KickStarter Shadowgate remake - NOW AVAILABLE!

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zojoi/shadowgate/?ref=kicktraq

$108,313
pledged of $120,000 goal


3
days to go



No interest in playing this, but thought some of you fags might be into it

 

[Jaesun]

March update: Design, Programming and more!
Update #34 · Mar. 08, 2013 · 4 comments

Hey everyone!
Well, we've been busy on all fronts of the game so let's get into it, shall we?
Design
We have had many great design meetings on Shadowgate since our last update. Our “re-imagining” is coming together nicely- certain aspects of the original game are intact while the look and feel is decidedly different. We don't want to go into too much detail as that will give things away. The best way to explain it is that certain puzzles are in familiar places and might even have similar components or solutions but they have just been made to fit within the fiction better than in the original game.
We have increased the size of our game substantially and have added some new elements that really enhance the world (we've also been looking at the Catacombs to see what we can do there . The Wizard Tower Expansion is meshing with the original game nicely and the Goblins and the Black Axe quest have also been designed and should please our fans.
Aaron's UI design is progressing nicely and we're pretty happy with giving it a facelift while still making sure it keeps some of the timeless functionality of the original game. We'll show this more in an upcoming update when we can mesh it properly into some rooms.
Programming
We're really still knee-deep in the boring 'under the hood' stuff within Unity. We've mapped out the high level architecture that runs the game and setup object and gui communication so that doing something as simple as clicking an object can trigger a response in the gui. As we discussed before, our sound management system is complete allowing us to fade and stack a series of tracks to build excitement and is now being used by Rich Douglas (more below). Other bits are done as well like input functionality to ensure both touch and click events work similarly.
Finally, we've been focusing on the data aspect of the game - both how to script the objects that create the rooms and how to save and change the states of those objects. As you probably know, Shadowgate is an object/room-driven game and each object or room has to be checked against dozens of different variables to ensure that you can interact with it on various levels. This includes Object Attributes ( Openable/Closable, Takable, Consumable, Unmoveable, etc.), Room Attributes (Darkness, Water, Heat, Weather, etc.), States ( Burnt, Frozen, Locked, Wet, Empty/Full, etc.), andTypes (Container, book, scroll, spell, exit, etc.). Whew. Lots of stuff to keep us all busy for quite some time!
Rooms
Chris continues to crank on rooms and inventory objects. We've changed the aspect ratio for the rooms to 16:9 and also added something else new to the game - zoomed views. These views are infrequent but very useful, especially when dealing with intricate puzzles or objects that are far away. Here's an example of the zoomed in interaction of the skeleton in the lake.

Audio
Rich has been patient with us as we finish up the design. I mentioned in the last email that he has been working with the programmers to give us separate tracks of instruments to allow us to create dynamic music. He composed a quick tune (based on the tomb room in the NES version) for our sound management system and I've posted an example of this below. These tracks can be mixed/matched, started/muted to change the feeling in the room based on events (in this case, perhaps opening individual tombs). The first track is the full version but the others are individual instruments so feel free to play around with them. The track listing is below.
That's it for now! As always, you can send us a PM via Kickstarter or email us directly at contact@zojoi.com.
Dave and Karl

Follow the KS link to hear some of the music: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zojoi/shadowgate/posts/423394?ref=activity

I thought some of the music was pretty fucking sweet <3

 

[Jaesun]

April Update!
Update #35 · Apr 5, 2013 · 1 comment

Hey everyone!
Here’s an update on Shadowgate from all fronts…

Development

Programming
‘Under the hood’ Unity work continues as our awesome programmers tackle two main pieces. First, the UI elements (commands, load/save, inventory/spellbook, map, textbox, etc.) are being tied to the main game logic code. Second, they are tying the XML game scripts (that contains all game, text and player interactions) into the same codebase. This is an important phase and we want to make sure this underlying code work is given the time it deserves.

Design
With the exception of a few bits, the entire castle and surrounding areas are laid out and the design for all puzzles is complete. We are excited to be adding new, never before seen locations throughout the game and within the promised Towers Expansion. As the programming framework solidifies, we have begun scripting (text, object interaction, etc.) the first set of rooms using the PAC (point and click) scripting tools.

Audio
Rich is pretty close to finishing the score for the game. His approach to dynamic tracks has been working very nicely and his new compositions are epic! I will post more about this and some exciting news about the soundtrack in the next update.

Artwork
As I mentioned last month, we’ve gone to a 16:9 perspective to make the game more immersive (and to fit your PC/Mac screen nicely). Chris Cold continues to develop stunning room art for us and we continue to drive him crazy as we add additional puzzles and objects. Aaron is pretty close to being done with the UI (he is working on the map and load/save bits now) before moving on to particle effects. Speaking of...

UI
The process of getting to a UI that we like has taken some time. We have gone through a number of iterations as well as read your comments in previous updates. In the end, we decided that the best route for the UI was not only the most intuitive and easiest to use but also the most straightforward. So, here’s where things stand:

• Full Screen environment: As mentioned earlier, the size has increased to 16:9, allowing us to show even more of the environments and make it more immersive.
• Command system: We original envisioned that the commands (as icons) might spin up around an object like a wheel (ala Paper Mario) and only actions related to that object would be available. However, like in the original, we have decided to have all commands on screen at all times and in the same location. This accomplishes a number of things. First, simply put, the game is driven by using commands and they should always be accessible. Second, it allows for more exploratory flexibility since you can choose any command and try it on any object. Third, there were many cases where the command wheel would appear awkwardly on screen or come up over other objects. This obscured the game screen and would be a detriment to the game play. Finally, to avoid any confusion, we decided to use words rather than icons to be clear about what each command does. Now, that said, the commands can be minimized, providing an even better view of the room and will have keyboard shortcuts.
• Text box: The game is heavy on the narrative so the text box is available at all times. It is scalable - which allows more text to be read should you wish - and can also be minimized.
• Torches: Since torches play an important role within the game of Shadowgate, we provide a torch onscreen so you can tell at a glance how much light is left to see by.

• Inventory/Spellbook: The Inventory/Spellbook is now available as an overlay on the main screen and uses the same commands along the top of the UI. Want to use an object? Open the inventory, click on an object, click Use and then select an object in the inventory or in the room. Pretty simple. This keeps the interactions straight-forward and intuitive. Tabs at the top allow for easy toggling between game objects and spells and if the commands require further action, you will be prompted in the text box.
• Game Options: Also available as an overlay by selecting the gears to the right of the command system.
• Map: The map screen allows you to see where you are, where you've been, and what you've seen along the way. It also allows you to quickly navigate through known environments.
• Thyself: This illustrated representation of your character (Jair) changes based on game circumstances.
• Yorick: This character is introduced right away in the game and will be your companion throughout the adventure. Yorick will provide important commentary and information that may be important in your quest. He will also provide hints if needed.
• Back Arrow: Finally, there is an arrow on screen that allows you to move to the exit behind you.

Rewards
Rewards have started shipping! Because shipping is expensive, we are bundling as many rewards as possible. While some rewards won’t ship until the game does, we do want to get the others to you as soon as they are completed. If there is any problem with your shipment, please let us know via our email at contact@zojoi.com.

• Posters, t-shirts and card games: Posters have gone out to those who did not order t-shirts or the card game. The next shipment will be to the t-shirt or t-shirt/poster folks. After that, we will ship to the posters/card games or posters/card games/t-shirts folks. Whew! Quite the assortment of shipments!
• Card game: We are still working with Coleman Charlton to finish up the Quests of Shadowgate card game (10 play test sessions in) and once he’s happy with it, we will print the cards. Also, we are excited to announce that we have expanded the game from 54 cards to 71 to ensure quality play. Bonus!
• Staff of ages: Kenny Hudson has been working hard on the 18” staves. He is sculpting each by hand, giving each staff backer a unique piece with a unique stone. We will ship them as he completes them.
• Soundtrack: As soon as we finish the soundtrack we send out the download keys to the folks that got this one.
• Website Credits: These should go up next week.

There you go! That’s it for now. You know how to get a hold of us so feel free to drop us a line!
Dave and Karl

p.s. We would be remiss not to post a new piece of music. Remember dying in Shadowgate? Sure you do! Here is the theme from the NES version. Below is Rich's orchestral update. Enjoy!

(Jaesun cannot into linking the music so just go to the link at the top to hear it). It is pretty fucking sweet. <3

 

[Zep Zepo]

Hmm. Not a fan of the UI being on the top like that. Just looks odd to me.

Zep--

 

[A user named cat]

Would have preferred them just mimmicking the original layout style with a smaller game window and map/inventory on the side. I guess that's not next-gen enough though. Still looking forward to playing this as that's hardly game-breaking, just a preference. I'm wondering if the background artwork is all static though or if there are atmospheric animations, not sure if that's been covered yet.

 

[tuluse]

I'm pretty sure they said they planned animated backgrounds.

 

[Jaesun]

Shadowgate Digital Soundtrack reward has shipped!
Update #36 · May 4, 2013 · 38 comments

It was on a scorching July day that I found myself firmly planted under an umbrella, iPhone in hand, watching my family play in the Atlantic. Earlier in the year, I had reacquired the rights to Shadowgate and felt that it was time to reimagine it for both the old and new generation of gamers. I knew that Karl Roelofs could handle the redesign, we had great programmers and I had already contacted the phenomenal Chris Cold and Aaron Milligan to tackle the art. I had even gotten KEMCO, the original developer of the NES version, to let me use the original NES music – a fan favorite. Now I just needed a composer that could bring this thing to life. That’s when I found an orchestrated Shadowgate score on YouTube by some guy named Rich Douglas. Even over the iPhone’s external speakers I could tell he was the man. I sent him a quick email as I yelled for my daughter to put on more sunblock and a half hour later I got a response from Rich. “OMG! When do I start?”

Over the next few months, Rich worked on the various tunes we would need for the Kickstarter campaign. We also started talking about how he would create two versions of the music of Shadowgate: one for the game using dynamic tracks (that could be muted and unmuted based on game interactions) and one as a soundtrack score that would be built from those tracks. I had also stressed how we wanted to deliver more than pledgers expected. Rich not only took that sentiment to heart but went to the extreme.

We are proud to announce the digital release of Shadowgate – The Original Soundtrack. Featuring 14 game tracks and 11 bonus tracks – totaling over 70 minutes of music!
If you pledged to this reward, you will be receiving an email from us with a download code to Bandcamp – an online music store that supports independent artists. With this code, you can choose from a number of different audio formats (Note it will download a zip file so you will need a program like WinZip or 7Zip to extract them). For you iTunes folks, the tracks can be imported easily enough and are labeled to be displayed correctly.

If you didn’t get a chance to pledge to the soundtrack, Rich will be making it available for purchase soon and I’ll be sure to send a link to his page when he does. In the meantime, I’ve posted one last track from the album called Journey’s End featuring the lovely Jillian Aversa. (BTW, be sure to check out her latest album being kickstarted here!)

Thanks again to the amazing Rich Douglas and everyone who has (and continues to) support us. Remember, if you encounter any problems with downloading, please let us know at contact@zojoi.com!

Dave

EDIT: I backed this at the digital OST level and fuck yeah this is pretty sweet! <3 <3

 

[Infinitron]

Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=189989799

 

[Boleskine]

Mid-December Update: Reward links and more!

 

[Infinitron]

Greenlit! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=189989799

 

[Boleskine]

Kickstarter - January update

Happy New Year!
We hope you have had a fun-filled holiday season and that your New Year has started off right.

We've had some great success this year already, Shadowgate was greenlit on Steam! Thanks to everyone who helped support us with your Up Vote and getting the message out! We were greenlit in 8 weeks and the comments have been phenomenal! Here are some interesting numbers from our Steam Greenlight page, including (in parenthesis) a comparison to the average top 50 games that were on Greenlight at the time:

• Unique visitors: 47,987 (32,434)
• Yes Votes: 14,626 (9,838)
• Favorites: 1,231 (630)

We will be getting the official Shadowgate Steam page up soon, as well as a page on the Zojoi site to allow folks that didn’t participate in the Kickstarter to pre-order the game.

Development
So far we've been busy putting in the remaining features for our Alpha delivery. It looks like we will most likely declare Alpha within the next 10 days.

Cool things just added...

• Death and Game Over: We've hooked in the game-over functionality which drops you from the game and back into the main menu. Also the death sequences have just been linked in. This means that doing something foolhardy during gameplay (like jumping in that deep, deadly, lava-filled chasm) now matters and will end your adventure for good! As you might imagine, this now makes playtesting that much more difficult!
• Cinematic Cut Scenes: The cut-scenes are built and have been added to the game script. You can now see and experience Lakmir in all his magical glory! It's awesome to see the story unfold during game play!
• Map Features: The map is now fully functional with correct tie-ins to each location. In addition, interesting items that you run across will show on the map in the form of "notes". These can be used to help solve puzzles or remind you of unique areas that you visited.
• Inventory: We've revamped the inventory to handle objects in a more efficient manner. We've also added an indicator for items that are currently equipped by the player.

Relax and take a look at the video that Sarah has compiled showing some of the latest features.

As you can see, we've made great headway and will be at Alpha soon. So what's left to do you might ask? Well, I'm glad you did...

• The Darkness: A key aspect to Shadowgate centers on managing your torch supply and keeping the darkness at bay. This means that we need to control the light level in each room based upon your torch level and any ambient light in the room. When it's too dark- it’s deadly to a player. We are adding this logic for gameplay during low-light and no-light situations as we speak.
• Winning: Shadowgate would not be much of a game if there wasn't a payoff to solving the adventure. By this, we mean appropriately handling the awards, achievements, and other various and sundry things one gets after saving the world!
• Final Assets: Placeholder animation and audio is being replaced with final assets. The real trick to this is syncing the audio with the animation. We'll be doing this from now until the game is released I am sure!
• Play Test and Polish: Be assured that we intend to play test and polish this game as much as possible! To that end, we will be setting up our beta test soon. So stay tuned for an upcoming announcement about that.

Rewards
We have word that our game boxes have just shown up at the Port of Los Angeles from places overseas. The box design is awesome! We are in the process of getting these shipped to the Port of Richmond and then to our staging area where we plan to collate the boxes once the game is ready.

The Humble Store keys went out a few weeks ago to all our backers. These keys allow you to claim your digital rewards. Please let us know if you did not receive yours or if you have any issues. You can always email us here!

Lastly
You guys are awesome! We want to thank you for your continuing support, especially as we start our final push to get the game completed!

Karl and the Zojoi Team

 

[Boleskine]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zojoi/shadowgate/posts/758934

Alpha

In between digging out of the big snows that have plagued the East Coast (we got over 16 inches a couple of weeks ago in central Virginia), we've been very productive this past month. We have reached our Alpha milestone!

This is huge because it means that every game play-related feature is in (in one form or another) and now we can concentrate on working toward our beta. It took a little longer than we expected but we’re pretty happy with the results!

Development

While there are tons of things that have been done, here are just a few of the bigger things we accomplished since our last update...

• Darkness: This feature required all-hands on deck for implementation. It touched all aspects of the game: graphics, scripting, and PAC engine. Take a look at what Sarah has put together in the latest video update to see how this is looking. We are still tweaking this graphically.
• Organizational Refactoring: Our programmers have refactored the structure of game files. This is so we can easily support the various difficulty levels, tutorial mode, localization into other languages, etc. More of an under the hood piece of work, but important nonetheless.
• Animation Prefabs and Spawn Points: We have added spawn points to all the rooms so that differing animations can play as necessitated by the script. This allows us to share one animation or particle effect across multiple scenes without having to add it to every scene. A real savings on the footprint for each scene load.
• Animations and particles: We continue to finalize our 2D animations and insert the particles effects that are needed for object specific interactions (like burning a burnable object) and various room ambiance (like fog and rain).

So now we move on toward our Beta Milestone and the full implementation of features that are only mostly in the game. This includes the following...

• Achievements: The support for our in-game achievements is currently being added to the game engine. We need to then input this into the script where necessary and hook in the visual display of each on the achievement page. And of course, part of this process is to add the support hooks for external achievement systems like Steam.
• Tutorial: While the design, xml script and assets are completed, we will be tying this together with the code (based upon the refactoring mentioned above) and begin testing it.
• Visual/Audio Tweaks: We are going through the game and polishing all the animated sequences. This includes adding missing audio, tweaking animation durations, and adding delays so things sync up properly.
• Play Test and Polish: Before we release the game to beta testers, we intend to play test and polish Shadowgate as much as possible to make it an awesome game.

(see update link for video embed from here)
Rewards

We now have word that our game boxes have been cleared from the Port of Richmond. Talk about your slow boats! Hopefully we'll get our eyes on them soon!

And again, if you didn’t get your Humble key, contact us at contact@zojoi.com and we'll be sure to get that sorted out.

Lastly

We are thankful for the continued support you have shown for our small company. We know it’s taking longer to develop than we had hoped but with the addition of extra rooms and features, we feel that we are giving you a much better game. Feel free to drop us a line (or post a comment) and let us know what you think.

We very much appreciate your feedback!

Karl and the Zojoi Team

 

[trustno1code]

March Update

Development updates ("Original NES music mode is now in the game" among them), website makeover, new artist on board, and...

 

[Crooked Bee]

Check out the trailer below and head over to the official website to pre-order, with packages starting at $14.99

Preorder here: http://www.zojoi.com/shadowgate/

 

[felipepepe]

The art is amazing, but the animation is clearly low budget... they should have kept them static, but I guess that's unnaceptable for today's standards...

 

[ghostdog]

Looks awesome.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

What's the release date on this bad boy?

 

[Jaesun]

That looks fucking great!

 

[Crooked Bee]

What's the release date on this bad boy?

"Late summer"

 

[belated]

Still wish the Sherlock Holmes Kickstarter had succeeded instead, but will get this one, eventually.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Any news on the flute? Will it play the Deja Vu theme again?

 

[Zep Zepo]

I'm still unhappy the actions are on the top instead of the bottom. Just looks too weird to me.

Zep--

 

[DalekFlay]

I am far from a graphics whore and love the art, but those animations are really distracting... oh well.

 

[sigma1932]

This sounds awesome as hell! Still remember playing the NES version way, way, way back when...

Indeed... makes me wanna pull out the emulator and take Deja Vu out for another spin as well.

 

[Essegi]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zojoi/shadowgate/posts/879866

Update #48 Jun 17 2014
June Update: Beta has officially begun!

Hello all,

Well, let's get to it shall we?

Beta

I know we are late with this update but it's been a bit crazy here at Zojoi. Two weeks ago we launched a soft-beta of the game and had a small number of testers beat on it - primarily finding 'blocker' bugs so that when we let more folks in, the game would be pretty darn stable.

Well, after 7 updates and tons of fixes, we're ready to move into full-blown beta. For those of you who pledged the Novice level and up and signed up for the beta (as well as those who bought the Hero tier on the Zojoi website), the wait is over. You will be receiving an email from us in a little bit outlining how to get into the beta.

Game launch

Our plan is to be in beta for eight weeks, squashing bugs and polishing the game before finally releasing the beast. After that, we will send out the final rewards to those who have been waiting so long.

We will keep you up to date on where we are at and how things are going over the next two months and, as always, we are very grateful for your support!

The Zojoi Team


The Grim Reaper awaits