Game News Tortured Hearts is a successor to the NWN module series over twelve years in the making

[Thac0]

I'm glad to hear that some people get upset when a guy asks for $40 for a game it took him 12+ years to finish because I thought such retards exist only in Poland. I'm relieved.

Most of the world doesn't believe in the labor theory of value.

This game could be used as an example to teach why the labor theory of value is bullshit...

 

[Drowed]

Pizza here is 4 USD and that's the good ones (a pre-baked frozen pizza is $1.8 USD, more or less). That said, regardless of how much I like the result, I praise the effort. There is something inspiring about a person who insists for more than a decade on a personal project, and has the determination (or the insanity) to keep investing in it tirelessly until they achieve their goal. In this sense, he has my respect and admiration.

Unfortunately I didn't like the result, and the dialogues in particular are especially too cringy for me, from what I could see. But hey, I like Larian's games and many people think the same of them, so it might just be a matter of taste.

 

[Thac0]

The guy wanted 300,000$ or so to hire programmers to port a NWN mod to Unity, and got jack.

So he just went on and programmed it himself. If he had wanted to build a space shuttle he would have constructed one with whatever parts he found in his garage. Of course the result looks like shit. But he being him couldn't give up for psychological reasons.

He pulled it off, so far so good. The guy is persevering asf. But the part I don't understand is the selling it for 40$ part. If the story is as good as some people say it could work as a 10$ game, but no one pays AAA prices for a piece of shit even if it has good story.

Numbers never were his forte I am afraid, he already went completely overboard with the kickstarter but didn't learn anything. He will sell a few hundred copies but say he pursued his dream, and in a way he did. Though working 13 years alone without financial reward is what I imagine to be hell on Earth than a dream.

No matter if this sells well or not, he has created something that will survive him. If only for a few years in offhand mentions on the codex, or whatever will be the premiere place to discuss western niche rpgs after that.
In the modern world his survival is not really threatened, more money just means more luxury.
In a sense he took the harder and more rewarding path. I can understand it a bit.

Still selling it for 40€ is retarded, he could have sold it for 20€ and made at least a bigger token sum of money from more than his 15 most dedicated fans.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The benefit of a digital product is that it costs nothing to reproduce. Attempting to charge a high price for it because you believe it is worth that(regardless of your personal subjective value placed on it) is foolish because it is playing directly against the strength of the product, and becomes a weakness instead.

 

[Tavernking]

The benefit of a digital product is that it costs nothing to reproduce. Attempting to charge a high price for it because you believe it is worth that(regardless of your personal subjective value placed on it) is foolish because it is playing directly against the strength of the product, and becomes a weakness instead.

Another reason why games are so cheap is that the competition is so cheap. There are free games out there better than Tortured Hearts. A lot of them.

 

[Necroscope]

The guy invested more than a decade of his life and decided to charge $40 for the result with respect to his efforts. Nobody forces you to buy it if you find the price unjust. It's not some evil and greedy corporation, it's just a dude who loves RPGs. I mean, c'mon...

 

[Siveon]

Really, it's just the controls that are confusing to me. I guess if you really like NWN you'd have weird ideas about controls too.

The dialogue feels google translated, I might add. So that doesn't help much. Everything else is... interesting, demo wise. Although sadly demo save data doesn't transfer over.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

On a technical basis, it looks like they did a lot of interesting things with the engine. As a matter of taste though, this looks like adolescent garbage. Combat also looks like a boring chore. Hard pass.

 

[Sweeper]

This is the bad kind of autism, isn't it?

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I enjoyed Tortured Hearts 2 as a module for NWN until I gimped myself beyond any hope of progressing because I didn't pimp a certain stat. Never played the original TH for NWN because the module description scared me off. Back then I had a tolerance for 100 hour RPGs, but 200 hour RPGs were too extreme even for my autism spectrum disorder (undiagnosed). I remember the developer coming here to the codex previewing this new version (not yet released) a few years ago, and he seemed so happy and upbeat and positive... at first. Then- well, you know. Poor guy never knew what hit him until he realized he had a new asshole that was bleeding profusely. Best of luck to him though. I hope he healed. It really does seem like a labor of love.

 

[Axioms]

The game is just bad. Even as a dirty commie I have to accept that someone can spend a ton of time on something that is not good. Functioning tooltips are not that hard to do. There is even free for commercial use stuff you can use if you want.Unity probably has a 40$ tooltip pack or something, too. The crystal skill selection thing is stupid as fuck and annoying to use.

The game system is not interesting. Like its DnD with few races, few classes, and nothing interesting going on. Why wouldn't you just play Kingmaker or something.

 

[Sweeper]

Then- well, you know.

That's a good way of putting it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ok so I jumped the gun.... NOT A MOD!
I'll watch some vids. Sometimes, I just react for some damn reason.

The guy wanted 300,000$ or so to hire programmers to port a NWN mod to Unity, and got jack.

So he just went on and programmed it himself. If he had wanted to build a space shuttle he would have constructed one with whatever parts he found in his garage. Of course the result looks like shit. But he being him couldn't give up for psychological reasons.

He pulled it off, so far so good. The guy is persevering asf. But the part I don't understand is the selling it for 40$ part. If the story is as good as some people say it could work as a 10$ game, but no one pays AAA prices for a piece of shit even if it has good story.

Numbers never were his forte I am afraid, he already went completely overboard with the kickstarter but didn't learn anything. He will sell a few hundred copies but say he pursued his dream, and in a way he did. Though working 13 years alone without financial reward is what I imagine to be hell on Earth than a dream.

 

[SubBassman]

Hi
I don't want to fight.
I just want to point out a few things.

The game has tooltips. You just need to press left Shift while the cursor is over a button or an icon.
Both the tutorial and the help section mention this along with many other useful tips.
The crystals are not skill selectors. They are skill affinity adjusters as the tutorial suggests.
Greater or lesser affinity means your bonus skill will cost less XP, your penalty skill will cost more.
It is not mandatory to use at all.

You can
-live with your random stats given at the start
-reroll your stats pressing F8 (as many times as you want)
-reset your stats at the stat resetter and reallot 100 k XP as you see fit

On the third tab of the char sheet you can see your actual buffs and debuffs. The +/- buttons can adjust their
display priority. The default values are quite okay though.

I asked Fluent about the leash camera. This is his opinion:
"Interesting. I find it very cool, smooth, and no problem approach. It just works. And it simulates overencumbrance penalties as a good party-based rpg should. I don't see why it's such a big point of contention for people."

As a matter of fact, I "invented" this method long before TH. For Newcomer Gold, that is. (Which is half done already). It has nothing to do with my coding skill or the lack of it.

My suggestions:
Don't buy the game until you have tried the demo. It covers 1/3 of the game for free. (save games are incompatible though)
Watch Fluent's game play videos to see if the game has anything you may enjoy.
Read the help section, please.
Read the pdf document attached on Steam.
Me and Fluent are ready to help anyone who has questions.

Dev time will be 13 years in April. It's a lot, over 60.000 hours because I worked 12-16 hours a day for many years. No weekends, nothing.
It was very demanding on many levels.

This game was made for the Fluent-type RPG-er. This is why he likes it.
I don't want to please everyone, because it's impossible.

Have a good one.

 

[The_Mask]

Food is a necessity not pizza. Pizza in many European countries costs 12-15 euros.

Technically, pizza is food. And what you're really paying for is for someone else to make it for you, even though pizza is rather easy to make by yourself.

The idea with this is that you're paying for someone else to make an adventure for you, and the bottom line is seeing the demand of pizza vs the demand of Tortured Hearts.

 

[Borian]

What comes next for you, SubBassman?

 

[SubBassman]

What comes next for you, SubBassman?

I'm creating small games to get some pocket money and practice the art of game making.
There is already one on Steam and there will be more of this kind.
Also, I've been working on Newcomer Gold for like 2-2.5 years now (mostly while waiting for TH testers).
I built the entire game from placeholder objects (planes and cubes, no actual graphics yet)
and now I'm working on ID-fying the C64 texts. I'll have to script the whole thing after. (lots of work)
The Code is about 80%, no combat yet. Every other game feature works though, even save/load.
I don't know if I can ever finish it because of the graphics. I can arrange everything else. Time doesn't
matter.
I started this project because the Ultimate Newcomer project failed. It was done by someone else,
I had nothing to with the project.
This is my promo page with additional info:
https://indiecore.club/

 

[OracleX]

Congratz with the game release. My respects for finishing this game after all these years.

 

[SubBassman]

Congratz with the game release. My respects for finishing this game after all these years.

Thank you. I'm watching Fluent's videos if there's anything to fix.
Fortunately, there is no bug yet.
I've already added a new feature on feedback. (Invert Y Axis)

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Took a brief look at Flu's YT playthrough. I like the art-style of the environs with its subdued cell-shaded look, but I just don't have it in me right now to play a long RPG. Looking for something a little different and unusual. Since I like the 3rd-person stealth style, I might play the Styx series where you play a puny little goblin sneaking up on humans and cutting them down in inventive, upgradeable ways.

 

[Darkozric]

Food is a necessity not pizza. Pizza in many European countries costs 12-15 euros.

Technically, pizza is food. And what you're really paying for is for someone else to make it for you, even though pizza is rather easy to make by yourself.

The idea with this is that you're paying for someone else to make an adventure for you, and the bottom line is seeing the demand of pizza vs the demand of Tortured Hearts.

I don't get what's your point, my initial comment was about how expensive in general is pizza in Europe, as for the game itself I prefer 4 pizzas than this shit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This is the bad kind of autism, isn't it?

No, it's the good kind. The kind we need more of.

 

[Darkozric]

This is the bad kind of autism, isn't it?

No, it's the good kind. The kind we need more of.

YOU need it not "we". Not all of us here suffering from coprophilia.

 

[Siveon]

I asked Fluent about the leash camera. This is his opinion:
"Interesting. I find it very cool, smooth, and no problem approach. It just works. And it simulates overencumbrance penalties as a good party-based rpg should. I don't see why it's such a big point of contention for people."

As a matter of fact, I "invented" this method long before TH. For Newcomer Gold, that is. (Which is half done already). It has nothing to do with my coding skill or the lack of it.

You'll very likely take Fluent's advice over many others, so this may fall on death ears since you do seem attached to this mechanic. But I'm going to frankly say this is not a hill to die on, and you should consider conventional control methods in the future if you want to actually reach the audience you are going for - as well as not bog down the conversation about your game to control methods. There's even a hint of this in Fluent's quote, as there is a point of contention.

Simply put, the leash camera has seemingly no function for how different it is to conventional controls in both the past and future. I got used to it, and it does at least function, but the last thing you want to do with controls especially for a $40 game is to tell your audience to learn something completely new and worse. Especially when your audience let's be real, are going to be people around their 30s and 40s who don't really want to contend with 'innovation'.

Maybe keep it in, but seriously consider just normal First Person controls as an option.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

If one was going to play this should they play the original 2 intallments first?