KickStarter Thaumistry: In Charm's Way. A New Comedy Text Adventure Game by Bob Bates

http://www.adventuregamers.com/articles/view/31062

I love Legend Entertainment games and I cannot lie. Which means I love Bob Bates too. So, while pretty much all adventure game KSs have been a disaster so far, I won't be learning from my mistakes and I will be donating to this one. Thankfully this is a text adventure so hopefully no home equity loans will be involved.

cc Sceptic

The article is also a fairly lengthy interview with Bob, so do check it out if you're interested.

Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...charms-way-a-new-comedy-text-adventu?ref=card

 

The one major text adventure I can think of, Hadean Lands, took forever to get made but is pretty triumphant. Hopefully that's more the paradigm.

 

Is this Hadean Lands any good ?
There's so much high-quality (and too hard from me) quality if that I don't even consider commercial ones, usually.

 

It depends what you like. Andrew Plotkin has a particular style, and not every digs it. He has lots of free games, so you can pretty easily figure out if you will.

 

Oh, ok, didn't notice it was him. I liked Spider and web, so, why not.

 

Spider & Web is really different from his other games IMO -- it's the only Plotkin one I really like. And even then I only really like the first half.

[EDIT: Actually, let me reframe this. I think the truth is that I generally like smaller IF games, and get lost in bigger ones, so I like S&W and Shade from Plotkin, Metamorphoses and City of Secrets from Emily Short, but not, say, A Change in the Weather and Savoir Faire, even though those are generally thought to be better.]

But people I consider highly reputable say that Hadean Lands is at the very top tier in design and execution.

 

We need a "I want to believe" button.

 

Do people even want to try these anymore and go through the pain of figuring out which variation of a verb or noun the designer decided to use over and over again?

 

http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/hadean-teaser/

Only played that teaser and thought it was great. But I am Plotkin fagboy so...

 

Thanks !

 

I've become so lame while getting older that I'm unable to solve a big game like Curses or Savoir-Faire by myself.

 

Kickstarter is now live:

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Thaum: (noun). A unit of magical energy

Bodge: (verb). To hack or kludge

Eric Knight was a child prodigy who was featured on the cover of Invent! Magazine at the age of 13 for his invention of an anti-stain chemical treatment.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t invented anything since and now, at the age of 23, he has a strong case of imposter syndrome. He feels like a failure.

For the past few years he has been given laboratory space in a start-up incubator, but as the game opens, he is holding a letter from IncuLab threatening to pull the plug if he cannot demonstrate within a day that his latest invention works.

As he thinks this over, an energetic stranger named Jack bursts into his lab and says, “I’m your wake-up call, dude. You feel like you don't quite fit in, right? Weird things happen when you're around? Traffic lights turn red just as you get to them. Elevator doors don't close when you push the button. Your alarm clock randomly fails in the morning. There's a name for people like that. We're called Bodgers. I'm one, and you might be one too.”

Eric soon learns that Bodgers are a group of people through whom magic flows into the world. Some Bodgers aren’t aware of this ability, and they come to regard themselves as accident-prone, jinxes, or jonahs. But Bodgers who realize their identity can learn to channel this mischievous magic. The aim of a Bodger is to make a small thing go wrong in order to make big things go right.

Is Eric himself a Bodger? Through the course of the game he tries to find out. But first there is an imminent danger that must be dealt with. Another inventor has created a thaumeter – a device that measures magical energy. Its unveiling is planned for the end of day, and if that happens then the existence of the Bodgers will be exposed, and mass persecution will follow.






Years ago, I wrote text adventure games for Infocom. And then I wrote text-and-graphic adventures, like TIMEQUEST and Eric The Unready, for Legend Entertainment.



And then, sadly, the genre lost its commercial potential and I had to move on to making different kinds of games for a living. But I was always looking back over my shoulder to the games that used only words to fire players’ imaginations, games where the person playing the game felt an intimate connection to the person who designed it.

I believe something was lost when our industry moved away from parser-driven games. Players lost the feeling that we could try anything we could think of. Games became more claustrophobic. And we especially lost the feeling that we were playing with the person who wrote the game.

So eleven years ago, I decided to return to the genre I love best. The task was daunting – to design, write, and code a game all by myself. I had to select and learn a development engine. I could only work nights and weekends. I had to battle orcs and balrogs… no, wait. That was a WoW raid last weekend.

Years passed, but now the game is coming to life. With it, I hope to restore that intimate connection. I hope that each player feels they are playing with me. That we can have a conversation. That we can have fun together.

Last May, I held a closed alpha test. Twenty players sent me their transcripts, and by the end of the month I knew for sure that the game will be up to the standards of a classic adventure game. It is a full-size, comedic, puzzle-driven, text adventure of the sort we would have been proud to publish at either Infocom or Legend.

So, having self-funded the game for so long, why am I now coming to Kickstarter and asking for your help in getting the game out the door? The answer is time, technical help, ports, and music. At the rate I’ve been going, it will take several more years to complete the game. But with a successful Kickstarter, I can devote more time to the game now and get it out the door within months, rather than years. And with stretch goal funding, I can hire technical help to port the game to more devices, and potentially even get music into the game.


Pardon Me While I Have a Strange Interlude
"Strange how the wind blows tonight. It has a thin eerie voice. It reminds me of poor old Marsden."






Here are some excerpts from early in the game when Jack lets you try some experimental spells they are working on.



Thaumistry Screenshot 1



Thaumistry Screenshot 2

 

With Chris Huelsbeck !
This I trust. Inexpensive focused kickstarter, brilliant designer.

"The other obvious risk in a single-author project is that the author might get hit by a bus or contract a fatal disease. I always look both ways before crossing the street and have been certified fatal-disease-free by the US Department of Fatal Diseasery."
So no risk.

 

Yep, it was nice to have a personal message from Bob. We backers are not that many, in fact. I hope the niche is big enough for this kind of games to be sustainable.

 

I like those Office 2007 and Windows Vista books in Bob's background.

Very nice KS pitch, but no pledge from me since I'm such a spoiled graphics whore.

 

Never played this stuff before, but backed based on the concept alone.

 

Nice. Go download Eric the Unready, you might like it !

 

Shit man, what's with all these kickstarters coming out simultaneously?

Oh well. Insta-peldge for me. I wanted to give moneyz just to say thanks for all of his legendary stuff I have abandonwared.

Not to mention that this has great chances to be awesome since it doesn't rely on graphics, and other shit that can bog down development and it has clear-cut ideas of gameplay.

Also, Chris Huelsbeck?

 

And the meat of the game is already done, the cash is merely for improvements.

 

Aw man, just when I thought I could finally give up on KS, Legend Ent makes a comeback.