Game News Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness Backer Beta Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness; GrapeOcean Technologies

With the demise of the Pillars of Eternity series and even Owlcat's Pathfinder games adopting a turn-based combat mode, you could be excused for believing the era of the real-time-with-pause Infinity Engine throwback was over. But you'd be wrong, for there is another. Over two years after it was successfully Kickstarted and over five years since it was first announced, the Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness beta has been released to eligible backers. The cheapest tier that included the beta cost €85 so there's not too many of them, but a couple of gameplay streams have already appeared on Twitch and YouTube. They reveal a game that is still very much a shameless clone of Pillars of Eternity, with some areas that are suspiciously similar to certain dungeons from Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale as well. Other than that though, it seems decent enough at a glance. Anyway, here's an excerpt from last week's release update:

Greetings, adventurers!

The Backer Beta has been ready for several days, and it’s bigger than we initially planned!

Having said that, as with every beta, it contains bugs – some of which we don't know about and you will hopefully help us to find. Also, it lacks several features, refinements and performance optimizations that didn’t make it to the beta but will be present in the final game.

Getting the Beta on Steam and GOG store pages takes much longer than the official information we received about it before. Therefore, we decided today that we will be shipping the Backer Beta directly to the eligible backers (those of you who pledged at the Early Access reward tier and above, or chose the Backer Beta add-on).

Regarding Steam and GOG, everything seems to be on the right track, so the Beta will eventually be available on GOG and Steam as well (depending on whether you have specified a GOG or a Steam key in BackerKit). In the meantime, however, we will ship the Backer Beta as a direct download.

This process will begin on the 3rd of July at the latest and will take a couple of days. We will notify every backer whose reward tier included the Backer Beta via email with instructions on how to receive the installer. If you don't receive such an email until 6th July, please send us a message on Kickstarter or via our contact forms.
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Unfortunately there's no way to get into the Black Geyser beta right now if you weren't a backer. I suspect it'll be a while yet before the game reaches its next stage of development, but we'll see.

 

[Elhoim]

shameless clone of Pillars of Eternity

No kidding, everything screams PoE.

 

[Lady_Error]

The first scene looks kind of cheap, especially the characters. But the rest of the video seems actually decent enough and promising.

Copying what works is not the worst idea.

 

[bataille]

Is the Crushmaster in?

 

[luj1]

Meme game

 

[HoboForEternity]

how majestically, unscalably incline is this

 

[Drowed]

Copying what works is not the worst idea.

See, that's the kind of phrase that's technically correct but the devil is in the details.

Many of the best games have clearly copied others that preceded them - but many of the worst games did it too. What you should copy is not literally the game itself, but its design principles. When you can understand at least part of the essence of a game and why it works, you can create a game that is a clone, yeah, but that brings something new. Because you can use the idea you copied as blocks of knowledge to produce something new (like combining lego pieces). But when you don't know what you're doing, you literally copy it all, shamelessly. Which almost always results in a worse version of the original. And if the original already had some problems, then...

Anyway, I hope the game brings something new enough to justify playing it. Otherwise, it's easier to play the games from where it copied its contents.

 

[Lady_Error]

Otherwise, it's easier to play the games from where it copied its contents.

What if you already played all those games?

The devil is indeed in the details. Will the game be “balanced“ or will it be the Anti-PoE? At least the writing looks serviceable and is not bloated prose.

 

[Haba]

Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness Backer Beta Releaed

sand haelp to findintron

hoep ne

ïä ïä

 

[Tacgnol]

Otherwise, it's easier to play the games from where it copied its contents.

What if you already played all those games?

The devil is indeed in the details. Will the game be “balanced“ or will it be the Anti-PoE? At least the writing looks serviceable and is not bloated prose.

As you say cloning PoE isn't that meaningful. The bigger picture is more things like whether they've focused on balance over fun or included wikipedia style loredumps between purple prose.

Have they cloned all the things that made PoE as fun as watching paint dry, or have they just copied the presentation?

 

[Drowed]

What if you already played all those games?

The devil is indeed in the details. Will the game be “balanced“ or will it be the Anti-PoE? At least the writing looks serviceable and is not bloated prose.

I mean, if you've played all those games and you don't want to play them again, then why would you... Play them... Again? Just changing the name?

But yeah, if nothing else, the dialogues are already different enough to perhaps justify an attempt to play it once. I'm not saying that the game will be a shameless copy of POE or any other game, my only point is that copying good games (and I don't even want to get into the debate of whether or not POE is good, particularly I liked the game) is not much of a guarantee, because almost every minimally competent game ends up having its clones. Good clones copy the game but go beyond its superficial features, so, I hope Black Geyser is one of those cases.

But the fact that the UI is so blatantly copied worries me a bit because it reminds me of the thousands of DOOM clones that were little more than a reskin of the game, but with worse level design. One of the traits of bad clones is usually the direct copy of game features, like elements of the UI that are essentially the same without even trying to change the position or improve something that was not functional before, because the team didn't really know what they were doing so they just copied the elements they saw as best they could. That raises some yellow flags.

It was intentional for sure, but it remains to be seen whether it was intentional only as marketing trick to try to attract the same audience (and maybe because they considered the IU really worthy of copying), or whether it was intentional because they just didn't know any better.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[thesheeep]

Will this be to PoE like Gorasul was to BG?

 

[The Avatar]

Even the main menu looks like its ripped from Pillars of Eternity.

 

[whydoibother]

With the demise of the Pillars of Eternity series and even Owlcat's Pathfinder games adopting a turn-based combat mode, you could be excused for believing the era of the real-time-with-pause Infinity Engine throwback was over.

And that's a good thing.

But you'd be wrong, for there is another.

... for now...

Even the main menu looks like its ripped from Pillars of Eternity.

This was already said 3 years ago. They started copying Pillars before Pillars declined, and now they have to release a game that won't be welcomed by the masses. Still looks great as a niche title though. All the people who thought Pillars is great, will probably find this great too.

 

[toro]

Black Geyser is a retarded name but whatever.

They can copy the UI from PoE as long as they don't copy the retarded combat system and the narrative (which is impossible without Sawyer in their team).

Yep. This game has potential to be ok.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The UI/UX of PoE were one of the areas that were an improvement over the IE games. Inventory especially so.

 

[Serious_Business]

What a fucking sweet title though you gotta admit. I mean at first you have things like Drakenor's Legacy : The Tome of Grindendor ; then you got this sublime shit coming up, the Black Geyser. That shit is going to spill all over the place and needs to be contained

 

[Wizfall]

Looks good, happy to see a new "ie" game !
Just hope it will have better dialogue/writting than in PoE (and in some extent more interesting aera to visit) as i love those games otherwise.

 

[tindrli]

looks great.. will try it for sure

 

[Lady_Error]

I mean, if you've played all those games and you don't want to play them again, then why would you... Play them... Again? Just changing the name?

Some of them I played again, though the replayability in narrative-heavy games is limited when you remember most of what happens.

But the fact that the UI is so blatantly copied worries me a bit because it reminds me of the thousands of DOOM clones that were little more than a reskin of the game, but with worse level design.

Well, Infi thinks that they took level-design “inspiration“ from IE-games too, so apparently it is not just Pillars that is being copied.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can do worse than copying from the greats (among which PoE isn't, before anyone says anything).

 

[Whisper]

Clone of PoE with some BG elements.

Not interested.

 

[Silly Germans]

Black Geyser is a retarded name but whatever.

They can copy the UI from PoE as long as they don't copy the retarded combat system and the narrative (which is impossible without Sawyer in their team).

Yep. This game has potential to be ok.

I think its quite the improvement over their first working title Explosive Diarrhea. It packed more punch but somehow lacked subtlety.

 

[Ulfhednar]

So the beta doesn't showcase their character builder, but just hands you a lvl 3 protag... not a good sign.