Information Kickstarter Round-up: Liege, Void of Darkness, UnderTale

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Kickstarter; Liege; UnderTale; Void of Darkness

Three new RPG -- including (gasp) JRPG-like -- projects have launched this week, and I'm here to tell you about them. First comes Void of Darkness, which is on IndieGoGo and thankfully going for fixed, not flexible funding. Asking for a mere $5,000, Void of Darkness presents itself as a "2d Space Combat, Trading, and Exploration RPG, inspired by Starflight 1 & 2." Which is a mighty cool concept, if you ask me.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/void-of-darkness

Starflight 1 & 2 by Binary Systems are some of my fondest memories of gaming. Since then, although other space games have been excellent in their own right, none have captured the feel of that 'little ship exploring a big universe' like Starflight did. A fan-made attempt at Starflight 3 has not materialized, and as I do not have the rights to create an official Starflight sequel, the next best thing I can do is create a project inspired by it. Hence Void of Darkness began.

If successful, VoD might be as close to a sequel to Starflight 2 that its fans could get. But this project is not only about Starflight fans, Void of Darkness will be a space game which any fan of space games can enjoy.

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$10 gets you a digital copy of the game as well as beta access. More info about it here.

Next comes Liege, a tactical Japanese-style RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. The only other Kickstarter project I'm aware of that comes close is Telepath Tactics, which we've already covered here.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/codagames/liege

It looks nice, but it also seems a bit simplistic to me, although I'm fully aware I'm basically judging the book by its cover here. I do like the following bit, though:

The game emphasizes spatial elements over leveling and equipment, so you won’t be able to grind until your party is effectively invincible. Your units will always be vulnerable; in fact, a single direct strike to an undefended unit will often prove fatal. Unused actions during your turn will determine your unit’s defensive ability during enemy turns. As a result, you will always need to balance evasion and defense, with well-timed, coordinated offense to survive.​

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$10 gets you a copy. With more than $10,000 already collected, it doesn't look like Liege is going to have any trouble reaching its $15,000 goal. Support it here if you feel like it.

Finally there's UnderTale, "a traditional role-playing game where no one has to get hurt," somewhat similar to Mother and Earthbound (and fully funded already).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002143342/undertale

Existing features:

- Fighting is wholly unnecessary: negotiate your way out of danger using the unique battle system.
- Time your attacks for extra damage, then dodge enemy attacks in a style reminiscent of top-down shooters.
- Use the format of a video game to tell the story: traditional fourth-wall breaking tropes such as "SAVING," "EXP," and "LV" are an intergrated part of the game's world.
- Obligatory puzzles. Lots and lots of obligatory puzzles.
- Original art and soundtrack brimming with personality.
- Captivating story with an emphasis on humor.

Planned features:

- Become friends with all of the bosses!
- Hilariously bad dating sim segments!
- Seriously, you can literally have a robot husband.

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Be sure to give the demo a try!

 

[General Maxson]

Void of Darkness seems interesting. I was always wondering why doesn't someone kickstart Starflight or Star Control 2 like game in this kickstarter craze. But it seems they aren't doing so well.

 

[Zed]

Where's Blood and Rust, the highly anticipated spiritual successor to Arcanum - the ultimate tactical combat RPG?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The link to Undertale's demo is b0rked

http://undertale.com/images/windows.png

 

[Crooked Bee]

The link to Undertale's demo is b0rked

http://undertale.com/images/windows.png

Fixed! Thx.

 

[Excidium]

Finally there's UnderTale, "a traditional role-playing game where no one has to get hurt"

Codex Dream game? I hope rat diplomacy isn't an exclusive backer skill.

 

[kaizoku]

Where's Blood and Rust, the highly anticipated spiritual successor to Arcanum - the ultimate tactical combat RPG?

Blood and Rust?
That sounds like a steampunk diablo.


It's going to be called Arcanum 2: A Voyage to the Center of the Earth

 

[kaizoku]

Liege looks very interesting. Beautiful artwork, good music, party based, turn based, has a story and supposedly mature themes, but... it screwed up on the combat
Simplistic stat system and I'm not sure if it even has a level up and inventory system. Not to mention C&C.

 

[gromit]

...Mike Wazowski?

 

[Alchemist]

Void of Darkness has potential but I see no mention of planetary landing / planetside exploration. It won't be a true Starflight successor if it lacks that. Maybe that could be a stretch goal? I'm a huge fan of Starflight and have been waiting forever for someone to make a proper successor with a modern interface. I'll keep an eye on this one.

I can't help but think Indiegogo campaigns are inherently gimped financially though. Too bad they couldn't get it onto KS.

 

[lightbane]

Did someone say something Earthbound? Whoa, it has a demo! I'll try to post my impressions later.

 

[Karellen]

So, the Undertale demo is pretty great. Good use of the visual style and very nice, Earthbound-y mood. I'm impressed. If the rest of the game can keep it up, it's great incline for indie JRPGs.

 

[Al3xand3r]

Liege looks fantastic, no clue where you come up with too simple.

If anything looks wise it seems like an SRPG (despite saying combat occurs in the game world, not separate arenas), ie, more complex.

Love the sprite work though, can't wait for this and Telepath Tactics (another SRPG style game).

Off topic (since you mentioned Earthbound and it reminds me of it slightly thanks to its quirky elements) have you lot played Dubloon? It's an amazing little freeware pirate themed JRPG style game with its own twists. Older, but awesome. I just happened to go back to it recently, since I never finished it and it still surprises me. All the little sub systems and mechanics, even if not all of them great (the shmup sections could have been better for example), just make it feel like a professional retro effort. Despite the style the interface is fully PC and mouse driven all the way too (though getting to the edges of an area can be weird in fullscreen where you can't move the cursor beyond the borders, it's a very minor issue and nonexistent if you play it windowed or use the arrow keys to move your character around).

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=13156.0

 

[lightbane]

Finished the Undertale demo. I dunno what to say, it certainly needs tons of stuff to be fixed. To start, if you must use fixed save points, the very least you can do is to allow multiple slots to save in. Second, despite saying it takes inspiration from Earthbound, random encounters are totally unavoidable and invisible, you can't see the enemy unlike what happens in Earthbound/Mother 3. Third, the Spare command doesn't work as it should, according to the manual sparing enemies would give you xp and stuff like it happens when you win a battle in the traditional way (aka killing everyone) but it doesn't seem to work for me.
However, it has good points: Puzzles (don't expect much though), the game keeps tracks of what you do (in some cases), the sprites are okay, the music is acceptable and, lastly but not least, "evil" actions are possible

Spoiler

There are few things as satisfying as backstabbing someone so starved for company that it tried to befriend you even though it knew it was futile. For extra cruelty the character calls you out and claims you're as bad as the monsters as you kill in its dying breath

 

[thesheeep]

Hmmm, Void Of Darkness is IMO a great example of how to not do a campaign video.
Only text, not a single gameplay demonstration or even talk about it.
Not even Obsidian would get much money that way.

What the heck? Most people will just view the video, not be interested at all and ignore the campaign.
Only very, very few will read the (actually interesting and with good information) text below after that video.

 

[GlutenBurger]

Second, despite saying it takes inspiration from Earthbound, random encounters are totally unavoidable and invisible, you can't see the enemy unlike what happens in Earthbound/Mother 3.

I didn't notice any comment saying he took actual inspiration from Earthbound, just that the demo has been compared to it. Which could have been nothing more than him showing it to her mother and having her say,

"That's very sweet, dear, it looks like that cute Earthland game you used to play."

The demo is mildly entertaining, but doesn't give the same type of satisfaction I get from a good RPG. I think the mechanic where you're trying to puzzle out the routine to defeat the monsters peacefully, and using shmup reflexes between rounds to buy yourself more time to work it out, has some potential to be rather nifty if he manages to keep the variety of monsters feeling fresh throughout the game.

 

[JustinVoD]

Hi everyone, I am the developer for Void of Darkness, thanks for mentioning the game and the kind words and constructive criticism. To speak to the comments in order, it is planned to have a planetary component such as that which existed in Starflight. However, being only one person, I wanted to concentrate first on the space part and get it right before expanding into what is virtually a second game in and of itself. This means that if there is enough interest in the final game (not the campaign itself but the actual final game available for purchase on various digital sites) then the first expansion will include this.

VoD is actually the first of a trilogy of games, the story was broken down into three parts, this being the introductory chapter.

Void of Darkness seems interesting. I was always wondering why doesn't someone kickstart Starflight or Star Control 2 like game in this kickstarter craze. But it seems they aren't doing so well.

This is in part to do with the other comment about the lacklustre pitch video. The blame in the end lies squarely with me as the project creator but I ran with some very bad advice on that one and not so good help. A friend offered to do the pitch video 2 weeks before the campaign. Up to three days before they had not come through and decided to throw that together at the last minute. No gameplay in the main video is a disaster of epic proportions, but he felt that there were so many videos available otherwise that it would speak for itself and this video was merely an introduction and the prospective pledgers would check out the rest of the content and then make a decision. Wrong. People want to see what I have to show up front there and then, not offsite.

But as we all know it is true, people will only give something that is so obscure as it is already very few seconds of their time, if they aren't grabbed in those seconds, they won't go further.

It is my intention to edit the pitch video with the current gameplay videos I am doing, so it will have the pitch video roll into several minutes of gameplay video. This won't help to reclaim the potentially lost backers, but hopefully in the remaining weeks it would serve as a better pitch video than the original.

Also it is true, Indiegogo is not the platform of choice for persons looking to back games. It seems there are hundreds of thousands of people on kickstarter who have what I term monthly budgets for backing, and it is true that although the pitch video is lame and the campaign obscure, it would definitely have more backers still if it were on KS.

I am a member of some space game communities and they know me well and trust me, so this is probably the reason it has any backers at all because of that respect I've built within the communities as I blogged about the progress of the game since February. Then there are people who email me and say put it on KS and I'll back it, I don't like Indiegogo, then there lots of people out there with misconceptions about indiegogo who believe the only campaign type is flexible one.

I still believe that with a good enough viral campaign among a close knit group of backers utilizing all the social media at their disposal that VoD could still makes its goal. If everyone who backs gets a friend, who gets a friend who gets a friend, it would work. I estimate VoD would probably be backed at probably 200 backers since the average pledge is about $30 right now.

It would get posted on more sites such as this as well.

But by this evening the new pitch video should be edited with gameplay elements, and I'll seek your feed back on it.

VoD is a stubborn project though, the Indiegogo campaign isn't the end. It has a story to tell, and hopefully the players will review it as a story worth being read.

Thanks again, you can email me with any questions or start a thread or post here, I'll keep an eye out

Always happy to discuss VoD and Starflight with anyone.

-Justin
Project Creator
Programmer