.

 

Wasteland 2 passed 1.8 millions and an update #7 with some interesting news that at 2.1 millions, Obsidian's Chris Avellone will enter the show and they'll utalise some of Obsidian's tools.

 

Booo, I was thinking of putting my project on Kick Starter to help fund the rest of my game development. Yet they only support people/companies in the US because of Amazon payments!!

That is lame

 

Noisecrime posted a couple of alternatives in this thread, you might want to check out those.

 

Oh man it's fun being a adventure gamer these days, oh well more precisely next year or so, hope i life this long.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1451923705/make-leisure-suit-larry-come-again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GodOPoyNIYg&feature=youtu.be

 

Just want to add that the remake of Leisure Suit Larry (from the link provided by taumel above) will be using Unity.

 

And Jane Jensen is kickstarting as well.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...rton-road-2012-2013-csg?ref=recently_launched

That's a lot of adventures in parallel, maybe too many to reach each project's full potential.

 

Shadowrun? *boom* Funded!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns

 

Oh and last but not least Update #8 on The Double Fine Adventure. :O)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure/posts

 

Quite some time no posting in this thread.

Now after DF decided to write their engine from scratch, crossing fingers for that they'll open source it, i thought it might be interesting to look at what other projects are using. Meanwhile Wasteland 2 made over 3 millions as well and Shadowrun looks like it will end up in a 1.5-2 million range. Both projects go the full cross desktop platform route (Win, OS X and Linux) and it seems like Wasteland 2 will be made with Unigine whilst Shadowrun will utalise MOAI. The Remake of Larry, which will be funded soon at $500k, will utalise Unity. I have no idea what Tex Murphy or Moebius plan to use.

The last game i solved (Legend of Grimrock) is run by an engine written by the devs. The game i'm playing right now, Botanoicula, is written in Flash and Torchlight 2, as for the rendering part, will be based on Ogre3D, the engine for The Witness also will be written by the devs, Bioshock Infinite is based on Unreal 3, ...

So, from my personal gaming habits and the more popular kickstarter projects i don't see this much of Unity.

 

The reason there's not much unity is because it's not industry proven when it comes to big games. I don't know myself, but I've heard it's actually hard to work on big games in unity. Unity is seen mainly as a mobile platform because that's where it has most of the games. Compared to some engines unity is missing a lot of features "AAA" developers might want/need.
So that's why there's not that much unity, at least I think so.

 

Bit disappointed that there haven't been any real updates to Double FineAdventure for several weeks, at least I've had nothing from kickstarter or personal emails. Though I've noticed that some interesting stuff is starting to appear in the DF private backers forum, such as a post from the programmer about their plans. Have I missed anything, or do I just need to keep visiting the DF backers forum?

 

The last update (with video) was on the 6th April, but there is some more random bits and pieces kicking about the backers forums as well

 

Ok so not missed any announcements, but I have missed lots of great stuff on the backers forum. If anyone who is a backer hasn't joined up or looked at the DFB forums recently, I would urge you to do so, there is some great information such as

Programming blog.
Kickstarter Stats and graphs.
Breakdown of where the money is going.

 

And the next one is already there, this time it's a space adventure from the Two Guys from Andromeda.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...enture-by-the-creators-of-space-que?ref=users

@Noisecrime
Your new avatar looks confusing.

 

There are two great new projects on Kickstarter right now:

Tex Murphy (an film noir sf detective adventure)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/251414413/tex-murphy-project-fedora

I guess many people know this one already.


and


Portal (Remake of Rob Swigart's Portal from 1986, the first graphic novel)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/subgames/rob-swigarts-portal-1986-reborn-v20

In comparison to many other games this one really features a interesting and well written story. Swigert wrote several books, thaught literature for many years and started with Murder on the Mississippi on the C64. They want to turn the graphic novel into a 3d adventure with adding, gameplay, puzzles, different places to explore, voice acting, flesh out the story, etc.

Beside of Swigert there are a few other interesting people involved like for instance Terri Brosius and Stephen Russell from System Shock 2 /the Thief serie). This is an exciting project away from slapstick, shallowness and the mainstream. Well, if you're interested in a interesting serious sf adventure then this might be worth checking out.

 

Heh, they raised quite a bit of money xD

 

Now it looks like it might be unity, since they are apparently hiring people with experience.

 

That one's got a lot of very high value donations. Avergae donation is $247. Although the tiers are a bit mean. I think if you are donating $2,500, $5,000 or $10,000 you shouldn't be asked for $20 for international shipping. It just lacks finesse.

 

Well, from those i was interested in, i haven't seen a project which does it all right yet. You know, giving some valuable background information instead of a few dazzlers for the die hard fans, delivering all the needed facts in well thought out tiers and so on. I guess the DFA still was the closest. Partly it's remarkable how amateurish some of these projects get started, still they are successful.

 

Don't know if they count as "big games" but those Nickolodeon games are using Unity. I believe Cartoon Network also.

 

Btw. Tex passed $100k, now kind of stalls waiting for an update - dev hint!

 

Beside of many of those kickstarter-projects which will probably show up sometime within the next year, there is one great adventure which you can pre order right now, it's called Resonance.

Resonance is a point&click adventure with an interesting sf-story in which you control up to four different characters. Is has some moody music, a.o. the Bastion-voice is on board, and it's drawn in pixel art style. Whilst it looks like an classical adventure, it also features some new ideas like the usage of short and long time memory slots. They kind of tried this in the first concepts for The DIG. For an oldskool adventure it feels kind of modern as well.

The game will be released on the 19th June and you can per order it for a discounted $9 at GOG. One of the cool things about the pre order is that you can instantly download a demo which is good for a few hours of gameplay.

>>> http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/resonance

 

Speaking of Double Fine, did anyone see the trailer for "The Cave" today? It's written by Ron Gilbert. It looks amazing.

http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/the_cave_has_risen/

 

Yep, i'm looking forward to it.

There also were a couple of more infos on Ron's http://grumpygamer.com/

 

If you don't follow the progress this closely, you know it's summer, football EM, eating ice cream and making special flavours on your own and eating them as well, ... then you might want to check out your eMail and have a look at update #10. It contains quite some entertaining as well as interesting information (i like that they use a skeletal system for the 2D characters - hint to Unity for their thinking about 2D).

And you must, i repeat, must, watch the video Art Update #3: Creating a Visual Style, Part 3.

 

The first public Wasteland 2 screenshot is up: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts

Maybe it's just me but looking at the screen reminded me of the HJB logo. :O)

 

Hey, all that lost posts, i'm glad the memory leak stopped here.

Day One, crowd funded adventure by Pendulo Studios, this time via ulule: http://www.ulule.com/dayone/

 

I really like all of Pendulo's recent games, but crowdsourcing is a joke. If they can't afford to fund their own game after their past five reasonably big releases, available on major stores, I don't see why anyone else should be asked to pay for it. The reality is they can afford to fund their own games, and this is nothing more than a begging bowl being passed around.

I realize that Chris Jones, Aaron Conners and Tim Schafer are also established developers with a track record of successful games and productions, but they were not independent. I don't have a problem with them using crowdsourcing to fund a move into being an independent developer. Pendulo have always been independent, and they've published five major titles on a variety of platforms.

I guess one other thing which niggles is that their most recent game, Yesterday, was unbelievably short, and I'm still stinging at being asked to pay £20 for a game I finished in 2 hours. Pendulo are getting more than a little bit greedy, if you ask me. (Which you didn't, I'll concede.)

 

I wouldn't mind if Electronic Arts would kickstart a game as long as the concept/game is good and worth my money.

So, no, i think it's a valid option for Pendulo Studios crowdfunding a game and adventure games aren't really famous for making you rich independent of the quality of the game. Pendulo Studios is good in graphics but they are less convincing when it comes to story telling, scripting, character and riddle design. They try to get more serious recently but they also operate with a relative low budget compared to big productions but a lot compared to smaller Indie productions.

John Yesterday was short and it was half baked in a number of aspects but the concept of DayOne might sound interesting enough for €12 if you're interested in adventure games but i also can understand people who say Yesterday was disappointing enough so that they don't trust them anymore. Pendulo Studios adventures never were the best in the genre, they always had their very specific flaws but a few of them still were enjoyable if you were interested in adventures.

 

Btw. Jack Houston, a stop motion point&click SPACE adventure, has 35 more hours to go: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warbirdgames/jack-houston-and-the-necronauts

 

Update 11 with episode 4 of the Double Fine Adventure is out.

If you're interested in concept art, you really should watch it!

 

... and about time too at this rate the next one will be in two months!

Sadly i've no time to watch it at the moment. ;(

 

Yup, it's not within the monthly schedule anymore but on the other side it's almost twice as long and interesting to watch.

 

Talking of schedules, are they still aiming for Oct 12 release? I can't see that as at all possible at the rate they are going and had assumed with the large Kickstarter goal they achieved that the release date was going to be pushed back anyway, but don't remember hearing anything about it.

 

I don't know, i remember that in one video Greg was kind of concerned because of the resources but i expect the game to arrive sometime in 2013. I don't care this much when it will arrive as long as it will be great. Having Peter Chan, Scott Campbell and Nathan Stapley as concept artists in one room is quite insane. If you then can't come up with something amazing then i don't know. Maybe Bob Ross was missing. :O)

 

Nice episode. They are also releasing "side quest" videos between the "real" ones.

 

Amiga users might remember The Great Giana Sisters, well the DS version was nice too.

Anyway, Project Giana on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/project-giana/project-giana

I like those ghosts.

 

Hmm I'm not sure whether all that old IP recycling is good or not. What comes next? Manic Mansion? Commander Keen?

I fear that those new games won't be as good as the old ones and that a lot people will be disappointed. The expectations are quite high.

 

I like both, new good IPs and successors to games i really enjoyed. Therefore i for sure won't turn down a new Maniac Mansion (actually this would be awesome but is very unlikely to happen due to the current situation at LucasArts) but you can keep Commander Keen. Obviously, regardless of where a game is coming from, it needs to be good. Talking of Giana Sisters i think it looks good and interesting, i'm just not a fan of those guitars but i'm sure Hülsbeck will have some nice tracks as well. And $10 sounds like a reasonable price.

 

I absolutely loved the Amiga version of Great Giana Sisters. The iOS version is actually pretty good too, despite the semi-crappy controls that come with almost all iOS games. Would be keen to check out this new version.

EDIT: Actually... wasn't it C64? I don't remember it being pretty enough to be Amiga.

EDIT EDIT: Looked it up - it was both

 

The Nintendo DS version was the nicest one, i never played the C64 version as i had the Amiga version already.

 

Wowowow, David Crane, you know the guy who once wrote the masterpieces for the VCS 2600 named Pitfall and Pitfall II is kickstarting David Crane's Jungle Adventure. Enter the cave here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jungleventure/david-cranes-jungle-adventure-0?ref=category

I like the way he pretends to enter things into his keyboard. :O)

 

kickstarter update: Crane's game will be driven by Unity 4.

 

Charles Cecil kickstarts a new 2D point&click Broken Sword adventure!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/165500047/broken-sword-the-serpents-curse-adventure?ref=live

 

Just had a quick look at how the last three mentioned projects are doing and it's quite interesting.

The Giana Sisters project is probably going to make it, so happy jumping and running. I would like to see it on Mac too.

David Crane's project isn't doing well at all. Maybe the fan base of his games isn't this big today anymore and/or it would have helped offering something more tangible for the audience (a little bit of gameplay or at least some screens). He's also asking for a lot of money compared to the latest projects. It a little bit reminds me of Portal, a great developer with a probably great game but somehow the project isn't able to activate an interested audience. I wish them best luck.

Broken Sword is doing very well and it looks like it could step out with some additional funding too. Adventure related Kickstarter is a dream. Broken Sword is one of the top ten (for some even top five) adventure franchises. Some fans (including me) have been waiting for a next Broken Sword, especially in 2D, since a very long time. This is very cool!

 

Nice one!!

 

And over 300k already. On one side it's great, on the other side it's also a bit dissapointing that they weren't able to collect it even sooner. The difference between a Tim Schafer adventure and others asking for funding on kickstarter is very noticeable, adventures are a niche. Anyway Giana is just a few hundred dollars away from its goal and i wonder if David Crane will cancel his campaign and restart with a smaller goal and more meat for the audience.