KickStarter BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION - isometric post-apocalyptic adventure from STASIS developer

[Pyke]

(RPG inspired) skills system that will allow us to play around with some very interesting ways of solving puzzles.

Woah, tell me there's melee combat and I'm backing this.

No combat Im afraid. Creating good combat loops is a huge challenge, and as it is we are pushing ourselves with this game! Next game tho...maybe... :D

 

[Infinitron]

Pyke, you like going crazy with the font sizes don't you? https://www.kickstarter.com/project...n-isometric-post-apocalyptic-ad/posts/1806213

Monday Backer Update & Kickstarter Live

Hey Guys,

We have scheduled our Kickstarter Live QA session for:

Wednesday - Feb 15
8:00 PM, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
12:00 PM, Pacific Time (PT)
3:00 PM, Eastern Time (ET)
You can see a LIVE countdown here:

https://live.kickstarter.com/broadcast/13431/overview
We won't do a backer update tomorrow, so feel free to come through on Wednesday and say HI!

You can also submit a question now at that link.

INTERVIEW
We had the pleasure of doing an HUGE interview with startingthingsup.com and Przem Wierzbicki:

A link to the entire conversation:https://www.startingthingsup.com/crowdfunding-beautiful-desolation-the-brotherhood-interviewed/

(Here are a few key questions and answers)

Przem Wierzbicki (StartingThingsUp.com): Beautiful Desolation’s setting is truly unique. I have never seen anything like it!

Chris Bischoff (THE BROTHERHOOD): I live at the tip of Africa – a stone throw away from the beach and right next to a wild nature reserve. BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION is an attempt to capture a bit of this magic around me and use it as a vehicle to tell a story. I want to show a desolate wasteland with a unique twist to it, and Africa is largely unexplored in science fiction and provides amazing potential for interesting design, characters and locations.

I was wondering. Who came up with the name? Beautiful Desolation. What a masterpiece of a name!

While brainstorming ideas for a name, I recalled that Buzz Aldrin wrote a book on his journey to the moon and called it Magnificent Desolation – since hearing it, it stuck at the back of my mind as a poetic name for a project. Joseph Kosinski called his vision for the film Oblivion “a beautiful desolation”.

With this in mind, BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION was an easy pick as a descriptive and emotive name for our game. It succinctly coveys both the descriptive nature of the project as well as the genre in only two words.

What were your most important inspirations? You have mentioned A Boy and His Dog…

I feel that science fiction has an incredible ability to distill complex ideas in simple personal stories. We grew up on Star Wars, Star Trek, and 80s sci-fi films like The Thing and ALIENS, and as you mentioned L.Q. Jones’s A Boy and His Dog (clearly inspiring POOCH) to name a few.

I think these films were largely inspiring in terms of our graphical elements and the look and feel design, especially in STASIS. But if I was to choose a single thematic inspiration for BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION, it would be Mad Max.

And how did you like the latest Mad Max?

The latest edition to the Mad Max series is probably one of the finest movies of this new century. They captured the essence of what made Max awesome and made it even better! George Miller is an incredible director and you can see that Fury Road was well planned and executed… and don’t get me started on the music! Wow.

About A Boy and His Dog. Pooch is obviously going to play a big role in the game, both mechanics- and narrative-wise. There’s a lot of games that explore this kind of theme, this kind of bond: a bond between a person and his/her animal companion (the latest one is, I believe, The Last Guardian). What’s your approach here? What makes the relation between Mark and Pooch unique? Given the fact that Pooch is a machine, there’s a lot of possibilities…

Perhaps the best recent example of this is the dependency showcased in the relationship between Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us. It is both subtle and emotional, and it builds up from the start of the game to the climatic ending that has most players crying. A core bond resonates with the audience and will develop between these characters as they journey through the game becoming increasingly reliant on each other.

Although POOCH is a mere robot, her sentience will speak to her past and we hope this explores and expands to a new territory for our stories. POOCH will assist Mark in the puzzles, but we trust that this relationship becomes more than a game mechanic. POOCH is fondly named after our pet labradoodle and we want to imbue a bit of her personality into this character, too. Can we make POOCH feel like a real anthropomorphic character? This is the challenge!

You’re also going to explore the relation between two brothers, right? Can you tell us something more?

YES! First and foremost, we see our games as a way to tell interesting stories. It is often said to “write what you know”. As brothers developing this game, we have a keen understanding on how our relationship works. Mark and Don will have separate stories through the game that are intertwined in the larger story events. Unlike the relationship between POOCH and Mark, Mark and Don have a history together, and with that comes messy, but interesting, intricacies. We hope that this gives the characters an unusual character arc as they come to terms with what has happened and how they need each other to survive.

In one of your updates, you’ve mentioned that Beautiful Desolation will emphasize exploration. How exactly?

We are still fleshing the technicalities of aspect but we want BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION to be more open than STASIS and CAYNE. We’ll be using a world that will have multiple places that can be explored at any time rather than keeping the player locked in an area.

I have also noticed that you have this Fallout-kind of world map mechanic in the game (I mean, it resembles the map from the original Fallouts; God, how I’ve missed it)…

Yes, Fallout is a massive stylistic influence on BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION, but I’d say that Star Control 2 is a larger design influence. Star Control 2 had a world that just felt gigantic, and you were overwhelmed when you first saw the star map – we want to capture that feeling again!

Will the game feature any action sequences? Are we going to see combat? Stealth? Something turn-based, possibly?

Not in the traditional RPG or ARPG sense of the word. We’re staying close to the point-and-click routes of combat, through subterfuge rather than direct action.

What about the conversations? Choices?

We’ve experimented with a conversation system similar to the one found Oxenfree, but it requires large amounts of dialogue – written and recorded. Considering all of our characters are voiced, we’ll probably be sticking to the same automatic conversation system found in STASIS and CAYNE...

Please read even the entire interview here: https://www.startingthingsup.com/crowdfunding-beautiful-desolation-the-brotherhood-interviewed/
Chat on Wednesday!

Chris

 

[Pyke]

I don't know what you're talking about.

 

[J_C]

You are almost there Pyke. I admit I was a bit worried at first because a week ago you were only sitting at around 80K. I thought you might miss your mark. But you really did great in the last few days, congrats!

 

[Pyke]

Thanks man. We got some awesome shout outs from the other campaigns that pushed us over the edge. I gotta say that InXile and Obsidian have me as a fan for LIFE.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Looks like you guys are going to make it. Really happy for you (and myself for getting to play this beautiful game in the future)!

 

[Infinitron]

Thanks man. We got some awesome shout outs from the other campaigns that pushed us over the edge. I gotta say that InXile and Obsidian have me as a fan for LIFE.

Can you tell which shout-out gave you the most pledges?

 

[Starwars]

Funded, congrats Pyke!

 

[Infinitron]

You can now contribute to our fundraiser safely: http://www.rpgcodex.net/campaigns.php?id=18

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...n-isometric-post-apocalyptic-ad/posts/1807340

100%

WE THANK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU.
Nic and I are humbled by your faith in our vision for BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION.

We're certain that you're going to love the world we're cooking up.

Nothing easy is worth doing and nothing worth doing is easy; so now the hard work begins.

We're working on a stretch goal announcement tomorrow (you know us, it has to be fancy).


Chris & Nic

Let's chat on Kickstarter Live (Wednesday - Feb 15):
8:00 PM, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) / 12:00 PM, Pacific Time (PT) / 3:00 PM, Eastern Time (ET)

P.S.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the folks at Torment: Tides of Numenera,
Wasteland 3 and Pillars of Eternity 2 : Deadfire.

PoE: Deadfire is crowd funding now (http://goo.gl/AIgXF2).
Torment is on Steam Early Access (http://store.steampowered.com/app/272270/).
Wasteland 3 (https://wasteland3.inxile-entertainment.com/) still has late backing open.

Each of these games have had a massive influence on DESOLATION - check em' out!
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan

 

[lightbane]

Incline incoming! After a few years of waiting, that is.

Hopefully this time we get multiple endings, each one worse than the other, of course.

 

[Metal Hurlant]

I'm hoping the fundraiser will get there.

 

[evdk]

Conratulations, Pyke

 

[StaticSpine]

Pyke



Congrats!

 

[Misco Jones]

Congrats!

Let's see the stretch goal.

 

[Pyke]

Thanks man. We got some awesome shout outs from the other campaigns that pushed us over the edge. I gotta say that InXile and Obsidian have me as a fan for LIFE.

Can you tell which shout-out gave you the most pledges?

We will be doing an in depth look at that when do a postmortem on the campaign. The Torment and Pillars one netted us a good 7k or so - its hard to tell which came from where because the are so close together - but we will check the exact timing and pledges a bit later.
We definitely got more from the campaigns that are ongoing in comparison to their size...so like WL3 and Torment were bumps - but at the scale of the people they went out to we expected a bigger one. But with things like Banner Saga and UnDungeon there was almost the same spike even with their much smaller backer numbers.
I suppose its a pretty obvious conclusion that people who are currently backing projects are more likely to back projects than people who backed something a while ago and have to be reminded of it.

 

[paintinggrey]

By the way Undungeon looks interesting, need to keep an eye on that one.

Congrats Pyke, so excited.

 

[Belegarsson]

Hey Pyke, just wondering are you guys doing PayPal pledge after Kickstarter ends? Would love to see my dumbass name in the game's credit in 2019 but I'm living on life support atm.

 

[Pyke]

http://desolationgame.com/backthisgame/

Just gone up. :D

 

[Belegarsson]

http://desolationgame.com/backthisgame/

Just gone up. :D

I love you you magnificent omnipotence.

 

[Ovplain]

Congratulations!

Can't wait to play the game.

 

[Boleskine]

Interview with Pyke at AdventureGamers

 

[Pyke]

This isnt up on the Kickstarter site yet - but heres yer Stretch Goal #1!

World Codex
Every place has a history, a story. That's a theme we want to push forward with BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION. We want players to explore the world we've created, make new discoveries and uncover the history of all the exciting places you visit.
The Codex is Dr. Mark Leslie's field notebook that will grow each time a new animal, plant (or the like) crosses his path. It will then be updated with drawings, facts and other information about the find in front of you. The Codex will include Mark's field drawings, photographs, notes - and even voiced entries.
It may also help you learn the customs of different tribes and factions: Who are friends or foes? What foods they eat? What has happened to them in the epochs since the Penrose appeared?
Sometimes these will be world building, and at other times will offer up clues to help you on your way. All while uncovering the secrets of BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION's technology, from strange constructs that pierce the sky to small alien-looking medical implants.
The lore of our world is just waiting to be unearthed!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...n-isometric-post-apocalyptic-ad/posts/1808200

STRETCH GOAL - THE WORLD CODEX

Hey Backers,

We're pleased to announce our first stretch goal:

THE WORLD CODEX
$ 135,000
Every place has a history, a story. That's a theme we want to push forward with BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION. We want players to explore the world we've created, make new discoveries and uncover the history of all the exciting places you visit.

The Codex is Dr. Mark Leslie's field notebook that will grow each time a new animal, plant (or the like) crosses his path. It will then be updated with drawings, facts and other information about the find in front of you. The Codex will include Mark's field drawings, photographs, notes - and even voiced entries.

It may also help you learn the customs of different tribes and factions: Who are friends or foes? What foods they eat? What has happened to them in the epochs since the Penrose appeared?
Sometimes these will be world building, and at other times will offer up clues to help you on your way. All while uncovering the secrets of BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION's technology, from strange constructs that pierce the sky to small alien-looking medical implants.



The lore of our world is just waiting to be unearthed!








We are now accepting PayPal pledges here:
http://desolationgame.com/backthisgame/

KICKSTARTER LIVE
We are going live soon! Check our Kickstarter page for details (ask a question and we will answer it best we can!).

8:00 PM, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) / 12:00 PM, Pacific Time (PT) / 3:00 PM, Eastern Time (ET)


-Chris

 

[vortex]

It's live:
https://live.kickstarter.com/christ...tasis-cayne-and-desolation-brothers-questions