Tags: Game Psych LLC; Tortured Hearts; Tortured Hearts - or, How I Saved The Universe. Again.
One of the many crowd-funding campaigns running at the moment is Tortured Hearts, being developed by small indie studio Game Psych LLC. Many Codexers know about it already, but here's a short rundown in case you missed it: turn-based combat, non-linear progression, introspective humor, colorful graphics, lots of dialogue and plenty of characters.
The Watch has an interview up with the lead designer (Zoltan) and a writer (Lenore) of the game. They go in-depth about the game and the Kickstarter campaign.
RPGWatch: What do you consider to be the Highlight of the game?
Lenore: The non-linearity, because it means that the areas don't "dry up" for a long time. You can keep going round and round and not feel like you hit a wall. The more side quests the player takes, the deeper it gets. It can be replayed in any number of ways depending on the sequence the player follows.
Zoltan: An interesting cast of characters in a cohesive story from beginning to end which emphasizes companionship. As in real life all the interpersonal stuff takes much time--about a hundred hours of playing time. Or even more.
RPGWatch: What is it that you want to accomplish with Tortured Hearts?
Lenore: As I writer, I find games a great medium to express my thoughts. But I want to create a great story, not a series of homilies. And I would like to make enough money to keep making interesting games.
Zoltan: I would like to realize my dream project: putting the first game I made, Newcomer, on the PC. I don't want to die before that...
But now let’s go back to Tortured Hearts and save the Universe.
RPGWatch: Why do you need funding and cannot finish it continuing like you have done up to now?
Lenore: Because we can't afford, actually, to pay the graphic artists, musicians, programmers, testers, and miscellaneous helpers that it will take to make the graphic interface and attach all the stuff that is already done. I really don’t know of a project of this size and technical complexity that was done by only two people.
Zoltan: We have done everything two people can do for free. I alone worked more than 5000 hours on writing dialogs and scripting the entire thing since 2008.
