KickStarter Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption - adventure-RPG from the creators of Quest for Glory

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

...and then Replay decided to go with N-Fusion to develop the game.

Bt

Why?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Given the latest developments that one is probably because of that Paul Trowe retard as well.

I don't know if they would have been better for the game, but at least I liked their take on the graphics more than what it ended up in the final game.

 

[Blackthorne]

That I don't really know. (Why Replay dumped Adventure Mob)


Bt

 

[jfrisby]

Josh Mandel on why they dropped Adventure Mob:

In Tel Aviv and during the due diligence phase, quite a few red flags were raised about the prospect of working with Adventure Mob. While we adored the demo work they did for LSL1, and while we had no reason to question their commitment to the project, we also had to acknowledge that, with absolutely no track record to look at, AM was going to be a very big risk for us.

My personal feeling was that it was a risk possibly worth taking with our *own* money, if that’s how we were funding the game. But we aren’t putting our own money into the game, we’re putting Kickstarter pledges into it. To me, we should absolutely not take this kind of risk with other people’s money. I would love to work with Oran on a future Larry game, but not until AM has a track record, and not with Kickstarter funds.

There were also stories about them having outsourced the Larry demo art, having no staff... They did fly over to Israel with backer money to check, though.

 

[Boleskine]

The Coles posted an update today.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Kickstarter is totally sustainable!

 

[DeepOcean]

Kickstarter is totally sustainable!

Nah, they were just dumbfucks at the start of the campaign. I'm glad they worked things out.

 

[J1M]

Nice to hear they have their own money in the project now.

 

[DeepOcean]

Nice to hear they have their own money in the project now.

Now we know that they can't come with: Sorry guys, see ya!

 

[SoundGuy]

Hey, Oded Sharon (from Bolt Riley) here.

First, thank you for those who backed and those who are planning to back this project.

We worked with the Coles on this in 2011. This was before we ran out of fund, and before we work with Replay on Larry. The Coles were involved in the design of all the game (including chapter 1) were part of writing the entire story.
It's expensive to make games. If chapter one succeed or if we reach the stretch goal we will make chapter 2. Without your help , this will not happen.

regarding the whole replay games - well, I'm already under threat of lawsuit by Replay so i can't post anything that will be considered damage or libel.
What i can share are some facts:
1. Despite what someone else said we had a team working on Larry and Riley. here it is:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...166214.-2207520000.1383135147.&type=3&theater

Who recognizes those backgrounds on our walls there?

2. Both adventure mob and replay games have done due diligence on each other late 2011. This was months before we went to kickstrater with them. So coming out of the woods with saying something like "we've done our due diligence"?
well, we already had most of chapter 1 for Bolt Riley developeed by then, a team of 20 people.
We actually found disturbing things which we choose to ignore. In retrospect maybe we shouldn't.

3. you can see that we were the ones doing the work on the larry demo here:
i can show you the code i wrote in unity. Myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmjnjRtsNu0

We never got paid a dime for our work and spent tons on money on it.


I assure you two things - the existence of this game does not only not interfere with Hero-u , in fact, as Corey mentoined it, was the catalyst for Hero-u as they got paid to work on this game years before they even conceived it.
We are making an awesome game. I've made some adventure games in the past with low budget and this game, being one with a higher budget will be great. (and the parts that are ready already are).

feel free to ask me any questions.
and thanks again for your support, we hope to make this game a reality.

Peace,
Oded

 

[FeelTheRads]

We never got paid a dime for our work and spent tons on money on it.

Huh.

"Hey, guise, we're totally cool and not like the evil publishers, give us some money, huh?"

 

[FeelTheRads]

Kinda. But I think that at least Al and Josh have been paid so there's that.

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

Good luck with the Kickstarter SoundGuy.

 

[SoundGuy]

We never got paid a dime for our work and spent tons on money on it.

"Hey, guise, we're totally cool and not like the evil publishers, give us some money, huh?"

The irony, huh ?

 

[Boleskine]

Positive demo feedback should translate to some preorders or additional donations for the game. Curious to see what happens.

 

[SoundGuy]

Hey - for those wondering about the quality of work we did in Adventure Mob, that we got "Traded up" but a certain publisher
I've put up an update with a video showing that :
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/soundguy/bolt-riley-a-reggae-adventure-game/posts/648297
You can also play the demo yourself.
It's in the middle.

 

[SoundGuy]

1. posted gameplay video.
2. The Coles and me will be doing Reddit tomorrow, I'm sure they'll be happy to get some Hero-u questions as well

see:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...a-reggae-adventure-game/posts/650668#comments

 

[Name]

http://www.hero-u.net/demo/HeroUDemo

 

[Bubbles]

Ah, sweet nostalgia. Whenever did adventure companies stop putting out 4 minute "demos" that are basically just interactive youtube clips?

 

[Haba]

The demo has some funky bugs in it.

1.) Manipulate an object
2.) Walk to the other end of the room
3.) Manipulate another object
4.) Get confused, as the interaction menu for the previous object pops up

 

[suejak]

Cory wasn't lying when he said he was going to make this one from his living room.

As expected, the absence of the Sierra production machine definitely hurts the gameplay. It's clunky, unresponsive, and super limited. I always felt like I was going to break it.

It felt sort of like a Windows 3.1 windowed game or a late-90s Flash browser thing. Not exactly a professional endeavour.

But! It shows promise, and I hope they manage to get some more of the QFG magic in there.

 

[DeepOcean]

Cory wasn't lying when he said he was going to make this one from his living room.

As expected, the absence of the Sierra production machine definitely hurts the gameplay. It's clunky, unresponsive, and super limited. I always felt like I was going to break it.

It felt sort of like a Windows 3.1 windowed game or a late-90s Flash browser thing. Not exactly a professional endeavour.

But! It shows promise, and I hope they manage to get some more of the QFG magic in there.

The game have promise but I really hope that this is just temporary programmer art and they are going to improve things on the graphics department as a few very low budget indies put them to shame in that department, at least by now.

 

[suejak]

Thoughts on the demo:

Item interaction menus seem to be an improvement over the old sierra "eye" and "hand" interaction system in that there are more options to choose from, but it seems to have lost the puzzle aspect of figuring out the right inventory item to use - here you automatically get a menu option if you possess the right item. This, to me, is a step down for an adventure game.

I hope the graphics are placeholder. Right now it doesn't even look as nice as the QFG2 remake. Animation is awkward.

Honestly, I think that asking it to look as good as the QFG2 remake is asking too much.

 

[Boleskine]

My general feeling is that the Coles should have gone with their original design for the game. I think they could have come up with some good puzzles and combat in the MacGuffin's Curse engine. It may not have been what everyone wanted, but it would have kept the budget within their original scope. Since the Coles are great people they took a lot of feedback to heart. In retrospect they probably should have gotten more feedback before actually launching their kickstarter.

After one year, they've had a hard time keeping programmers on the project and consistently moving forward. The demo is in a sort of limbo between two different approaches - on one hand they tried to expand things graphically as people were turned off by the tile-based system. On the other hand the functionality in the demo (not representative of the entire game necessarily) is rather simplistic and associated with casual puzzle games.

It's just a tech demo above all, but I don't get a sense of where the game is going. Will the narrative follow a linear structure, or will it have a more open environment that allows you to visit any number of locations at a given time to increase puzzle difficulty? Even without caring about context, the demo does leave something to be desired in terms of visuals and interactions/complexity.

What also concerns me is that the Coles have mentioned in their updates how they've taken out loans for their mortgage in order to avoid needing to take a salary from the kickstarter budget. I believe in them and think they can pull it off, but at the same time the situation just doesn't look good.

 

[Stabwound]

Jesus, they actually took out loans against their mortgage to fund this. This is taking a turn for the depressing.

Instead, Lori and I decided to self-fund the game by means of a personal home-equity loan. We will use that to pay our living expenses so we no longer need a salary, and we will fund other costs out of our "pocket". Some say this is a big risk – We might lose our home. We see it as much less of a risk than promising a bestseller that we can't guarantee.

They could have went the Quest For Glory AGI clone route and been done and wildly successful by now with what would probably be a great game, but instead they went with whatever this is supposed to be. A glorified hidden object game.