Vapourware Asylum (from creator of Scratches) - coming March 6th

[garren]

Backers could get access to some trello boards with info and pics but I can't be assed to make another useless account ill never use again.

 

[Boleskine]

There is a new backers only update.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/agustincordes/asylum-kickstart-the-horror/posts/1724444

The summary is:

• They changed the engine from Unity to Unreal 4 due to performance and other issues.
• Asylum Dagon (engine) development was in hiatus "for awhile" until a developer who is also a fan "took over the reins".
• They're making another game - a "small side project" similar to Serena but will be commercial. Not using Kickstarter money (private investment). It will be "cool news" to learn who's behind this.

Asylum was first announced something like 7 years ago. The Kickstarter was almost 4 years ago when the game was said to be almost finished. Two engine changes in the last couple years. Development of the open source Dagon engine stopped for awhile. New developer/programmer joined Senscape and took the lead with Dagon.

The Kickstarter was for $120,000 and I doubt any of that is left. It sounds like the previous team member(s) left once the money ran out but that's just a guess. This new side project is probably necessary to raise more funds to finish Asylum. There's been very little demonstrated progress in the last 2-3 years, and they wasted all their time trying to make the game run in Unity only to abandon that effort.

Asylum looked very good in their Dagon engine. Was it necessary to switch to Unity? I remember one reason was to help model some 3D characters, but if the game isn't fully 3D then doing pre-rendered animations might have been better. This game probably doesn't have that many NPC interactions anyway so it seems like a waste to spend all this time trying to do real-time 3D characters especially since it made the game run poorly, and after 2 years in Unity they couldn't find a way to optimize it.

I don't know if Asylum is vaporware but it's getting close. If Hero-U and Spaceventure come out first, .

Also a Halloween trailer for the game.

 

[Whisky]

Yeah, I've lost all hope on this one.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Yeah, I've lost all hope on this one.

That's p. good immersion.

 

[trustno1code]

• Asylum development was in hiatus "for awhile" until a developer who is also a fan "took over the reins".

This was about the Dagon engine, not Asylum.

 

[J_C]

They fucking chanced the engine AGAIN? First they switched the engine to Unity, then now they changed it to Unreal Engine, meanwhile they have spent money on their own Dagon Engine, which they appearantly won't use.

This game is the epitome of vaporware.

 

[Boleskine]

• Asylum development was in hiatus "for awhile" until a developer who is also a fan "took over the reins".

This was about the Dagon engine, not Asylum.

You're right - I misread that part.

 

[Barbarian]

Such mismanagement. They could have released a quality product years ago and could be sitting on returns right now, but are instead working against time and without money to deliver something which will eventually be subpar(if it gets released at all) because of stupid decisions. 2d engine and pre-rendere characters are fine. Scratches was developed by Cordes basically alone and with no money. This time he had over 100k to deliver a game that was basically nearly finished and he failed spetacularly.

That is the thing with giving money to indie devs. Without suits breathing down their neck they have the creativity to create good things, but they don't have the discipline and common sense to pull it off.

 

[Barbarian]

Btw, I'm glad his second kickstarter failed. Imagine if it had succeeded. Guess people wised up the kickstarter scam and didn't pay up a second time to someone who hasn't delivered yet.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

And he wasted even more time by making a game about a transgender. Cordes has gone full SJW.

 

[Boleskine]

If the second kickstarter was successful maybe that would have forced Cordes to wrap up Asylum so the artists and programmers could move to the Lovecraft game.

I don't understand how you go from almost finished to three years of two engine changes. For comparison to the above trailer here is the original kickstarter video. At 2:15 you can see a few character models. They don't look great but passable enough considering the environments look much better with strong atmosphere and attention to detail.



At 1:23 in the new teaser I posted above you can see the same character and animation in a hallway as from the 4-year-old video (at 2:27). I don't see much of a difference between the two clips. Is the new teaser using the old footage? If so, wouldn't it make more sense to show the updated character model if it looks better?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Ah yes...Scratches. One of the most atmospheric games released in the past 10 years, marred by some of the most retarded game design decisions of the past 20 years.

It's not the Myst-like movement around the house that bothered me, it's the fact that the game rarely bothers telling you what you should be doing, but when it does tell you, it requires bone-headed solutions to the most basic problems.

By far the best example of this is the safe. There is a safe in the manor. Jerry the realtor knows this, and he even has the combination. And yet, even though the game points out that Jerry wants half of every valuable item that could be found in the house, Jerry doesn't bother to tell Michael that there is a safe in the house because :reasons:. The player is left just looking around clicking at things and hopefully spot the one painting among dozens that happens to have hinges on its side. Only after the player discovers the safe in-game will Jerry cough up the combination.

Then there's the case of the rope. A certain room can only be reached by hanging a rope outside of the house. Let's ignore the fact that the rope, once ready, is almost invisible against the dim and brown background, and focus on using it. The player clicks once, the game starts babbling about doubts. The player clicks again, more doubts. Only on the third try does the game actually let the player use the rope. Considering that every other puzzle in the game so far has involved pixel-hunting and "you can't solve this stupidly obvious puzzle any other way than the game wants you to"-solutions, this does nothing but tell the player that he must do something else first...except he doesn't. He just needs to try harder.

What about those stupidly obvious puzzles? I present the case of the lantern. There are no light sources anywhere in the manor, except for a lantern that has no oil. At one point I find myself in a dark room with lots of dirty cans, and one that looks like an oil can. I can pick up the oil can, but I can't use it to fuel the lantern, not even a little bit. So where can I find oil for the lantern? Among the other dirty cans is a large can of oil, but the game will only tell me that if I wipe it clean first. Even someone as thick-headed as Michael should be able to identify a large container of oil, even though it's smudged and dirty. The microscopic detail that the cans are dirty, and I just happen to have a rag will only become clear after players have realized that the only way to progress in this stupid game is to click everything on everything.

Want more? Michael looking for candles. This stumped me for quite a while as the game wanted me to explore the house and get a feel for my surroundings at the same time (which I did) but because I missed one drawer in the dining room I couldn't proceed past this point. I found half-a-dozen unique books in the bookshelves, I went through a dozen drawers with absolutely nothing in them, but because I didn't click on one more empty drawer I was barred from advancing in the game.

I don't care how much "genius" the developer demonstrates in building up suspense and frightening moments, if you can't build a decent game around it you shouldn't be in the game industry to begin with. Sadly that seems to be exactly the case with Asylum. Years in the making, 2 engine switches and nothing to show for it yet? Nope, I'm not having it.

 

[Barbarian]

I don't think this guy will actually manage to deliver a game at this rate. It will be fun to see the drama unfold in a couple of years I guess.

If he didn't have the benefit of a favorable currency exchange rate and living cheaply in Argentina this would have failed much sooner.

 

[garren]

I did like scratches for the atmosphere, it was great and I've always enjoyed exploring mysterious houses in games. I like games that have this big, singular location that you slowly crack open. However I agree with Unkillable Cat that some of the "puzzles" were... shit. Like the oil can for example, I had to use a walkthrough because I did try to get oil from it, but couldn't, and I also tried everything else in the whole goddamn house. Yeah, use a fucking rag on the oil can before you can take the oil.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Stuff

My favourite Scratches "puzzle" is how you have to find one exact specific newspaper to put under a door at one point

despite there being stacks of newspapers lying around in every fucking corner of the house

 

[trustno1code]

Years in the making, 2 engine switches and nothing to show for it yet?

They released an Alpha (~1.5 years ago ) with about 1/4th of the game, and a VIP version with "the (near) full extent" of the asylum.
Without any of the actual gameplay, just a temporary quest to add flow to the exploration, but still.

 

[A user named cat]

Seems silly to knock Scratches when almost all adventure games feature some asinine puzzles that halt progress with completely illogical solutions. There's a shitload worse in The Longest Journey and especially Grim Fandango which are also great despite many of their nonsensical faults. To me it's always been the turd sandwich you must swallow when playing these kind of games. Don't even get me started on games which feature mandatory slide puzzles, fucking Still Life.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Seems silly to knock Scratches when almost all adventure games feature some asinine puzzles that halt progress with completely illogical solutions. There's a shitload worse in The Longest Journey and especially Grim Fandango which are also great despite many of their nonsensical faults. To me it's always been the turd sandwich you must swallow when playing these kind of games. Don't even get me started on games which feature mandatory slide puzzles, fucking Still Life.

You're referring to the trope known as Adventure Game Logic, IIRC. Yes, many adventure games suffer from this.

But Scratches takes this to a whole new level. We're dealing with mundane, everyday situations that can be resolved in numerous ways, even with the items strewn about the house - but the game only accepts the one solution that the author thought of, and offers no concessions. Every drawer must be searched, only that one everyday item must be used to solve the puzzle, you cannot look in that particular place for that lost item until the game tells you to. And that's before we factor in that while adventure game protagonists are usually a little dim-witted, Michael seems to be a "special needs" case - no preparation for a visit to a house he's never been to, and therefore has no idea whether it's currently habitable or not, and seems to be a prude in general. He spends most of Day 1 on the phone whining to Jerry about this and that is broken - to the point that Jerry picks up the phone at one point with the snarky: "Let me guess - Michael?" So the author seems fully aware of this, yet doesn't see a reason to act on it.

The sad thing is, I've seen almost that exact same mentality from a Urugayan game developer, which suggests that this is a mindset originating from South America.

 

[Boleskine]

The sad thing is, I've seen almost that exact same mentality from a Urugayan game developer, which suggests that this is a mindset originating from South America.

Let's build a wall around South America and make adventure games great again.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Barbarian]

No words. Guess this guy thinks it is acceptable to deliver the game a decade after promised(if he actually delivers).

Kickstarter is dead because of this shit.

 

[Boleskine]

New update

Android and iOS ports confirmed (if they weren't before).

We need a bit more time to put all of this together. Asylum is performing well on all of these platforms, and the idea is to let you test all of them soon. There’s several rough edges that need to be sorted out, especially for VR – if you have an Android phone with a gyroscope, chances are you’ll be able to try the game with any headset (including that lousy one I purchased for myself). We came up with an interface that allows you to play the game completely “hands free”. It’s quite neat.

We’re going to need until late January or so to upload a new backer exclusive demo. After this initial test phase, we’re going to pause and reevaluate the current situation of the project to give you a proper estimate for a release date.

There's also a short video of the commercial side project mentioned in the last update. It's called "Codename: TOMT" and looks like some kind of VR first-person war game.

 

[ortucis]

The summary is:

• They changed the engine from Unity to Unreal 4 due to Unity being a pile of shit.

Hmm, interesting.

 

[Barnabas]

Hopefully it's not a point and click game

 

[Boleskine]

Sorry for the bump. I was bored and checking the KS comments for updates.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ror/comments?cursor=15831366#comment-15831365

Agustín Cordes 2-time creator 2 days ago
Why are you so convinced the game won't be released? You seem to know more than us!

If I keep coming back here, addressing every concern, posting lengthy updates, showing progress in the development, it's because I care. Believe me when I tell you that *I* want to finish Asylum as much as you want to play it. Definitely understand the frustration and no offense taken -- I see you're angry because you also care, and I won't disappoint you.

VIP backers can confirm a good chunk of Asylum is playable and most locations are near-final. We're primarily working on the game logic now (which yes, it's still a lot of work and is taking much time), but there's a *huge* deal of content finished.

We simply won't give up.

If "game logic" means all the puzzles and progression in the game, it feels like the status hasn't really changed for 2 years since the VIP alpha came out. This wouldn't be surprising since most of that time has been spent on two engine changes.

Also, in that post Cordes seems to be acknowledging the possibility that Asylum wouldn't be completed. He's saying he wants to finish the game and that he won't give up, but he stops short of saying it will definitely come out. Maybe I'm reading too far into things.