Shadows Are Falling

We're now in the last day for kickstarting Shadowrun: Hong Kong!


I continue to be impressed at how mature and thoughtful HBS has been in conducting this campaign. They've obviously been around the block before, and having experienced the entire cycle of crowdfunding has taught them what to do and what to avoid. This has helped prevent them from overextending themselves, and increases my confidence that they will deliver an even more successful project than before.

The clearest example of this is their handling of stretch goals. Practically every successful video game project that I've backed has added stretch goals which make the game cooler by adding more features. That's great, but also inevitably means that they blow out their initial release date: more features means more time. In this case, Harebrained Schemes identified early on what stretch goals they wanted to support, and identified how they would staff up to add them while still sticking to their schedule.

The campaign has been a success, and they blew past all of their defined stretch goals. Lots of speculation arose over what would come next: adding support for the astral plane? Implementing a compelling stealth system? Letting players modify their body shapes?

Nope: rather than follow the traditional $50k bumps in tiered stretch goals, which tends to keep up momentum, they added a new $1 million goal above their previous-highest $700k goal, a 40% increase without any intervening rewards. What was that goal? Not a feature or an enhancement, but an expansion: a new mini-campaign to be delivered and set after the end of Hong Kong.

That is a brilliant idea. It neatly solves the schedule problem that every other game kickstarter runs into: it creates an entire separate schedule, not tied to the already-committed dates, for a later improvement. They don't need to scramble to hire new staff: this gives their existing staff their next project to work on after Hong Kong. And it avoids the feature creep that causes things to spiral out of control.

That $1 million goal was pretty aggressive, but realistic. Based on the trends at the time, it seemed likely that they would hit it during the final hours, especially with the last-minute bump that kickstarters often get. They ended up exceeding expectations, landing the goal this weekend with several days left to go.

Backers immediately exploded with yet more speculation. What would come next? Maybe they could add something more for $1.1 million? Some other incentive to ensure that people continued flocking to the project and pushing it higher yet...

HBS did what I don't think I've seen any other creators do: they said "no". They were delighted to have hit their funding, and are refraining from piling on more tasks for themselves. In a very candid and thoughtful update, they demonstrate their familiarity with Murphy's law. More funding will be used, but it will be used to help cover the cost overruns and unexpected disasters and last-minute tweaks necessary to get out a successful game. They had their vision, and are sticking to it, even when strangers on the internet are throwing dollars at them.

So, why should people continue to back the project if it's reached all of its goals and doesn't have any higher goals to achieve? Well, for their own benefit. People who back at the $15 level are essentially pre-ordering the game at a discount, and getting some exclusive digital exclusives. Those who back at higher levels are getting rewards that won't be available anywhere in a few days. And everyone is getting the benefits that earlier backers have already unlocked, like more miniature figures and an expanded game and a free (for backers) expansion.

I thought that was a very noble and reasonable attitude for HBS to take, but was a bit concerned that they might kill their own momentum by essentially telling people "Thanks, but we're good." I needn't have worried. The last-minute push continues apace, already creeping up to that $1.1 million mark and poised to go well beyond.

I'm excited to see where this all ends up, and even more excited to see the final game when it arrives in August. I probably have more confidence in this game than any other I've backed on Kickstarter before. If you'd like to get in on the action, you still have some time; otherwise, keep your eyes peeled for a fun new adventure coming later this year!

Returns Returns!

We got another one! Harebrained Schemes has launched a new Kickstarter campaign for their new expansion to Shadowrun Returns. It’s looking really, really good… it’s set in Hong Kong, which is a perfect location for the cyber-noir vibe of Shadowrun, and the information they’ve shared so far about the setting, story, and characters all sound really intriguing.

As excited as I am to see the campaign, I’m almost more happy to see the way they’re approaching this Kickstarter. Attitudes towards crowd-sourced funding are much more mature now than they were a couple of years ago. There’s no longer that magical sense of, “Here’s a lever we can pull to get free money to make awesome games that will be perfect in every way!” We’ve seen enough successes, failures, and blowbacks that canny observers like HBS can predict the likely shape of their campaign, and plan accordingly. A few particularly interesting things caught my eye:

Lack of physical rewards. This was initially disappointing to me, but it makes a lot of sense. In almost every video game kickstarter I’ve been involved in, one of the major things the companies talked about at the end was how the physical rewards took more time and money to distribute than they had initially planned; in multiple cases this ended up meaning the difference between a planned slight profit and an actual slight loss. This time around, they only have two options for physical rewards, both of which are at higher tiers of $150+ and thus will have fewer claimants (and, notably, are not personalized at all). So I get it, even as I regret it; the T-Shirt and Doc Wagon card from the first campaign might be my favorite premiums from any Kickstarter I’ve been involved in.

Focus on the PC. This seems more unique to Shadowrun than crowd-funding generally. HBS’s very first goal (before the initial SRR kickstarter) was closer to a casual game, similar to their Crimson Pirates title, which would run on pretty much anything. Thanks to the runaway success of the Kickstarter, they got the funding to make a more featureful engine with 3D elements, particle effects, and a bigger scope. They kept their tablet goal in mind, and eventually released for tablets as well, but it’s a stripped-down affair there. So, the Hong Kong campaign is declaring itself PC-only up front. This is smart sense financially and technically, since it lets them focus in on a particular target and create the best game they can for that without needing to worry about constrained devices. But it’s also a smart move socially. The PC gaming community is an intense and loyal one, and a strong declaration like this will reassure a lot of potential backers and encourage more to join in. (There are still a large number of tablet gamers, but they don’t seem to be as strong a presence.)

Up-front about project status and finances. HBS teased this campaign late last year, and there’s been some grumbling from malcontents in the community: If the franchise is doing well, why go back to Kickstarter again? Why not act like a big boy and sign on with a traditional publisher? To me, this had seemed like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation: companies who haven’t done Kickstarters before are looked at with suspicion since they haven’t proven they can deliver, while companies like HBS which have run successful Kickstarters before are looked at with suspicion since they should presumably have all the money they need forever. So I think it’s not only nice, but wise, for HBS to highlight what’s going on with Hong Kong and why they’re doing another Kickstarter. The game is happening no matter what, and will come out even if the project were to somehow fail. (Spoiler: It won’t.)

Unlimited backer slots available. This actually surprised me a little; most of the campaigns I see make use of a restricted number of backers allowed at particular levels. Typically, the lower levels (like "Pay $5 to get on our mailing list and receive a free digital wallpaper!") take all comers. At the higher levels (like "Pay $5000 and get a producer credit, plus a hand-crafted bust of your face from one of our artists!"), only a handful will be available. Recently, many projects have started using a large but limited number of slots at lower levels to help drive early commitment to a project:  inXile has used this, for example, perhaps offering a $20 "early bird" package with a free digital download to the first 5000 backers at that level; after it fills up, they'll create a new $25 level which offers the same thing. That seems like it gives incentives for people to join sooner, which in turn helps speed up the funding drive and create more buzz for the project. Anyways, Hong Kong has none of that, at either the low or the high end. I'm sure that HBS has good reasons for it, but I'm a bit curious as to why. It might be that, if you misjudge a tier's popularity, your project could suffer: perhaps a ton of people like the rewards at $500, but if you artificially limited it to 10 backers, and people didn't want to increase to the $1000 tier, then you're potentially leaving a lot of money on the table when those people end up making $100 pledges instead. On the flip side, if someone comes to a project late, it looks bad if they scan the rewards and sees that only 3 of the 1000 slots at the $500 level have been taken. I suppose the best approach is just to make sure that the marginal cost at each tier is low enough that it always makes sense to add one more person. That said, I am curious what that will mean for stuff like the e-book; as of this writing, 58 people will be added as characters in the ebook, so it seems like at some point they're basically going to end up with a big list of names to fit them all in.

Varying fulfillment dates. This is one aspect of Kickstarter's interface which isn't great. Each tier has an "Estimated delivery". This is a good idea in general, since it gives backers a general idea of when to expect their stuff. For the Kickstarters I'm usually involved in, though, multiple deliverables are involved, each with their own timelines. In the case of Hong Kong, some early PDFs will go out next month; the game itself is tentatively scheduled for August; and the eventual e-book is scheduled for December. Which all makes sense, and is much better than them holding stuff back until everything is ready, especially if it meant that people pledging at lower levels got their stuff before higher pledgers did. The other wrinkle for video games, though, is what happens to that ship date. Often, if a video game kickstarter is very successful, stretch goals will result in adding more content and features to the game. That's a great thing, but does mean that the originally-announced release date ends up slipping, just due to the nature of how software development works. That seems to be less of an issue for Hong Kong; since they're working on top of an existing engine and have already delivered two campaigns, they probably have a clearer idea of how long this will realistically take. Still, I'm going to treat that August date as a very rough goal, and won't be disappointed if it takes them longer to release the game in the condition they want.

All the strong advance work by HBS has paid off, along with the devoted Shadowrun community (a sprawling affair, stretching from decades-long pen-and-paper players to neophytes who recently picked up Dragonfall on a Steam Sale) and other supporters, and so the campaign has started off with a bang. They asked for a modest $100k up front, and must have known that they would get it. They were funded in less than two hours and continue to rocket higher as time goes on. They've been gradually unveiling additional stretch goals as they knock out earlier ones, and it's looking like a strong set: upgrades to the cyberwear system, new types of summons, Foci for mages, and an overhaul of the Matrix. Folks in the community have also been chattering about some other stretch goals they'd like to see which seem pretty plausible, like an Astral system (which seems like it could fit nicely alongside their existing Matrix system) and upgrades to the editor.

So, we'll see where it all goes! It's a long-duration Kickstarter, and will be going on for more than a month. If you've previously played and enjoyed Shadowrun Returns and/or Dragonfall, consider pitching in! You're basically pre-ordering the game for a very reasonable $15, and getting some nice bonuses for doing so. Personally, I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to go after one of the higher tiers: after SRR successfully shipped, I kicked myself for not springing for one of the higher levels that would have actually inserted my presence into the game itself in one form or another, and thus gotten a taste of sweet immortality. Back then, there was a lot of excitement but also a lot of uncertainty around Kickstarter and how reliable companies would be at delivering on their promises. As far as I'm concerned, Harebrained Schemes have proven themselves, and I feel the confidence I need to stretch a little further in helping them reach their goals. 

Visions of the Surface

I appreciate many things about Failbetter Games, and one of them is how quickly they turn around their Kickstarter projects. The Silver Tree appeared only two months after its successful Kickstarter campaign, and I've recently started playing the Early Access version of Sunless Sea less than a year after backing it. In comparison, Torment: Tides of Numenera recently slipped back to the fourth quarter of 2015. (Not that I terribly mind - I'd much rather a game be done right than quickly - but I admire Failbetter's ability to do both.)

Sunless Sea is a new direction for Failbetter. Up until now, they have been exclusively known for crafting very well-written interactive fiction. They've developed a system, the StoryNexus platform, that allows them to make this more game-y than most other IF, which tends to follow the model of either "Choose Your Own Adventure" or "Zork". Their games feature beautiful bespoke art, which primarily serves as illustration to the text.

In contrast, Sunless Sea is a game-game. It combines a bunch of different systems: there's real-time exploration, a form of turn-based combat, short narrative chunks (some of which have branching storylines), and an economy that includes opportunities for trading. It was advertised as a roguelike with strong story elements, taking inspiration from games like FTL and Sid Meier's Pirates!, and so far it is living up to that description. I didn't back the project at a high enough tier to get into the beta, but all backers have gotten access to the Early Access, and I had a lot of fun playing with it over the weekend.

As a side note, there has been some controversy lately around Early Access games, where people buy games before they are complete and get to play them early while the developers finish them. There is some risk that games won't be finished at all, and you're definitely giving up the opportunity to read reviews and Metacritic scores before purchasing. I think Failbetter is taking a good approach to this... they've been focusing on the core mechanics of the game, front-loading the development of graphics, combat, illumination, etc., so what we're getting in EA feels like a more-or-less complete game. Over the next three months, they'll be focusing on building out the remaining content for the game: in concrete terms, creating the rest of the (enormous!) map, adding and completing more storylines, building more trading centers, etc. Of course, they're listening to feedback during this time as well, and will be adjusting things like combat difficulty and survivability.

I'm a bit reluctant to discuss any strategies or the like, since I'm sure things will change quite a bit by the time the game is finished. That said, here are a few things I've noted so far:

There are multiple resources to manage. The most obvious ones are Supplies and Fuel. Your crew eats Supplies at a steady rate. You consume more Fuel as your ship moves faster and when you turn on your ship's lights; you can hang out in a single spot for a while with your engine and lights off and stop burning any Fuel, but will still be losing a few Supplies. A less obvious resource is kind of an anti-resource, Terror. Your zailors are scared of the dark, and their Terror will increase when you venture into unlighted areas and as you stray further from shore. This reminds me a little of the Nightmares mechanic from Fallen London: it doesn't have much of an impact at low levels, but can cascade when it gets higher (you may begin having nightmares which further increase Terror). When it reaches 100, your game is basically over: your crewmates will go insane, jumping overboard and leaving you stranded and dead. There was a somewhat similar system in place for Pirates! based on morale, which kept any single voyage from continuing for too long.

That isn't the only way to lose, of course: you can also starve to death, have your crew mutiny, or be destroyed in combat. This is a roguelike, so you're expected to die somewhat frequently. Over time, I have come to get a better feeling for just how prepared I need to be when embarking on a voyage, how to minimize my zailor's Terror, and most importantly, that I should run away from combat with all but the easiest enemies. When you do die, the game lets you carry a legacy forward into your next game: one of your officers, a single stat, or your current map. So far I've been opting for my most-expensive Officer, which comes with a bit of a stat boost and opportunities to further upgrade my character.

The most fun way I've discovered so far to play involves speaking with the Admiralty Office in London, which will send you on a mission to a specific random port to retrieve Strategic Information. I'll try to make a loop out of the trip, stopping in at all nearby ports along the way and collecting Port Reports from each, as well as whatever storylets they have to offer. Back in London, you can turn in the Strategic Information for 150 Echoes (the in-game currency), and each Port Report can fetch anywhere from 5-100 Echoes more, with most worth around 20-30. This is usually enough money to hire a new Officer, repair any damage I may have accrued, replenish any lost crew, and hopefully still have a bit left. After several hours of play on my most successful game yet, I've acquired a full slate of high-quality officers and upgraded my engines.

For trips to the north, I'll usually also offer passage to some Tomb-Colonists and engage in a little arbitrage (Prisoner's Honey to Venderbight, then Spider-Silk back to London). I presume that more trading ports will be added as the game continues further development, which will add more opportunities for side-profits along the way, although I'm fairly sure that pure trading will never be the best way to advance in the game.

So far, I'm really enjoying the game! The bones feel solid, and I'm eager to see how the story develops. Fallen London has been a very fun and surprising game, and so far it feels like Sunless Sea has captured much of the atmosphere and ambiance of that game while creating something entirely new to play. At this point, I think I'll probably keep playing my character as long as possible until her inevitable death, then maybe wait until September to play the final version. That should give me a few weeks to master the Unterzee until the Inquisition unexpectedly arrives.

Simple Things

It's time for another mini-roundup!

When I pledged to Shadowrun Returns, one of my rewards was a PDF of a short story anthology. Honestly, I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of this - game fiction prose tends to be rather poor, and it didn't have any A-list authors attached. I just recently finished reading it, and was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. Each story stands on its own, but when taken together they weave together to tell a surprisingly epic story, which in its own way is just as dramatic as (and simultaneously subtler than) Dead Man's Switch.

It does reveal some crucial plot twists from the main game, so I wouldn't recommend starting it until after finishing the game. If you do read it afterwards, though, there are a lot of treats for you. Some of them you might expect, like getting to know more of the backstory of various characters like Cherry Bomb, Jessica Watts, and Dresden. Others are some surprising changes from the initial concept of the story to the version that ultimately shipped in the game. The world depicted in the anthology is much more, uh, adult than the game, particularly where the Seamstresses' Union is concerned. In the game, it's a bar with some attractive bartenders. In the book, it's a brothel. In the game, it's overseen by Mrs. Kubota. In the book, it's run by Madam Sinful.

The best part of it, though, is how the book broadens the scope of the game's story. It takes a long time to piece together the meta-plot, but when you do, it not only makes many of the other stories make more sense, but also shines a new light on some elements in DMS that felt like red herrings at the time. The NTSB, for example, was a great setting in the game but felt a bit superfluous, important only because it was the site of a murder that could have occurred anywhere. In the book, though, you see how the NTSB is involved in a much more subtle and long-running plot, which adds a new color to the scenes you spent there.

Oh, and in addition to the stories, there's also some really fantastic concept art, as well as a huge portrait gallery. The latter is actually pretty directly useful to me, since it's an easier way to locate good NPC pictures than browsing through the filesystem. Anyways, I think you can pick up the anthology as part of the Deluxe package on Steam.

In other Shadowrun news, I got my physical rewards! The Doc Wagon card looks and feels great. It even links to a funny video that is certainly the corniest, cheesiest thing ever created in connection with Shadowrun (and there's a lot of competition for that title!). The T-Shirt looks nice too, with a good quality fabric and great image transfer. I know that some folks aren't fans of the new blue/green Shadowrun skull logo, but now that I'm used to it I strongly prefer it to the original red skull logo.

In less cheering video game news, I picked up the new Ultima tablet game and found it wanting. I wasn't really surprised. I'd initially been ecstatic at the news, back when I thought that it was BioWare remaking Ultima IV. Since then, I'd learned that it was actually another division within EA who was working on it. (There was a brief period of time when it seemed like EA was trying to cannibalize BioWare's good name by transferring it to unrelated studios. That seems to have stopped, though I don't know if it's because BioWare complained, or if EA thought that the brand is less powerful in a post-ME3, post-DA2 environment.)

I still think that a remake of Ultima IV could make an awesome tablet game. Those early RPGs had relatively simple controls and maps, and so could be a perfect match for today's tablet interface and hardware. At the same time, it wouldn't take a ton of effort to streamline the gameplay to conform to modern sensibilities: cut down on the grinding, maybe add some high-res portraits for the NPCs, etc.

In the short time that I played Quest of the Avatar, I didn't really notice any similarities at all with the plot of Ultima IV. There is a plot, to be sure, but it's something about a, uh, psychic sickness or malevolent evil force or something. The Virtues, which were the cornerstone of Ultima IV, are present here, but in a weird form. The game starts with you answering virtue questions like you did in most Ultimas, but since there are only two classes available they don't really make any difference to your gameplay. The questions themselves seemed more jokey than I remembered, though that might just be me turning into a crotchety old man. In-game, you periodically encounter virtue quests that demand you to make a choice (e.g., show Justice and send a dying criminal to prison, or Compassion and let him die in peace), but they didn't really engage me.

The worst aspect of all, though, is the Free-to-Play structure. Once again, I should not have been surprised. I have never enjoyed a F2P game (with the sole, shining exception of the excellent Fallen London), and Quest for the Avatar seems to combine the elements I most dislike about this genre.

• It aggressively tries to tie in to your social network.
• It encourages you to play daily, but discourages you from playing for very long (without paying).
• It consistently pings you to spend money to improve your game.
• It throws you into semi-forced, low-quality play with other humans.

 The main mechanic they use is "keys". You are awarded some keys within the game, but the system is set up to encourage you to spend money to buy higher-quality keys. Having keys and more valuable keys results in more-powerful items, which allow you to progress more through the game. Worse, items actually degrade as they're damaged, and you need to spend (you guessed it!) keys to repair them.

I went through the tutorial dungeon, met Lady British (which was a fine change on its own, but really underscored how this plot has nothing to do with the original Quest of the Avatar), went into a dungeon, got invited to join a party, and swiftly quit and uninstalled. Sigh.

On the plus side, I have since learned that the Commodore 64 version of the original Ultima IV has just arrived on iOS, so it looks like I will get to check that out soon! I'll probably never get the remake I wanted, but I suspect that the unaltered original will tickle my fancy more than its complete transformation into a F2P game.

Heh, my gaming landscape has changed drastically between when I started this post and starting this paragraph. To wit: GTA V has arrived! I've had almost no time to play it, thanks to an unusually aggressive confluence of time commitments, but am eagerly anticipating diving into it. I think this is the first game I've pre-ordered since Dragon Age: Origins.  My expectations are simultaneously high and measured. San Andreas is my favorite installment of the franchise, and GTA IV was the most impressive technically, so a combination of the two has the potential to become one of my favorite games ever. It looks like they're shifting slightly back towards San Andreas's RPG-ish elements, including tons of customizations and upgradeable skills (though no more fat, alas, alas). And the setting itself looks gorgeous. That was probably what I missed most in GTA IV: I adored the open countryside in San Andreas, being able to blast down an open freeway along the coast with Radio Los Santos blasting through an open convertible, or riding a dirtbike down Mount Chiliad, or flying through the desert on a dune buggy, or... well, yeah. As much as I appreciated GTA IV's taxi innovations and the ability to get from Point A to Point B quicker than ever before, I also really like having interesting land to travel between those points.

The aspect of GTA V that interested me the least in the press build-up was probably the multiple-characters angle. Of the three, only Franklin really stood out as someone I would want to play as. In the brief time that I've tried V, I've come to appreciate Michael much more, and can see some interesting possibilities in his character. He's kind of in a position where other GTA characters would be 15 years after their own games ended: he's married, with two kids, living in a huge fancy house, and absolutely bored out of his mind. So far, the thing I like most is seeing the very different ways that Franklin and Michael express their rage. When Franklin crashes into someone, he'll yell at them. When Michael crashes, he's quiet for a second, as he calmly collects himself... and then proceeds to very deliberately express his hatred in measured, violent tones. It's a great example of maturity affecting attitude in an unexpected way.

So, yes. GTA V will be my big gaming project for the next while. I'm sure I'll have more opinions on it. I'm kind of dreading meeting Trevor; based on his appearances in the previews, he looks like an entertaining character to meet, but I don't know if I'll be comfortable playing as him.

Hm, what else.... oh! Kickstarter! The Sunless Sea has been funded, and can use your help to reach its first stretch goal!


This comes from the fine folks who created Fallen London, and shares some of the lore, but is a totally new game. It's a 2D top-down exploration, trading, and strategy game. It's semi-procedurally-generated, has a system of officers that will allow for party-building, and will include embedded stories within the action (in the tradition of something like Castles). They call out some fantastic influences like Sid Meier's Pirates!, FTL, and roguelikes.

I was one of the people who voted for this concept when Failbetter ran a survey a few months ago, and am really looking forward to its becoming a reality. There's already so many great concepts to (literally) explore, like Hunter's Keep, the Elder Continent, Corpscage Islands, the Tomb-Colonies, and tons more. The game mechanics seem clean and fun, a set of manageable systems that will allow for tinkering and experimentation without requiring micromanagement. And, of course, knowing that Failbetter writers are producing the content makes me very optimistic about the quality of story. (They're one of the few companies out there with a good track record for producing asynchronous, semi-randomized stories, and they do it well.)

There's just over a week left to go, and they still have many slots available in the upper tiers if you want to go nuts. I know that I personally was kicking myself after Shadowrun Returns came out for not pledging at one of those top levels to be immortalized in a game. Here's a chance to do that if the concept appeals to you.

Cling Clang Clung

So, I've just received my first-ever Kickstarter-backed game! It's... interesting. Not as awesome as I had hoped, but still a nifty little piece of tech.

This is CLANG, the Kickstarted swordfighting game from Subutai that featured the incredible Neal Stephenson as a spokesperson and had several awesome martial combat videos. They made their goal, but just barely, and it definitely wasn't a run-away success like some other projects (Double Fine Adventure, Reaper Miniatures Bones, Wasteland 2). So, fairly soon after the campaign ended, they communicated that they would be focusing specifically on the sword combat mechanics, and not much in the way of narrative or other gameplay.

It seems like a bit of a skunkworks project, and that was clear even in the delivery. The game was distributed as a 200+MB download, and their servers did not appear to be equipped to handle the load of thousands of geeks all downloading it at once; I think my download timed out over a dozen times and had to be restarted each attempt before I finally snagged it.

The initial pitch for CLANG was to create a swordfighting experience in game that "feels" similar to actually using a sword. Neal Stephenson has made some fantastic observations in the past about the inadequate metaphors that our computers offer, and a mouse and keyboard are particularly lousy tools for emulating the sensation of melee combat. As I recently noted, I picked up a Razer Hydra after they identified it as the ideal peripheral to control the game: its fine motion- and position-sensing technology lets you control your in-game stance by shifting your arms around, segueing from one form to another.

All of that is really cool in theory. In practice, I felt totally adrift. I think that, for a neophyte like me, the lack of a tutorial makes the game practically unplayable. I was lost even at the very beginning when calibrating my Hydra, when the on-screen instructions said, "Hold the controllers like you would a sword." Uh... which would be like what, exactly? The only sword I've held before is a fencing foil, and I certainly haven't ever wielded a two-handed longsword. That's a big part of why I was excited to back the project: so I could have the vicarious experience of what it would be like to fight with a sword. That's what drives most of the games I play, actually: the chance to get a taste of an experience that I'll likely never have in real life. As it stands, CLANG seems to pre-suppose familiarity with the basics of sword combat. It would be a little like if a flight simulator assumed that players already knew how to fly an airplane.

I totally get why they didn't build out a tutorial (the option is currently grayed-out): it's expensive, and something that most players would probably only ever run once, so it makes more sense to focus on the core gameplay mechanics. Still, anything that they could have provided would have helped me immensely: a PDF that showed how to position your hands and outlined the various stances, for instance. Heck, if they ever just make a YouTube video that shows a more experienced person playing this, that will probably be enough for me to get the basic mechanics and try again.

As it was, though, I felt like I was flailing. I fought a couple of matches, and won some, and lost some, but really don't have any understanding of what I was doing: I was trying to position my arms to match the ghost outlines that the game shows, and pressing buttons and pulling a trigger, and then some stuff happened.

In their release email, Subutai explained the roadmap: they're going to try and get more funding to build out the game more. That's cool. I still love the idea of a medieval combat game. I just wish that this proof-of-concept was a bit more usable to someone like me.

In happier Kickstarter news: Shadowrun should be released in the next couple of months, and is currently available for pre-order on Steam for non-backers. I was floored and delighted last week when they revealed that, contrary to everyone's expectations, the Matrix will be available in the initial release of the game! I've been planning to play a Decker since I first heard about the project, so this makes me incredibly happy. The initial concept had been that Deckers would only see an "overlay" in the real world, but as a new video shows, they will be able to actually "jack in" to the Matrix, combat IC, duel rival AI, shut down security nodes, and all the other awesome stuff that I remember from the SNES and Genesis games.

They are carefully managing expectations: Matrix runs will be relatively rare, and not a huge feature in the main game. What's really exciting, though, is that just by making this available, they're also making those resources accessible to the mod community, and I have no doubt that we will see many Matrix runs in the months ahead.

Speaking of which: it sounds like early access to the mission creator has been delayed. That makes me feel a bit better about not backing at a higher level just to get early access: I don't think there's going to be a ton of time between when it's made available to backers, and when the game itself comes out (and the creator made available to everyone). It's kind of an awkward situation for Harebrained Schemes to be in: they want to reward their backers, but they also want to make the game as good as possible for their customers, and it will help the game to have a wider pool of community mod creators early on. I'm curious to see how this all plays out. And, of course, I can't wait to get it in my greedy little hands!

It's exciting to see it moving forward. I just recently filled out a survey for getting my T-Shirt and other rewards. The coolest bit was realizing that I'd be able to upload my own photo for my DocWagon card - I'd assumed that by "personalized," they had just meant that it would have my name on it, but nope, this will be a true SINless card! I picked a rare headshot of me wearing sunglasses, which seems slightly more in character for the Sixth World. 

Finally, the Torment kickstarter finished with a rousing success. There was actually a bit of a coda to this: they extended the Paypal campaign for the month of April to let the community try for their final stretch goal, a player stronghold. This has sounded really cool: they're not sure exactly what it will be, but a few ideas they have floated have included a mobile airship, or an interdimensional portal, or inside your own mind. They just announced that we fell a little short of the stretch goal, BUT since the Amazon pledges have had a better-than-expected success rate (not many insufficient funds, etc.), they've decided to take it on after all. Hooray!

So, that's something to look forward to, far, far in the future. They're still in the very early concept phases, and won't even start any coding until after Wasteland 2 ships near the end of this year. I love everything that I've seen so far from the team, though. It's an interesting mix of ambition and tradition: they want to create a deeply meaningful, complex, thought-provoking game; but they're also very explicitly harkening back to old-school gaming (PC-only, no multiplayer) and to a particular beloved property (Planescape: Torment). I'm especially enjoying the video chats with members of the creative team, who are geographically dispersed and temperamentally varied, from the humble Adam Heine to the sly Colin McComb to the playful Tony Evans. Just seeing their individual personalities sparkle makes me excited about the kinds of characters they're going to write. 2015 is going to be awesome!

Oh, and if you aren't already familiar with MrBtongue's excellent, philosophical YouTube videos, I highly recommend checking out his recent meditation on Choice & Consequences. He does a fantastic job of articulating some ideas that I've struggled to communicate on this blog. It sounds like inXile is taking his words to heart, which makes me even more excited about the potential of Torment.

Kickedstarter

Man, I really should have waited another 12 hours before publishing my last Kickstarter post. Two big bombshells dropped that have direct relevance: a revelation and a promise.


For starters, Harebrained Schemes released their first look at a running, alpha version of the game. They run and talk their way through a good chunk of a mission, chatting along the way about what we're looking at, the various systems being demonstrated, what's particularly cool, and so on. I highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in the project. It looks surprisingly good for a relatively low-budget game... details like the Seattle rain add a ton to the atmosphere, and I love how the character designs look. That combination of simple model and detailed facial portrait was magic for games like Baldur's Gate (and, yes, Planescape: Torment), and I think it's a really smart direction to take.

Almost immediately after releasing the video, Harebrained announced that they were allowing backers to upgrade their pledge levels. I thought that was interesting. I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. Obviously since it's just optional, anyone who wants to give them more money will presumably be happy with the opportunity. Though, I suspect that the upper tiers that involve creating new NPCs or items or the like may feel less integrated if they're claimed at this stage, rather than prior to development. It does seem like a "safer" move to make now than it was during the initial pledge phase; now that they've brought the game to, say, 80% completion, backers have much more confidence in the success of the project and a much clearer idea of what the actual game is. But, as far as I can tell they're only allowing the increases of pledges, not newcomers, so people have already voted with their wallets; it would be more discouraging if someone could come in 18 months later and get the same reward as a day-one true believer.

From Harebrained Schemes' perspective, there's a pretty clear advantage to re-opening pledge levels: it increases their funding, and gives them more money to finish the game. I imagine that's a good thing... if it lets them devote more resources to QA, and to polishing, and to creating sample missions, and all the other stuff that makes the final product sing, then that's all good.



A separate Kickstarter was also announced, one that I had a hunch would be coming soon: a new game from Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima franchise and one of the godfathers of both computer RPGs and PC games in general. I'd signed up a few days ago for a "secret announcement" type thingy; it seemed clear that it would be for a new game, and I was right in suspecting that it would involve Kickstarter.

I'm a bit ashamed to say that I haven't [yet!] backed it. I regularly cite the Ultima series as the most formative series for me, as well as one of my favorites; I have particularly strong affection for Ultimas VI and VII in particular.

There are so many things that Garriott trailblazed. Zork predates Ultima, but Ultima pioneered applying a D&D-style rule-based system to a computer game; it had some of the very first graphics ever for a PC game; Ultima was one of the first games ever to tell a story (you'd be hard-pressed to find an actual story in the original Zork); Ultima IV was arguably the first game to actually explore deeper issues like morality; Ultima Underworld was the first FPS RPG, and was years ahead of its time with features like FPS companions, NPCs, and true three-dimensional levels; Wing Commander was one of the first games ever to use full-motion video; and Ultima Online, while not the first MMO, was the largest of its time and popularized many genre tropes that are still in use today.

That said, Garriott has been largely out of sight for over a decade. He was sadly a pioneer in yet another way: building an awesome gaming company that was acquired by EA and then absolutely ruined. It's a story that has been repeated countless times since: EA insists on churning out games at a faster pace; they release games in buggy states; a franchise loses its way, feeling rushed and with a weaker story; over time, your love for the great franchise starts to dim; sales fall as gamers turn away from the increasingly poor releases; and, finally, EA kills off the company. Origin was the first, and since then we've seen it repeated with Bullfrog, Maxis, Westwood Studios and Mythic, and we're all praying that Bioware escapes that fate.

Since leaving Origin/EA, Garriott is mostly known for creating Tabula Rasa, which unfortunately is best known as a fascinating failure of an MMO. Initially envisioned as a means to link together Eastern and Western players, it massively overshot its schedule, releasing after about six years in development and closing down two years later. Well, actually, Garriott is probably best known now for non-gaming purposes: being the first commercial space passenger, and the first second-generation space traveler, and building elaborate mansion castles.

So, while I'm profoundly grateful to Garriott for all he has contributed to the field of gaming, I'm not feeling terribly optimistic that he will deliver a great new game. Other successful kickstarter projects have become successful by essentially promising a second version of something people love. Torment is a great example of that: it's set in a different universe and based on a new rule-set, but everything about the project's promotion specifically references the terrific, groundbreaking things the team did in Planescape, and promises to deliver an experience that will make you feel similar to how you felt playing that earlier game. (Adam Heine put this very well in a comment on a recent Kickstarter update. The update made some vague references to how the game would treat relationships, which is a matter of intense concern among some fans. After frantic posts worrying about exactly what this meant, Adam wrote, "When in doubt, you can usually assume we will do things like we did in PST." That's a good line, and also something that should really help soothe the neurotic concerns that tend to bubble up whenever you treat an update to a beloved property.) Shadowrun took an opposite approach: they wanted to significantly modify the gameplay (modern graphics, no matrix, user-created missions), but kept the setting virtually identical (old-school Shadowrun set in the 2050s, instead of the more updated 2070s or a re-adjusted future based on today and not on projections from the 1980s). Again, people who had played the old Shadowrun console games or the pen-and-paper RPGs had a great feeling for the setting, and could back the project in the hopes of being able to re-visit that universe.

In contrast, after reading through the kickstarter for Shroud of the Avatar, watching the videos, and scanning through a few interviews, I'm still a bit baffled at what exactly the game experience will be like. I don't fundamentally "get" what he's proposing here... so, it's a multiplayer game, but it can be played offline as well? And it's a shared, persistent world? But we'll only encounter a few people at a time? And we'll pay taxes (with real money) on properties we buy?

Garriott built his reputation on innovating, and so it does make sense that he would be trying something new and unique that hasn't been done before. It may even be awesome. But personally, I tend to process new things by mapping them back onto things I've previously encountered, and I'm having a hard time understanding what he's going for here.

It would be easier for me if, say, he wanted to make a new single-player game set in Brittannia; I would probably back that in a heartbeat. But, Garriott no longer owns his own creation, since he sold it to EA, and thus he can't make a new game set there. I would also go for a game that invoked Ultima VII: a party-based game, set in an open fantasy world, played in a third person overhead view, with an intricate plot, and fairly modern graphics and sound. And while I personally wouldn't back an MMO, I'm sure there would be a huge audience for people who miss UO's lived-in world, which promoted community and ownership over the WoW model of stat advancement, grinding, and clans.

I'm definitely watching this campaign with interest, and I dearly hope that it turns out to be a terrific game - I'll be one of the first to buy it if it does. It's kind of hard for me to back right now, though.

To be honest, the game also suffers from poor timing. I imagine that Garriott has been planning this for a while, hence the Lord British secret announcement mailing list and such. However, since it was announced only a few days after Torment, I think a lot of oxygen had already left the room. For starters, Torment was a huge success story: the fastest Kickstarter to ever hit a million dollars (even beating the Ouya console), and on pace to become one of the best-funded game projects ever (currently at #6 in Gaming, with more than three weeks left to go). Shroud of the Avatar has put in very respectable numbers, but as of this writing they haven't yet reached their one-million-dollar goal; I'm sure they'll hit it, but it hasn't exploded like Torment did.

There may be some overlap between the games, too, so people with limited Kickstarting budgets who already pledged for Torment may be more reluctant to back Shroud of the Avatar as well. The games aren't all that similar: Torment is proudly single-player ("There is no total this Kickstarter could reach that would lead us to implement multiplayer"), and will take a novelistic approach, while Shroud of the Avatar is... some single/multi-player hybrid thing? Planescape: Torment came out in 1999, while Ultima's most celebrated games spanned the 1980s to the early 1990s, so I suspect Torment's target audience may skew slightly younger (though the enduring popularity of Ultima Online may somewhat equalize those demographics). Still, both games are fantasy RPGs, and in that respect they are conceivably fighting for the same entertainment dollars.

Still... as I said in my previous post, one of the things I love most about Kickstarter is the collegial atmosphere it fosters, not just between creators and backers, but between creators. You might think that inXile would get miffed that Garriott jumped in while their campaign was running, or Garriott might be bummed that Brian Fargo stole his thunder. I don't know what they think in private, but in public interviews both leaders are respectful and appreciative towards one another, claiming to be pleased at each others' successes. Anyways. It reinforces my ideal of the Kickstarter model being about focusing on creativity rather than competition, and growing the pie so everyone can feast on the long tail. Erm, that metaphor may have gotten away from me.

Regardless: while I'm not backing the Shroud campaign at the moment, I'm delighted it's running and pleased to see it doing so well. Hopefully people with more vision than me can help join in and make it succeed.

Circumambient

Time for a return to one of my periodic fascinations: Kickstarter campaigns!

A new computer game kickstarter has kicked off, and it is blowing up. Torment: Tides of Numenera aims to be a spiritual successor of sorts to Planescape: Torment, one of the strangest and most-beloved RPGs of all time. It's set in a completely new fantasy campaign setting, and reunites a significant part of the team that created the original PS:T game. It raised its $900,000 goal in six hours, and is floating around two million as we speak. I'm sure it will slow down as the month progresses - there's a lot of pent-up demand for more Torment, and the most enthusiastic fans hurled themselves into its gaping maw at first opportunity - but they already seem set to blow through all their currently defined stretch goals, and could easily become the most-funded computer game on Kickstarter if they keep it up. I'm holding out hope that they'll be able to hire Jennifer Hale, Michael Weiss, and the other fantastic voice actors from the original game to play new characters here.

The culture around Kickstarters is really cool and encouraging. The thing that has surprised and pleased me the most is how fraternal it is. Torment is being run by a small company called inXile. The currently best-funded game project on Kickstarter is Project Eternity, which is also a spiritual successor to a beloved game from the late 90s/early 2000s, and that's run by another small company called Obsidian Entertainment. You might think that the two companies would be competitors, or at least rivals. However, that's not the case! You can see that each company has helped fund the others' games, and it's really cool that one company's CEO is the lead endorsement on the other company's project.

I also love how Kickstarter encourages companies to share insight into the game-development process with their backers. This isn't that unusual - I'm sure that an investor would also get access to internal development procedures - but since we funders are also fans, we get to focus on the really cool and interesting aspects of development. It's in the company's interest to keep us informed, too... as they enjoy saying, we're not just the backers, but we're also the first wave of marketing. Keeping apprised of evolving feature sets and milestones helps us manage expectations while maintaining excitement.

One thing that does make me a little nervous is that we're now experiencing a second wave of Kickstarted game projects, before any major games from the first wave have been completed. This all really kicked off with the Doublefine Adventure game, and we also have Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, the Two Guys from Andromeda, and many more in the pipeline. I'm still excited about the potential for creating quality games under this model, but I'm really looking forward to seeing some actual success stories. (Not that that has kept me from opening my wallet again - hey, it's Torment! - but I grow more hesitant each time I do it.)

Many of the major Kickstarter games were scheduled to ship in 2012, and none of them did. That really isn't the fault of the developers, more a weird quirk of the impact of successful campaigns. Due to the nature of Kickstarter, companies are incentivized to set initial goals for the smallest achievable game they can make. This is basically something equivalent to an iPad game: nice-looking and fun, but with fairly shallow gameplay. As they exceed the goal, new stretch goals continue to expand the scope of the game. New characters! New areas! New classes! New quests! Mission editors! Multiplayer! Suddenly, what was a nine-month project has ballooned into a year-plus project. The end result will be cooler, but it's our own generosity that made them miss their target.

As a programmer, I know well that you can't save time by adding people to a project. This does seem to be a minor but increasing complaint in the kickstarter community: "We gave you so much money, why don't you just hire more people?" They often do hire more folks - and, again, the developers are remarkably transparent in explaining what kind of people they bring on and why - but beyond a certain point, adding additional people will just slow down the project even more. You can't make a baby in one month by adding eight more women.

It's been very cool to see how some developers are looking to improve their schedules by crowdsourcing other aspects of the game, beyond the initial funding. inXile has had surprising success in sourcing art designs for its games by turning to the community. Basically, they will post a description of the sort of thing they've looking for (grimy gun turrets, patched-together water tanks), give designers ten days to come up with models, then pick the ones they want, pay the artists, and give the artists credit within the game and let them retain the rights to their creation. This seems like a huge all-around win, and also a potential boon to future game creation projects. inXile can tap a flexible resource without needing to ramp up an in-house modeling team that would likely get laid off in a few months; aspiring artists can break into the gaming industry; and truly dedicated fans can contribute in a creative way to a property that they really enjoy.

Along similar lines, one of the early ideas of Shadowrun Returns has been allowing fans to build their own missions for the game.  This nicely evokes the pen-and-paper RPG roots of the Shadowrun setting, where creative GMs would design their own adventures to send runners through. However, it could also turn out to be a brilliant piece of strategy for Harebrained Schemes. If several user-created missions are already available at launch, then Shadowrun Returns will automatically become a longer game, with more stuff to do, and hence potentially more valuable to future buyers. The developers recognize the importance of a strong mod/creator community, and have provided early looks at their mission-creation tool, offered direct access to developers so we can ask our questions and plan our creations, etc. I've gotten increasingly excited about the possibilities here, and have started fooling around with some mission ideas of my own. Who knows if anything will come from my efforts, but between the thousands of passionate Shadowrun fans out there, I'm sure some great stories will be told.

Finally: I've been saying for a while that Kickstarter is a fascinating concept for crowd-sourced funding in general. So far it's been a successful model for funding movies, books, music albums, independent films, and board games. I'm hopeful that, in the next 3-6 months, it will also be demonstrated as successful for funding major (albeit not AAA) computer/video games. In the entertainment realm, it would be fascinating to see if you could successfully crowdfund a major property: a new season of Community, Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote, something like that.

I've paid less attention to non-entertainment initiatives, but those are actually more interesting and encouraging in the long run. The most famous of these is probably The Oatmeal's hugely successful effort to build a goddamned Tesla museum. That just warms my heart: nerds all around the world opened their wallets to help pay a belated tribute to one of the bestest nerds of all time.

And, speaking of science-related crowdfunding initiatives: my friend E. A. Quinn is a biological anthropologist who is helping to lead a field study in Tibet later this year. This is some terrific pure research, gathering data on a subject that we don't know much about (how altitude affects a mother's milk). If you have a few dollars to spare for science, I highly recommend tossing some her way! No, you won't get early access to a level editor or a downloadable digital soundtrack, but you WILL get to expand our species' collective knowledge of itself and be officially credited as a supporter of this study and  receive a beautiful journal of the published results! Microryza will accept donations as small as $2. Come on and do it! For SCIENCE!

In Living Colour

Ryan North's Kickstarter for To Be Or Not To Be recently passed the $300,000 mark, and this unlocked a new reward: all versions of the book will now be illustrated in full colo(u)r! Wow!

The collective read-through of the CYOA has been a great deal of fun as well. We've stuck with Ophelia so far, got a couple of endings (including one particularly awesome one), and are now entering into the CYOA-within-a-CYOA section.

Where will the kickstarter go from here? Who knows! This one has actually been quite unique, in that Ryan announces that there ARE stretch goals ahead of time, but doesn't announce WHAT they are until after we have already passed them. That makes them surprising! And fun! It seems perfectly in keeping with his personality to celebrate awesomeness instead of feeling the need to coax awesomeness from us.

In the (very civil and intelligent and just plain good) Comments section, someone posted a link to a nifty site that does visualizations of Kickstarter campaigns. I love data! It looks like this project has been quite consistent - there was a big influx on Day One, of course, which I imagine is almost always the case for "celebrity" projects like this that tap into existing fanbases, but since then it has been adding new pledges at a pretty consistent rate. It would be interesting to do analysis on the performance over time; I'm curious if the spikes shown follow media mentions of the project, or if certain days of the week are more conducive to pledges, etc.

Anyways... there are nine days left in the campaign, so if you've been on the fence, now is an excellent time to join in and get a taste of some delicious backer exclusives. The project is even more awesome now than when it started!

Last, but certainly not least, I just had to share this: I was clicking through the Pokey archives the other day, and stumbled across the other intersection of web comics and choose-your-own-adventure stories. It is titled THE HANDS ARE NOT CLEAN!!. Ahhh, Pokey! How I love you!

There Are More Kickstarters in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy

Hey, here's something I haven't plugged yet!


Ryan North has created To Be Or Not To Be, a new Kickstarter for a choose-your-own-adventure-style gamebook that allows you to play through the story of Hamlet. This combines many of my favorite things into one delicious package:
* The comedy stylings of Ryan North, as exemplified through projects such as Dino Comics and B^F.
* The dramatic stylings of Shakespeare, and specifically, my favorite play from The Bard.
* Humorous japes at honored literary institutions (see also: Bored of the Rings, Fool)
* Text adventures
* Choose-your-own-adventure books
* The artistry of Kate Beaton!
* The artistry of Jeffrey Rowland!
* The artistry of Randall Munroe!
* The artistry of Andrew Hussie!
* The artistry of Anthony Clark!
* The artistry of Chris Hastings!
* The artistry of David Malki!
* The artistry of Jess Fink! (Link NSFW!)
* The artistry of KC Green!
* The artistry of Matthew Inman! (Wow... while typing out this list, I'm belatedly realizing how much I missed when collating my earlier list of webcomics artists I enjoy, if more occasionally than I would like.)
* Sword fights!
* Kickstarter projects

Ryan has already written the book, so the funds are all going to making as great a package as possible. It raised his goal in just over THREE HOURS, and since then has grown more than tenfold. We have now funded full illustrations for all of the hundred-plus deaths in the book, a prequel mini-adventure (Poor Yorick!), multiple free ebooks of Dino Comics collections, a promise at a sequel (no decision yet as to what, although the comments have been cheerfully agitating for a comedy like Measure For Measure or As You Like It), a sweet multi-partite bookmark perfect for maintaining multiple states within the book, etc. And so far the project hasn't shown much sign of slowing down, so more rewards are getting added and knocked away quickly.

I really like the direction he's taking the project. It's very funny, of course. The setting is grounded in Shakespeare's story, and if you want to, you can play the story through to its original conclusion (though, as he notes, he WON'T skip the pirate fight, and also, the original ending is kind of a bummer). Much of the book will let you explore alternate approaches and different perspectives, though... you can also play as Ophelia, or as Hamlet Sr. (a g-g-g-g-ghost!) investigating his own death.

The language is... well, it isn't Shakespearean, but I love it. Very in keeping with Ryan's voice, which I enjoy immensely.

If you're at all curious, check it out! The pledges start at just $15, which was originally only for the ebook but is now picking up a bunch of stretch goal bonuses. I'm currently pledged at $20, which gets a nifty printed and signed copy of the book, but I'll probably upgrade at some point so I can take advantage of the new goodies added to higher levels.

One of the nicest aspects of this project that I didn't anticipate (but perhaps should have) is the really cool community that has swiftly sprung up around it. Checking out the comments section always makes me smile. Ryan is definitely encouraging people to participate through the very clever device of letting us make a new choice in the book each time a new fundraising goal is reached, so we're essentially playing it as a group. What's really wonderful, though, is the high quality of contributions. People argue for their idea with passion, cleverness, and/or good humor. I've seen Shakespearean sonnets! Copious references to my best-loved lines from Dino Comics! Heartfelt arguments for extra material focusing on Horatio or Rosencrantz and Guidenstern. Anyways... it's the most activity I've seen on a Kickstarter project since Shadowrun, and I have to say that the value of the average contribution here is quite a bit higher.

In totally unrelated news:

I'm writing this post on board a Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago back to San Francisco. I'm extremely frugal at heart, and this is the first time I've been able to make myself pay the measley five bucks to get online. It's... interesting! This is probably the best example I've seen so far of a high-bandwidth, high-latency connection. Hitting a site like Google News might take over 30 seconds to start loading, but once it does, it all arrives almost instantly. I don't think this would work too well for streaming or stuff, but it's been surprisingly bearable for playing turn-based web games like Fallen London and generally keeping me awake. Definitely worth the five dollars, but keep your expectations low.

Low, Low, Low

Here's another quickie Kickstarter post. You remember The Silver Tree? The Kickstarter that Failbetter did a while back? Well, they're at it again! Up next is Below, a "dungeon-delving RPG card game."

One thing that's really nice about this project is that, in addition to the requisite inspirational video and gushing description of the end product, they actually include a playable prototype of the game. It's built on their StoryNexus platform, so, as they point out in their "Risks & Challenges" section, they aren't really creating any new technology for this project. The funding is all for the art, the story, and other aspects of content. They are quick to point out that it's an early prototype with placeholder art, but I actually think it looks really good. I was kind of expecting them to recycle prior art from Fallen London and/or The Silver Tree, but so far all the cards share a nifty, unique aesthetic... it fits in very nicely with the subterranean mood of the setting.

I've only played a bit of the game so far, but I'm cautiously optimistic. As they say, the feel of the game is quite different from other Failbetter projects that they've done. This is kind of an homage to or emulation of classic dungeon crawls, so instead of progressing through a choose-your-own-adventure tale, it'll be a bit more of a game approach: explore a level of the dungeon, find equipment and improve your stats, then descend to the next level and take on more difficult challenges. But, it'll still have a very strong overarching narrative that will get into your character's motivations and the life they were leading on the surface.

So far, I think my favorite aspect of the game is the writing. It sounds very anglo-saxon, like something from a lost section of Beowulf. Take this sentence from the introduction: "Each year the Sea-Kings come in greater numbers, with their dawn-winking swords, their tall ships serpent-prowed." I love it! The setting is excellent as well, kind of dark and atmospheric without being macabre. It's kind of hard to describe, but it's very different from Fallen London's atmosphere, despite the fact that both games are set almost entirely underground. The Kickstarter page references classic literary dungeon settings like Moria and the Tombs of Atuan. I still vividly remember my impressions of Moria when I first encountered it as a child, and I retain that same sensation of fascination mixed with dread when I think of these sorts of cave settings. (Of course, from a gaming perspective, the best analogy is probably something like Rogue/NetHack... but I think BELOW is aiming more at literary predecessors.)

It is pretty cool to see how flexible StoryNexus is... I'd initially assumed that it would be for people to make games like Fallen London, just in different genre settings, but I'm increasingly impressed by the very distinct types of games that they've been able to construct out of the same building blocks (multiple card decks, a hand, pinned cards, qualities, and items). It should help spur adoption, since people can start playing different games with a system that has familiar elements, but still expresses a lot of variety from one creator to the next. (In other words, it looks like building a StoryNexus game isn't just a matter of providing content: it's also designing a gaming system. Personally, I think that sounds like at least as much fun!)

The only downside so far is that the rewards don't have too much to offer Fallen London players. The Silver Tree kickstarter had some nifty perks like access to a new location, multiple items, and new storylines. As far as I can tell, the only Fallen London perk for this project is a single item that's available at 30 pounds (roughly $45). Well, there was also a second bottle of Hesperidean Cider, but it was snapped up very quickly; and also some bespoke characters/stories, which sound AWESOME, but are all rather pricey at 150-1000 pounds.

Still, for just doing Below stuff, all the rewards are extremely well-priced: you're essentially pre-ordering some unique content and getting a discount. If my experiences with The Silver Tree are to be relied upon, it would be money very well spent!

All Shall Find the Light at Last / Silver on the Tree

I've finished The Silver Tree, Failbetter Games' latest contribution to their StoryNexus platform. It's the first StoryNexus game that I've actually finished: I lost interest in Cabinet Noir (though I may revisit it sometime), and they haven't finished all the storylines in Fallen London yet. It was cool to see what an entire Failbetter narrative arc feels like, and I was pretty impressed with the result.

Failbetter seems to take a page from Bioware's philosophy towards game design. Stories matter, choices matter, characters matter. You're given a few decisions early on that help shape your conception of your character. As you play the game, you get a better understanding of the world you're in, what plots are unfolding, what's at stake. And, at the end, you make decisions that affect the outcome of that world. It isn't a totally wide-open world - you can't kill Lord British - but it is a much richer and more involved narrative than most games can offer.

MINI SPOILERS for THE SILVER TREE (includes game mechanics for this and Fallen London but no plot information):

The system for The Silver Tree has the same major components as Fallen London, but they are far simpler, mostly because there are far fewer of them. Fallen London has four primary qualities, probably over a hundred secondary qualities, four main menaces, and over a hundred types of items; it also has many locations and long storylines. The Silver Tree has three primary qualities; the secondary qualities mostly just track your progress in each of the half-dozen plots; there's just one menace; and there are only three important types of items (but another three for Kickstarter backers and/or Nex customers). So, it's much easier to understand what's going on, and to track your progress through the game.

Even though the two games both use the same components of qualities and items, the way they're used are quite different. For starters, instead of increasing your primary qualities by using them, you increase them by collecting and spending items. The opportunity deck is pretty different, too: in Fallen London, cards are free to draw but cost actions to play; in The Silver Tree, it costs an action to draw, but the cards are free to play.

The biggest change is probably in how story progression works. Fallen London has many different systems throughout the game, but most often, you'll raise a minor quality to a certain level, then learn the next story beat; this will often reset that minor quality or give you a new one, which you then need to raise again to learn the next plot point; and so on. So, you tend to follow a more or less linear progression within any given plot; sometimes you can choose between multiple paths, or decide in which order to do things. The Silver Tree works the opposite way: you can do the story beats at any time, in any order, and doing so raises the story's minor quality. Once it gets high enough (typically 20, sometimes 30), that plot is done, and you need to make a decision. From a plot perspective, the idea is that you're gradually investigating and learning things, and once you've learned enough, you decide what to do with your knowledge; it's an aggregating process, not a linear progression.

It was an interesting variation, but I think I prefer the Fallen London style. My biggest problem is that, with something like six different plots, each of which have many story beats, some from your deck and some from "pinned cards" (which seems to be the new nomenclature for storylets), it's extremely difficult to keep track of what stories you've already played, and which are new. I'm pretty sure that there are fewer than 20 for each of them, so you'll probably eventually repeat some, which is fine; but the game would also let you play the same plot 20 times, in which case you'd never get to see the other options. I can remember whether some of the result text I'm reading is a duplicate, but the prompts are brief enough that it's really hard to recall whether or not it goes with an already-explored result. I think the game would benefit immensely from some sort of icon indicating whether or not you've previously taken a particular choice.

One or two plots do work somewhat differently, which I appreciated... I think either The Sculptor's Story or A Sip of Immortality. Unlike the other plots, whose only requirement is a plot value between 1 and 20, this one broke down the stories differently: some for levels 1-5, then 6-10, 11-15, etc. This helped immensely, since I'm much more likely to remember whether I took an option in the near past than remember whether I ever did it. It also lets the story feel more like a Fallen London progression, with you actually digging deeper and learning more secret stuff, instead of just additional stuff.

As for strategy: as far as I can tell, it looks like the best plan is to use the opportunity deck for almost all of your actions. This lets you essentially triple your progress, since you're spending 1 action for 3 moves; as a bonus, many of the options give you better results, or let you raise your major quality more cheaply. Use pinned cards to kick off each plot; use to play each plot option once (assuming you're a story-hound like me); if you have the Place of Whispers, play those stories if you like; and once you raise your story qualities to 20 or 30, play the pinned cards to end the plots. Otherwise, cards for everything.

That said, I believe that the quickest way to end the game might be to exclusively play the pinned cards. The flow of a deck-based game is that you gradually acquire more Trusted stats for the three characters; then, when you advance a story, that Trusted is converted to an equal number of items; and, periodically, you'll cash in many items for a boost in a primary quality. However, with the repeatable pinned cards, you can skip challenges altogether and simply advance stories by converting between Trusted and items. For example, one story might require 20 Trusted by the Khan and reward you with 20 Gifts; another will require 20 Gifts and return you 20 Trusted by the Khan. Playing this way will never advance your stat, and you'll miss many of the unique stories, but I think you could finish the game in just about 40 actions this way. If I re-play the game, I may try that, just to quickly check out some of the alternate endings.

MEGA SPOILERS (includes plot and an ending for The Silver Tree, and some minor references to Fallen London):

I was initially attracted to The Silver Tree by the promise of a tie-in to Fallen London, and it didn't disappoint. This doesn't exactly feel like a prequel, but there are some nice thematic nods towards future events and settings in London, and lots of nifty little hidden gems that will catch the attention of London veterans. Most of these are associated with The Cloaked Emissary's story, which sheds a lot of light on the process by which a city falls, but there are many intriguing nuggets scattered throughout. The story of Discovering Another Place has some things to say about Parabola, of which I've also heard a few whispers in London. The Princess's peach brandy explains a lot about The Gracious Widow. And the silver tree itself, of course, is a future fixture in the Forgotten Quarter.

The Silver Tree doesn't try to answer all the questions, which may disappoint some people but I personally enjoyed. I love ambiguity in my fiction, and really enjoy the lingering sense of wonder and mystery that remains when the story is done. I know of the love of the Princess and William; how do I reconcile their story with her eventual identity as The Gracious Widow? Specifically, how was she widowed? I currently am imagining a wedding between the two of them, but what next? Was William killed when Cathay invaded? Did both of them descend to the Neath, in which case, did the Princess's brandy work for herself and not for him? (The brandy itself is pretty fascinating - she developed it herself, without aid from the Bazaar, so it makes sense that, while it would behave somewhat similarly to Hesperidean Cider, it may not be as reliable, or may have other effects.)

One of the benefits and risks of a Bioware-style approach is reconciling continuity and canon with varying player choice. Within the frame of the story, we know that, no matter what, Karakorum will come under attack, and we know that, eventually, it will be a decayed ruin underneath Fallen London. But the question of HOW it falls remain up in the air; and furthermore, your choices will help decide WHY it falls. I'd be curious to re-try the endings sometime and see how other stories finish. In my case, I chose to confront the Cloaked Emissary. This turned out to be a perfect option for a Fallen London player like me, since this way I learned that this wasn't just any master, but Mr Wines, probably the favorite among them all. I spirited him away from the city and set him up in Rome, presumably under the watchful eye of the Pope. And, who knows, maybe he was one of the first Masters to have cast an eye upon London.

I was pretty tempted to pick one of the Princess's endings - I had "Sympathetic to the Princess" at 3 by the story's end - but none of the options sounded quite right for my character.

Oh, speaking of which: this game doesn't have quite the same degree of customization as what you can get in Fallen London - there's no stats like Subtle or Heartless - and the stories you play within the game don't really make a difference, but the way you start and end those stories does let you construct a good vision of who you are. So: in my case, I was Seberin Cirion, an emissary from the Pope, officially there to learn about the Mongol culture, but secretly to discover the capabilities of the Mongol army and provide that information to the leaders of Europe. I was strong in my faith, naming my falcon Iohannes after Saint John; over time, I became more and more intrigued by what I learned of Mongol culture (drinking airag, dreaming strange dreams of another place), and ended up embracing much of what I had learned. I was intrigued by the quiet struggle between Khan, Princess, and Sculptor; I liked the Princess and wanted her to find happiness, but worried about the Sculptor's ulterior motives. Specifically, I learned that he was there on orders from Europe, whose leaders had somehow learned of the Bazaar, and wanted to make sure that the Masters took Karakorum instead of one of their own cities. His love of the Princess seemed genuine, but less important than his devotion to the nations of Europe. I never quite figured out what the Interpreter was up to.

After I had completed my official and secret missions, and all of my other plots, I confessed my actions to the Khan and offered to help him. This led to the very final part of the game, where you can choose your own ending. I had something like ten options; the choices you make with each of the other stories (The Cloaked Emissary, The Sculptor's Tale, The Silver Tree, The Khan and His Daughter, Seeking Another Place) will each unlock one or two possible endings, either directly (as with the Cloaked Emissary) or by providing another stat (The Sculptor's Tale and The Khan and His Daughter can each provide Sympathetic to the Princess). I think I unlocked everything except for the Interpreter's ending.

At the end of the Cloaked Emissary's story, I had two choices: agree to save Karakorum by letting the city be sold, or to ensure that the city was destroyed by Cathay. Neither choice was too appealing, but I understand that the fate of the city is sealed, so I went with the first choice. When it came to the end of the game, though, I chose not to facilitate the sale. Instead, as noted above, I absconded with the Emissary. I do hope that the Princess came to a happy end. Well... she hasn't ended yet, but you know what I mean.

END SPOILERS

The Silver Tree was a really fun game, and I think it could be a great gateway game for people who might feel overwhelmed by Fallen London's scope. I loved the atmosphere, the writing, the characters (those brief sentences add up to really rich and nuanced portraits of a half-dozen enigmatic people), and the gorgeous artwork. Best of all, the game is a great exemplar of the "choices matter" philosophy of game design, and if you're like me, you'll be thinking long and hard before you click that final button.