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KickStarter ZED - surreal adventure from ex-Myst dev
- Thread starter Crooked Bee
- Start date
ushas
Savant
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2015
- Messages
- 550
Missed few updates. In case anybody's interested, the last one linked below.
They were showcasing the game at PAX east and are asking for to be wishlisted on steam. Chuck Carter was also on a PAX panel with Tim Cain, 30 years in games, but the search function told me that the panel is already covered, by as always as ever swift LESS T_T over at Obsidian thread.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368459285/zed/posts/2477598
They were showcasing the game at PAX east and are asking for to be wishlisted on steam. Chuck Carter was also on a PAX panel with Tim Cain, 30 years in games, but the search function told me that the panel is already covered, by as always as ever swift LESS T_T over at Obsidian thread.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368459285/zed/posts/2477598
Apr 11 2019
Update #38: Showcase Recap
Posted by Eagre Games (Creator)
Hello everybody!
We have been as busy as we've ever been this past month with GDC, PAX East, the Cleveland Film Festival, and finalizing our development. PAX was a wonderful, albeit tiring, experience for us. We had a large booth inside the IndieMEGABOOTH which has become a premier attraction of PAX. We were able to set up 7 PC stations provided by OriginPC, Pixio Monitors, and Logitech peripherals -- ZED has never looked so good and played so well! We seriously appreciated having these companies generously sponsor us so that we'd be able to put on this show - without their helping hand it wouldn't be possible to show this game reliably to so many people! In addition to our 7 PC stations, we had 2 Oculus stations available and got to have several hundred people play in VR. The feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive and it was a terrific (albeit exhausting) experience for us. Our favorite part was being able to meet many Kickstarter backers (and even had one randomly start helping out in our booth!), fans from our Discord server, and meeting tons of new people! PAX was the first time some of us got to meet our friends from Cyan in person, and the first public appearance for Chuck and Rand since the release of Myst We sat in on a panel that Sunday morning with a packed house (a great turnout for a Sunday morning!) and had a great time talking about our careers in games. You can view a VOD provided by PAX here.
Quick message from Chuck:
Hi everyone! I just wanted to say PAX East was a very successful show for us in a lot of ways. For one thing we had the chance to meet a lot of our backers there, which was awesome, and a lot of them had the opportunity to play ZED for a short time. The feedback we received from the event was invaluable - it told us what's working and areas that we can improve on. The reaction we got from people playing the game was overall very positive. We think we have something special and I just wanted to tell everyone again - how important your backing ZED was and still is. We could not have done it without your patience and support! We are on the final push now to release so please keep an eye out and be sure to help us with wishlisting and getting the word out there! Thanks to everyone - cheers! Chuck Carter
After PAX, Chuck flew out to his native Cleveland to attend the Cleveland Film Festival where we exhibited ZED for four days. It was a unique experience that was quite different to PAX East, and provided us the ability to put ZED in front of a lot of people who'd never tried VR before and weren't traditional gamers. People were very enthusiastic about our narrative and voiceover work.
A few housekeeping issues: In the coming weeks we'll be sending out Kickstarter Backer Surveys (and posting an update to remind you) so we can get any necessary information from you depending on your Kickstarter tier. We're only able to send them out once so we need to do our due diligence and ensure we get it right the first time so we save everyone a headache. Keep an eye out soon!
The next big thing is our Steam Wishlists. While we're trying to get on as many platforms as possible, Steam remains the largest online retailer of games and they gatekeep how many people they show us to based on how many other people Wishlist. It's a huge help to independent developers to have as many people as possible Wishlist and spread the word about us so we can continue making games. As it stands we're still about 20% shy of our bottom ideal threshold so we've got some work to do and could use some help getting the word out. Thanks, as always, for your support.
We'll leave you with some pictures from the past month and a reminder that you can always keep in touch with us on our social channels - we really are enjoying getting to chat with many of you.
Our PAX East booth!
Rand and Chuck's first public appearance since the release of Myst!
Our PAX panel
Our panelists. Moderator Seth Mantie, Karthik Bala of Vicarious Visions and Velan Studios, Tim Cain (creator of Fallout), Rand Miller (Cyan), and Chuck Carter (Eagre Games Founder)
Happy booth patrons!
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
June 4th: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eagregames/zed/posts/2514704
ZED Launch Date Announcement!
Greetings, ZED Backers!
Today we bring you the best news of all ...
Launch Date for ZED!
Before this game was made from a concept into a reality, you were there.
Through all the planning, development, testing and polishing of the game, you've been there.
And now, as we finally launch to the whole world, you'll be there FIRST.
We hope to send out the keys for ZED to all you backers just before the rest of the world gets the game, so watch your email on Monday, June 3 for that!
Game Changes and Improvements
Since we began work on ZED, the game has taken on a life of its own. We had so many great ideas but were able to really focus in on what the game did best, and from that we feel we've created something with deep meaning and imagination. Chuck explains this more fully in a new video for our backers, here:
LIVE STREAMING EVENT with Chuck Carter!
Join us on Tuesday June 4, 2019 at 1:00 PM EDT (10:00 AM PDT) for a special LIVE STREAM with Chuck Carter! Chuck will be playing ZED and answering fans' questions from the chat. Tune in on Cyan's Twitch Channel to ask Chuck all your questions about ZED, Eagre Games and life in picturesque Maine.
https://www.twitch.tv/cyan_inc
Help Spread the Word!
Now's the time to tell all your friends, family members, neighbors and strangers about ZED. Tell them to Wishlist on Steam by sharing this link:
http://bit.ly/ZEDgame
Be sure you're following all our social media channels:
Survey Reminder!
On May 9, we sent out our Kickstarter reward surveys and want to remind everyone to please return the surveys at your earliest convenience. If your name is appearing in game or credits, those have already been put in, but we will do a later 'Credits' update to include anyone we missed. If you did not receive a survey, please contact us so we can assist you. Physical reward tiers will be shipped after we release ZED.
Lastly, thank you, all backers, for taking this journey to ZED with us. Your contributions and support mean more to us than you'll ever know.
- The ZED Team
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
Last edited by a moderator:
Myst isn't even the most complicated game in the series. 
in case someone's interested in Zed, here's my opinion:
I knew what I was getting into, so I don't share the same level of disappointment that you see in the gog & steam reviews.
Zed is a heavily railroaded walking simulator. a bit of exploration, a bit of solving puzzles. the main focus of the game was telling a story and that story was pretty good imo.
basically you walk from area to area, they are always seperated by a door. btw the areas vary in size, some are more spacious (for example a train station) others are extremely small (bathroom, garage). in every area there are 4 objects "hidden" (they glow). collecting them will give you an entry into your journal and will unlock the puzzle, which you have to solve to open the door to the next area.
those puzzles are very easy to begin with, but the solution is always depicted as a painting on the wall in the same area. a child could play through this game with ease.
one thing that annoyed me was that you had to wait several times for a door to open, because the dialogue wasn't finished yet; this felt like a waste of time.
strangely the graphics quality was pretty inconsistent. sometimes there were beautiful sceneries, other times some parts looked like straight from an early 2000s game (for example a highly pixelated shadow in the house).
all in all Zed is pretty short, I've seen everything there is to see and it took me about 1 hour and 40 minutes.
would I recommend it? depends on your taste. if you don't mind walking simulators, easy puzzles and a heavy emphasis on story, Zed is worth your time. I liked the general tone and atmosphere, the story was nice and some of the areas were really creative and surreal.
but if you want another game like Myst then look elsewhere.
I knew what I was getting into, so I don't share the same level of disappointment that you see in the gog & steam reviews.
Zed is a heavily railroaded walking simulator. a bit of exploration, a bit of solving puzzles. the main focus of the game was telling a story and that story was pretty good imo.
basically you walk from area to area, they are always seperated by a door. btw the areas vary in size, some are more spacious (for example a train station) others are extremely small (bathroom, garage). in every area there are 4 objects "hidden" (they glow). collecting them will give you an entry into your journal and will unlock the puzzle, which you have to solve to open the door to the next area.
those puzzles are very easy to begin with, but the solution is always depicted as a painting on the wall in the same area. a child could play through this game with ease.
one thing that annoyed me was that you had to wait several times for a door to open, because the dialogue wasn't finished yet; this felt like a waste of time.
strangely the graphics quality was pretty inconsistent. sometimes there were beautiful sceneries, other times some parts looked like straight from an early 2000s game (for example a highly pixelated shadow in the house).
all in all Zed is pretty short, I've seen everything there is to see and it took me about 1 hour and 40 minutes.
would I recommend it? depends on your taste. if you don't mind walking simulators, easy puzzles and a heavy emphasis on story, Zed is worth your time. I liked the general tone and atmosphere, the story was nice and some of the areas were really creative and surreal.
but if you want another game like Myst then look elsewhere.
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