KickStarter Consortium - a Sci-Fi FPS ADVENTURE - remaster coming Q2 2024

[SuicideBunny]

Stopped reading at BinLaden, and not putting this in spoiler tags because seriously what the fuck.

it's scientifically proven that spoilers do not reduce our enjoyment of things.

 

[Psquit]

True. But detail spoilers are the ones that rustle mah jimmies.

 

[Bubbles]

FROM THE DESK OF INTERDIMENSIONAL GAMES

PATCH 1.1 RELEASED

ALL SAVE GAMES INVALIDATED

FEBRUARY OF INCLINE BEGINS TODAY

MAJOR FIXES

• Fixed case where the number of incapacitated fighters was reported as 100% when it really wasn’t.
• Coming out of the VT, the door will now be closed after coming out of the VT, also fixed collision issue with not being able to shoot the traitor.
• Fixed some players getting stuck in the medical bay on Pawn24
• Fixed fighters looking messed up before the boarding or surrender threads
• Fixed two Kirils showing up and breaking things badly if starting a fight with the mercs in the surrender thread
• Fixed Hangar bay floor collision issues happening when fighting the mercs
• Fixed it so that it's impossible for the virus hunt mission to still partially be active after it's shut down
• Fixed energy charging station disabling/enabling logic from being able to trigger AFTER the traitor has been dealt with.
• Fixed Pawn 12 stopping by the MedBay door and never moving again, blocking player.
• Fixed being locked out of B8's cabin after the traitor situation
• Fixed bug where Zenlil could get attacked and explode while K15 is delivering a speech.
• Fixed it so that a large R25 conversation will properly disable K15 asking player to come talk with the Queen while it's ongoing.
• Fixed player weapons breaking after waking up from the second dream sequence.
• Various end game freefall fixes (K15/Traitor encounter flashback issues fixed, merc fight, preventing roaming the ship, Kiril non-progression bug fixed)

• Cleaned up quantum limbo...
• Fixed it so that the traitor's cell door will always be closed
• P19 now reacts appropriately to EMP event
• Instances of the weapon safety lock not turning off during the merc fight should be gone now...mercs will no longer be able to get into lower avionics. Let us know if this still occurs for you, and where/when exactly it happens please!
• Additional fixes to end-game: finally fixed the non-progression that only some players were having with Kiril.
• Made it impossible for the traitor killed/captured articles to show up near the beginning of the game.
• Pawn 11 or Pawn 32 using consoles at rear of ship will no longer get the player stuck.
• If R25 does not ask player who the murderer was, then the "chose poorly" achievement will NOT fire.
• Fixed it so that if the player choose the correct npc as the traitor and then goes to sleep, the cabin will not lock
• Fixed it so that R13 will properly leave B6's cabin after the P64 incident.
• Fixed it so that Wade will no longer walk AWAY from the briefing room before the briefing starts
• Fixed it so that it's impossible to trigger an incorrect convo with P32
• Fixed traitor re-spawning and appearing in the hangar bay
• Fixed getting stuck on pawn24 in the medical bay
• No longer can get locked in the barracks near the end of the game
• Fixed "Enemy Mine" achievement not firing
• Fixed getting stuck on r25 during EMP scene
• PERFORMANCE BREAKTHROUGH: We reduced the "deferred_rt_shadowpoint_res" from 1024 to 512, MAJOR performance improvements noted on Geforce GTX 650Ti . Many mid / lower end cards should now see a significant frame-rate boost. Some shadow quality is lost, but we see this as a welcome trade-off.
• Major fixes/improvements/balancing to the traitor fight
• Fixed the minigame reporting incorrect states of fighters for incaps vs deaths
• Fixed it so that P32 will still go to R25 if player abandons the initial P32 convo in the hangar bay
• Traitor is now immune to decompression
• Fixed lights in elevator turning off completely sometimes when using the elevator.
• Issue with pawn 64 getting stuck in barracks and blocking player fixed
• Pawn 64 elevator issue fixed
• Pawn 64 now properly gets up and leaves B6's cabin after the incident
• Fixed it so that primary mission objectives will automatically cancel previous mission objectives, so old objectives will no longer show up after loading games.
• Fixed save/load issue with the minigame, would cause incorrect stats being reported
• Fixed player getting stuck in bots when they are on ladders
• Fixed bots doing a disappearing act (if they are going to do it, they will only if the player isn't looking at them, and they will properly fire the incapacitation outputs)
• Fixed various objects transitioning into _2 that should not have
• Fixed consumables properly transitioning into _2
• Characters will now walk around P1's dead body
• Fixed up and polished both threads of the P64 incident, especially the ending of it..P64 and R13 will leave the scene correctly
• Fixed triggering confront conversation too early!! (again...nasty logic)
• Fixed up P52 and P64 issues around the chess board
• Fixes for if K15 is shot
• Fixed potential overlapping and zenlil destroying logic not shutting off if players got to mission ops quickly enough after dealing with Kiril
• Fixed abandoning conversation with Kiril in hangar bay properly triggering fight
• Fixed it so that when mercs are killed via decompression, they actually count as kills
• Fixed recycables not transitioning after the minigame
• Update to player iDGi-1 conversation options across the whole story
• Save game system overhaul: autosaves and quicksaves will now all show up in the save game menu.
• Added new inventory hints overlay and added logic for showing and hiding certain elements based on availability of usage
• Inventory management upgrade: "slide events" will now how much utility will be vented in real-time, as well as how much extra storage space will be taken by dropping stacks of items on the PCU from chests or generic slots.
• Fixed crash related to the python driven conversation system
• Updated secondary objectives HUD element to support multiple objectives (and grow depending on how many)
• Major polish to player/merc /Kiril stand-off
• Fixed instance where it was possible to get traitor to instantly transform into a BUS wearing crazy person and kill the player during the b8 cabin confront scene
• Made a change to help prevent player from ever getting stuck in auto doors
• Made a change to ensure that the "start briefing" logic can only possibly fire ONCE
• Made it impossible to get stuck in the VR booth at the wrong time
• Fixed R25 properly recognizing the player getting the Freefall suit and being able to talk with her without difficulty
• Shifted difficulty of minigame to rely more heavily on player chosen difficulty level
• Auto-saves added throughout
• Prevented "incapped all mercs" achievement and general merc fighting feedback from Consortium officers from firing if player just incapped/killed Kiril and did not fight any mercs
• Fixed player objective regarding the traitor firing when it should not have near the end of the game.
• Alignment changes will now default to NOT showing during gameplay. Can toggle back on if you wish.
• Can now browse finished streams from the front-end
• Major update to player conversation choices across the entire story
• Major polish to saving and/or not saving p1
• Fixed many instances where conversations simply would not trigger sometimes, stopping the game.
• Fixed b8's cabin being open too early and player ruining the murder scene
• Fixed and polished R25 escoring merc into brig sequence
• Fixed issue with traitor not showing up in the barracks when she blinks away, which was blocking an entire series of barracks scenes PLUS fixing a previously untriggerable achievement
• Fixed crash that would happen if players ran out of medbay in the beginning immediately after walking into it.
• vt_tutorial: tightened collision to prevent bots from falling through the world, causing non-progression
• Fixed it so punching will trigger combat with the mercs during the surrender thread and punching will harm mercs correctly
• Fixed some characters not properly getting killed when they were sucked out of Zenlil
• Major polish to how the music triggers during the traitor fight
• Fixed overlapping credits music
• Fixed issue with players getting stuck on K15 in her cabin
• Fixed issue with pawn hanging in mid-air in Global Ops while lying down after the traitor fight
• Fixed issue where Wade would run away from briefing room IF he was previously saved by R13

MINOR FIXES

• Removed lighting editor key command (which was causing the lighting editor to come up when trying to take a screenshot on the steam version)
• Fixed weapon control doors not being open when player disengages from controls
• Fixed it so that when Wade comes back to the cockpit after being saved, he goes right into his chair
• Pawn 1 will face the correct direction in the med bay now, before getting into the med bed.
• P62 and 62 will now only acknowledge player if player is actually present after their chess game is complete.
• Fixed R9 not looping his "busy in cockpit" idle
• Fixed chair closing sound playing when it should not have for wade's chair
• Fixed R25 going back to fixing the CCU after player accepts secondary mission.
• Fixed it so that the Queen ending trigger in upper avionics can't fire if the other Queen ending trigger was fired.
• Fixed any possibility of K15 getting angry about players not showing up in her office, even if players are in her office.
• Fixed the Global Ops holo-projector closing animation if Wheats never enters the conversation.
• Fixed P32 conversation click-talk being triggerable twice
• New player movement FX for ending sequence
• Fixed Kiril saying the "get here now!" line if the player already got there.
• "Confront the traitor" objective can be properly completed now
• Fixed P24 getting up first, then talking after when player first walks into med bay
• Fixed first-person hands not updating back to freefall suit after time jumps
• Wade incident polish: prevention of some potentially overlapping lines.
• R13 will now turn on and off the TV
• Kiril now has a chance to not get knocked down by grenades
• Added check for fighter jets getting removed when they shouldn't be, to always notify the counter of their state before deletion
• Swapped Helmet and body armor bars
• Punching traitor will no longer trigger the fight too early
• Fix having to jump to get up stairs
• Minigame tuning: lasers now have infinite range, takes slightly longer to incapacitate now.
• Fixed pawn 19's intro click talk so it will turn off before she gets to mission ops, preventing CMC overlapping.
• Added missing sounds for sinks and dryers in cells
• Prevented picking up the assault helmet in B8's cabin
• Fixed conversation loop that was possible when talking with the traitor
• Tweak made to the safety lock so you can still shoot at mercs
• Fixed broken image coming up onto the main menu on some machines
• Fixed broken sink in med bay
• Fixed shotgun ammo box missing proper symbol
• New CMC visual design
• Fixed Pawn12's console after he gets back from MedBay to not be part of the random virus static
• Fixed screen under mission pod that p32 is working on to have an error screen.
• Fixed R25 cmc convo overlapping with K15 asking player to meet the Queen.
• Killing 75% or more Mercs in BOTH combat and the mini-game will now trigger -1 alignment to all crew members + Queen.
• Nerfed Zenlil defense minigame slightly on medium difficulty, also upped the total amount of Zenlil energy for all difficulty levels.
• Fixed escorting fighters appearing to crash into each other
• Added missing line for pawn11 when convo in brig ends
• Fixed it so players can't open the door too early before R25 walks in
• When going into the cockpit before the merc fight, Wade will no longer spin around in his chair.
• Made a change to ensure R25 goes to the CCU after the briefing
• Fixed wrong objective showing up when told to go fight Kiril
• Added missing sounds for replacing chip in battery crawl
• Spaced out "allPawnstoBarracks" event to try and ensure that all logic in it fires correctly.
• Changed objective to put chip in battery crawl to start at beginning of line instead of the end to help alleviate confusion.
• Fixed broken alignment for emergency lights in B8's Cabin
• Prevented Wade CMCs from overlapping in the briefing room
• Made sure upper avionics hatch from cockpit is closed when players gets to mission ops for the first time
• Made the manual weapons line only triggerable AFTER cmc intro stuff is done.
• Improved post EMP state of lounge to be more broken and red-alert looks better
• Edits made to Kiril in mission ops intro so they react to the player sooner
• Fixed it so you can only heal characters if you actually have energy for the nanites
• Polished player entering k15's office logic
• Fixed another instance where K15's invitation to come visit the Queen would overlap another CMC convo
• Fixed instance where vt finishing music plays on top of the b6 intro music
• idgi-1 error and static for invisible walls
• Fixed upsidedown texture in hangar bay
• Added additional trigger in hangar bay to trigger fight if player tries to get into the upper crawl
• Polish and fixes to JW section
• Fixed mission pod screen to show "launched" if Pod was launched from the story
• Reduced whistling frequency of rooks in briefing room
• Fixed issue where elevator hatch door was not openable functional from the upper crawl side despite saying "unlocked"
• No longer possible to get stuck at the bottom of the elevator
• fixed upper avionics hatch not locking when first entering cockpit
• Fixed R3 appearing in the briefing in a broken manner
• Fixed Kieran getting stuck in cabins hallway and not coming to mission ops until later
• Fixed incorrect line firing when player holsters their weapon after the surrender thread battle finished IF the player never had a weapon when surrendering AND IF the battle started from ♥♥♥♥ing off the merc via dialogue
• Fixed manual weapon control doors so they remain open immediately after Zenlil defense minigame, then close.
• Added missing chip replacement sounds for upper crawl chip banks
• Fixed ambient music not turning off when the traitor event happens in K15's office

UNABLE TO READ LIST AT PRESENT DUE TO LIMITED SPARE TIME

PLEASE ADVISE ON NECESSITY OF SPOILER TAGS

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

All of the below changes will NOT affect save games. Each subsequent improvement we will accompany with an announcement and your game will simply get better.

• PERFORMANCE ISSUES: If you have a good Nvidea (GeForce) card and are experiencing very bad frame-rate, we humbly ask you for a little more patience. We know what the problem is, we have a specialist working on it, and have been told it will take approximately another week or so to program a solution which will greatly improve frame rate. The issue has to do with how our renderer was originally coded and we’re actually pretty excited to have pin-pointed the specific problem after a lot of hard work.
  
• ALT-TAB CRASHING. Similar as above, a solution is being coded right now for this, but it isn't quite ready to roll out. Watch for an update in about a week that will fix the crashing associated with alt-tabbing, and should generally make the game more stable in general. A work-around for right now is to run the game in Windowed mode.
  
• CONTROLLER SUPPORT. This is coming asap! We’re quite literally “waiting for parts” and will be supporting the xbox360 controller very soon.
  
• SUBTITLES. We’ve made plenty of improvements here but there are still more to come. We know how important they are so they’re still high on the list to improve further.
  
• SPANISH. Still ongoing and will be included ASAP, and then onto other languages.
  
• OCULUS RIFT. This is coming! A rough ETA for this would be March/April.

 

[StaticSpine]

well, probably "Kickstarter relaunched" phrase should be removed from the thread name

 

[Name]

This is just one weird game...
1.The entire game happens on a high-tech military plane (and graphics are really bad...)
2.It's first-person, but the shooting part is like 1%-5%, depending on your choices
3.It has a premise similar to Omikron... The best part is that

Spoiler

you can tell this to everyone... and it can become a quest line and overshadow the main plot (whatever that is)

4.Also I now officially dislike episode games or games divided into acts or games planned as trilogy. Because there are just too many of them!

I wonder if they should have just used 2D graphics and make an interactive storybook/AVG instead.

All in all this is just a mediocrely bizarre game... it can become the same kind of bad "cult" game like Deadly Premonition if they bother to release the whole thing.

 

[bertram_tung]

it's engaging at first but pretty meh overall

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idgi/consortium-0/posts/954416

Where are we at with Consortium 2?
It has been six months since our rather disastrous launch back in January (see: HERE ) and while we are still reeling over said launch both emotionally and financially, we have nonetheless come to grips with the reality of things and are able to speak openly about our plans for the future.

Our original plan was simple: Make Game One with an incredibly low budget and overhead costs so that we would only need to sell a small number of copies in order to self-fund Game Two and continue on from there. Unfortunately it has not quite worked out so simply.

So far, CONSORTIUM has sold well enough to keep certain key members on the payroll in order to release the Master Edition and other patches since launch (including creating and sending out the physical rewards for all you backers and working on the port for Mac and Spanish localization). These efforts have allowed us to fix and improve the game in addition to making strides to reach a wider audience. The Mac port is 90% done, and the Spanish localization is pretty much finished – we are just working out a few bugs with it. Getting the game localized into Spanish was a FAR more difficult task than we anticipated.

However, we have not yet sold enough copies to self-fund Game Two as originally planned. While due to several factors, the number one reason the game has not reached the audience we hoped it would – and why we are not all working full-speed ahead on producing the sequel – is due to our completely flubbed launch. We have unfortunately been faced with the issue of convincing the world of the current reality of CONSORTIUM (very close to bug free!) when compared to the perceived reality we have been marred with since launch (incredibly buggy!). It all then leads back to our decision not to launch as Early Access back in January, which would have extended our beta testing period and prevented reviews from being based on buggy builds. That was a massive, game changing mistake and we have been paying for it ever since. Our Metacritic score, for example, is based on too many reviews speaking about bugs and problems which no longer exist.

We could go on and on with excuses and such... but we will not do that. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. This does not mean, however, that we are beaten as a company. Not by a long shot. We are dedicated to making Game Two because one game is simply not enough to tell the story we want to tell. Scratch that, the story we need to tell.

Game Two of the iDGi-1 Trilogy is officially in pre-production. The overall story is completely fleshed out and the core environment of the game has hundreds of man hours of design work put into it.

Attention Early Access haters.

 

[Bubbles]

Time for a Codex review to set things right.

 

[Abu Antar]

We wanted to wait until we had something substantial to share before beginning to send updates via this list. We are about to announce this to the world, but we wanted you to get a sneak-peek at it before anyone else:

http://thetowerprophecy.com

Please, feel free to start sharing and distributing this through all your social networks.

We are at the beginning of a new journey. A journey that, if carefully planned and executed, will ultimately lead to Game Two of the iDGi-1 Trilogy being produced with the same level of creative freedom that we had with the first game. "CONSORTIUM: The Tower Prophecy" will take the experience to the Churchill Tower, a massive skyscraper built directly on top of the River Thames in London. It will be a stand-alone experience that will not require the first game to fully enjoy. However, if you DID play the first game, all of your universe statistics, decisions and inventory will carry over and heavily influence how Game Two plays out.

We would like to invite you onto this journey. Starting a new franchise from scratch without any real marketing support to speak of (yet) is a daunting task. CONSORTIUM continues to sell and make new fans, and due to its heavy reliance on story and characters, it is a game that could continue to sell for years, BUT it has yet to break out. We know there are hundreds of thousands of sci-fi story loving gamers that would love CONSORTIUM, but reaching them is turning out to be extremely difficult.

We want to speed this process up as much as possible. Our intention is to launch a large crowdfunding campaign in 2015 to raise the needed production capital for The Tower Prophecy, but we won't be launching it until *a minimum* 2000 people have committed to showing up on Day One of the campaign to give us a powerful start. As of writing this, there are almost 600 of you on this list, which is a nice start, but that number needs to grow to be much larger.

Interested in joining us on this journey to make Game Two happen? There are many ways you can make a huge difference:
Have you had a great time with CONSORTIUM but have not written about it? Please, consider writing a review online...the easiest and most effective way to do this is through the Steam user review system. We are quite confident that the review percentage (currently at 81%) will rise as more people discover the game!
Like us, and join in on discussions on Facebook. We regularly post interesting articles that relate to CONSORTIUM, science fiction and fact:https://www.facebook.com/CONSORTIUM.GAME
Follow us on twitter and help to spread news through re-tweeting: @iDGi_1
Simply helping us to spread the word of CONSORTIUM's existence in any and all form would help us immensely.
We are considering opening up a public discussion forum as part of this effort, and would like your feedback: is this a good idea, and would you contribute to it?
Please simply reply to this email with any thoughts or comments you may have on anything here. We are here, we are listening!

Also, please feel free to pass this email along to any of your friends and/or family that may be interested.

We here at iDGi would like to wish you and your loved ones a safe and fun holiday season....

Happy Holidays and here's to an awesome 2015!!

Sincerely,

The CONSORTIUM and iDGi team

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Glad to hear they're working on game two. Picked up Consortium a while ago because it sounded interesting and haven't gotten around to playing yet, but it's nice to know there'll be at least the second part of the planned trilogy.

 

[Visperas]

Someone else has played this? Is it really meh? It's at 7$ on Steam until January 2nd if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Name]

Someone else has played this? Is it really meh? It's at 7$ on Steam until January 2nd if I'm not mistaken.

The traditional gameplay element like gunplay is meh (not bad enough for someone to scream. more like nonexistent).

The freedom of dialogue choices is quite intriguing and weird, especially it can lead to some really bizarre dialogue trees...

Too early to judge given only one episode.

I'd say $7 is too much. Wait for $1 from Humble Bundle or something LOL. Better, it will probably be free when episode 2 come out.

 

[Bubbles]

It's basically an episodic Bioware RPG with amateur voice actors.

 

[Visperas]

The traditional gameplay element like gunplay is meh (not bad enough for someone to scream. more like nonexistent).

The freedom of dialogue choices is quite intriguing and weird, especially it can lead to some really bizarre dialogue trees...

Too early to judge given only one episode.

I'd say $7 is too much. Wait for $1 from Humble Bundle or something LOL. Better, it will probably be free when episode 2 come out.

Do you know how long is this ep. 1 aprox? Does it end properly?

 

[Bubbles]

Do you know how long is this ep. 1 aprox? Does it end properly?

http://www.howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=13814

It ends with (mild spoilers)

Spoiler

you fighting the alternate universe version of a well known Islamic terrorist

 

[Baron Dupek]

That's some cool shit.

$7 is too much? Then stop buying that much games on promos, that you won't play anyway FFS. Buy once something decent and play already.

 

[Astral Rag]

It's basically an episodic Bioware RPG with amateur voice actors.

What a ringing endorsement.

 

[Bubbles]

Self-review is up on Steam. If wish more devs did those:

Interdimensional Games
142 products in account
Recommended
149.7 hrs on record
Posted: 5 October, 2014

It may come across as strange for a developer to write a review of their own game. I decided, as part of my process on working towards a full post-mortem on the project, to attempt to write a very honest self-appraisal of our work.

I named this Steam account after our company, but my name is actually Gregory MacMartin and I am the C.E.O. and lead game designer for iDGi. To see the other stuff I've worked on in my career, checking out my LinkedIn profile is probably a good place to start: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drschelter

CONSORTIUM is the greatest achievement of my career. It was also by far the most difficult project. I'm proud of nearly every game I've contributed to, but almost nothing touches this one in terms of my professional and personal pride. It is a completely original and unheard of experience that follows no genre conventions, and I can say with all honesty that no "big money, low risk" publisher would have ever approved this.

I formed iDGi in 2006 with the goal of making truly story driven single-player games with a strong moral compass. Games that treated violence seriously, and games in which there are actual consequences to killing or causing general mayhem. In particular after working on the extremely violent title “Scarface: The World is Yours,” I was becoming quite sick of meaningless violence in games.

CONSORTIUM is the first result of this intention, a game where violence is only an option, and not forced upon the player. It has in many ways surpassed what I originally envisioned. The final experience itself is also quite different from what I originally envisioned.

Story/Interactivity Blended:
The game accomplishes something that I've been striving to do my entire career: seamlessly blend interactivity and narrative. It relies heavily on player action, inaction and dialog to move forward, and the game stays "out of the way" of the player as much as possible. The result of this is that when you complete a play-through, the precise experience you had is quite unique to you. Due to the mass of variables in play, it is almost impossible for any two players to have the same experience, and the replay value is very high. You really need to play it at least twice (making different decisions and doing different things each time) to get a strong sense for what the game is really all about.

That said, this fusion has left some gamers, in particular those who play it like any other game and only go from objective to objective, with a very short experience that could leave some unfulfilled or even downright confused. In particular the fact that you can "finish" the game without solving one of the core story threads (a murder mystery) causes some to think that the game doesn't ALLOW players to solve the mystery. Looking back, I would have put more work into the murder mystery solving aspect to allow for more ways to solve it across the story, rather than only having one opportunity to choose the culprit after handling the investigation and before its resolution one way or the other.

True Role-Playing :
Without a doubt, our game puts the "role-playing" back into RPG. We consciously shed all of the pen&paper conventions that pretty much all CRPGs still use to this day. The focus of this game is largely built around realistically interacting with virtual people. My brother Steve MacMartin wrote the entire interactive screenplay (over 500 pages long!), and while we worked closely together throughout, the game's characters and dialog are as good as they are largely because of his focus, dedication and passion for what we were trying to do. We had a lot of fun working with the voice actors as well, both of us casting and directing them through all 4,500 lines of dialogue, who equally enjoyed the game's concept and the often unexpected or unusual lines they had to work with.

The system we invented is far from perfect, however... with tweaks to how it works for the sequel, we will be able to branch much more and allow for much deeper conversations that affect the overall story in more tangible ways. The game also originally had players able to upgrade their gear, but this was cut fairly early on for scope reasons. You can bet that this level of gear customization is one of the key features of the sequel!

On Combat:
A common criticism leveled at the game is that the combat experience is lacking. We developed a ton of combat mechanics and related systems, but many of them do not really get a chance to *shine* during a playthrough. While this depends largely on player choices, it is still very true that the constrained environment of Zenlil does not lend itself very well to particularly interesting or engaging combat scenarios that make use of all the Consortium Bishop mechanics. While I AM proud of the fact that combat only happens based on whether the player takes the story there (see above), the flexibility of the combat and enemy A.I systems don't become apparent until many playthroughs . Obviously, this is one of the things we'll be addressing directly in the sequel, which will be taking place across a huge and open environment. I must also admit that the virtual trainer (VT) stuff did not turn out as good as it could have been. The overall mechanics of the Civilian Defense scenario could have been far more fleshed out on its own, but time and resources worked hard against this. We had also originally envisioned multiple different VT scenarios being in the game, and even had another designer and a concept artist working on this, but it simply wasn't a sustainable effort and I had to end up taking on the VT stuff entirely on my own.

On the Game's Length:
Game One of the iDGi-1 Trilogy originally included a large skyscraper environment as part of the first game. It took us a year of production to realize that this was an impossible goal. We therefore heavily expanded the story of what happens aboard Zenlil to compensate for the loss of the tower, which ultimately resulted in the game having the deep and multi-threaded story that makes it what it is. We worked hard to try and make the story as self-contained as possible despite the game ending in a cliffhangar. I think we partially succeeded with this goal, but if I could go back I would simplify or cut the entire mission briefing altogether and only instead hint at the next game. I would have focused us instead on wrapping up and providing a more definitive ending to the Zenlil story.

In Conclusion...
I recommend this game! ;-) Seriously though, at the very least I can pretty much guarantee that you have never played anything like CONSORTIUM before. If you like science-fiction and single-player story driven games, you simply MUST play our game. Trust me, it will be a true treat! Because I made it, I can easily see the missing pieces, many of which account for some of the criticism of the game (technical issues notwithstanding). But this first game firmly establishes the core game mechanics, world, characters, GUI and the beginning of a powerful interactive narrative that we're driven to complete! With that groundwork firmly laid, the path to making the second game is very clear from a development perspective. I for one am excited to be able to take everything we've made and refine and expand the hell out of it, taking into account all of the incredibly helpful feedback we've received since launch.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the experience!

Extremely self critical stuff, but that will only make the sequel better.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Without a doubt, our game puts the "role-playing" back into RPG.

That sounds familiar.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Just went through this. It's something alright. Not so sure I like it, especially how heavily it leans on having a sequel, but it seems fairly unique. I'd have to play it again to see how much you can change, plus a large part of the coolness would lean on how heavily the next two games feed off of your actions, but yeah. Kinda neat but didn't really send me into a D1P frothy frenzy for the sequel.

 

[FuelBlooded]

I got it from a bundle for 4$, together with Betrayal. I am considering D1P.

 

[Abu Antar]

escapistmagazine has an interview with two of the devs working on the sequel.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...l-Games-Gregory-MacMartin-and-Steve-MacMartin

 

[Keshik]

 

[LESS T_T]

Kickstarter on January 18th: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idgi/consortium-0/posts/1397054

 

[Bubbles]

Finally got around to playing this game, liked it far more than I expected. It still seems a little buggy though, and there seem to be way too many unskippable dialogues for a game that's meant to be replayed. I'll have to replay it anyway though, because I seem to have missed way too much stuff.