KickStarter Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness - Tales of the Moon Cult expansion on the way

[Viata]

 

[hello friend]

mods will bring Crushmaster back

 

[ERYFKRAD]

mods will bring Crushmaster back

By Crom I certainly hope so.

 

[Mustawd]

Kickstarter is live. Video is actually not bad.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grapeocean/black-geyser-couriers-of-darkness

Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness
An isometric, party-based, real-time with pause RPG in a fantasy world infested by greed and envy. Coming to Windows, Mac and Linux.

About

Chaos and despair spread throughout the Kingdom of Isilmerald. Its desperate people cry out, praying to the gods for help. But the force they face is no mere plague of the undead, or demonic attack… Something far more sinister, far more primal is afoot. Avarice!

Will you yield to the dark tendrils of desire coiling around your heart? Become an agent of greed and usher the kingdom into chaos.

Isilmerald, once a kingdom of peace and righteousness.
Or rebuke its seductive advances? Vow to discover the truth of the madness and restore the kingdom to its rightful glory? Temptation beckons you to become one of its couriers... or dares you to stop it. The choice is yours.

Spoiler

Inspired by Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and other classics, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness is an isometric, party-based, single-player RPG set in the new fantasy world of Yerengal. The story focuses on Isilmerald, the largest, most racially diverse kingdom in Yerengal ruled by a human lineage. The game is coming to Windows, Mac and Linux on Steam and GoG. Key features include:

• Greed. It's spreading all the time in the kingdom, directly affecting gameplay. You can slow this process with your actions—or speed it up if you prefer.
• Party of up to 5 characters. You start with a single protagonist. Additional NPCs join you later if you choose to accept them. Every NPC boasts a rich, complex personality and past.
• Choose from several races, classes and skills during character generation.
• Real-time-with-pause (RTwP) gameplay: pause the game at any time.
• Rich lore and storyline. Hundreds of quests.
• Tactical combat. Powerful magic. Clear, slot-based spell system.
• Deep NPC interactions. Complex dialogues and persuasion.
• Hand-made, beautiful graphics.
• Free-roaming exploration in wilderness and subterranean areas.

Subterranean passages are not for the faint of heart. They may seem abandoned at first, but by the time you realize you're not alone, it may be too late.

Choose your playing style
Whenever a creature acts greedily in the kingdom, the power of Zornilsa, the goddess of greed, grows. Your actions are no exception. Keep this in mind when controlling your party (rewards, looting, donations in temples etc.). As Zornilsa gets stronger, the world becomes more chaotic, directly affecting gameplay:

• Prices go up as merchants lose interest in keeping a stable marketplace.
• NPCs become suspicious and unfriendly, making positive interactions more difficult.
• Law-abiding citizens may end up as desperate outlaws prone to attack.
• Loot Scavengers and hostile adventurer parties may appear after battles and attempt to seize your loot.
• Vineyards and manors tempt greed-infested groups and individuals, becoming a flashpoint for their hidden—and eventually open—conflicts.

Isilmerald countryside is a land of vineyards and traditions. Though everything seems peaceful in this vineyard, greed has begun to silently infest people's minds.
Your approach to greed allows a variety of different playing styles, greatly increasing replayability. For example, if you take all loot and accept quest rewards every single time, avarice will infest the kingdom faster, triggering an opposite process: NPCs will offer you less valuable rewards for quests, and—while you will never miss a powerful item from a villain—you might miss some of the finest wares from merchants. Shops will get extremely expensive, and may even go bankrupt and close shop.

The curse of greed may become so strong that it causes the dead to come back as possessed objects or corpses to reclaim their previous wealth.
When one door closes, another opens—chaos has its advantages and disadvantanges.You can become influential and powerful regardless of the path you choose. No path is inferior or superior to the others. Being extremely greedy will lead the kingdom into much greater chaos by the game's final chapters, allowing you to fish in troubled waters or become a ruthless tyrant in the eyes of the people. Being generous, on the other hand, will bring you different types of challenges and allies while you strive to become powerful enough to openly defy a dark goddess. The choice is yours—and so are the consequences.

Being greedy or generous isn't the same as being good or evil in the Kingdom of Isilmerald. Sometimes these moral concepts will overlap in extreme situations, but greed isn't necessarily evil, and you can be evil without being greedy.

Plant Item: a new skill for thieves and swindlers
In a greed-infested kingdom, where tension and distrust among the people of Isilmerald fester, cunning and subtlety are the player's ally. The Plant Item skill offers a chance to get results without a direct conflict, or give an edge to an unavoidable one.

This skill is the opposite of pickpocketing. It allows the Thief or Swindler class to silently plant certain items into the clothing of other characters. For example:

• You can hide poisonous or sleeping powder under the armor of guards, which will start to affect them after a designated amount of time.
• Your character can steal jewelry from an NPC, hide it in the pockets of another NPC and then accuse him of stealing! These types of scenarios can instigate a conflict between two creatures, giving the Thief and Swindler classes much greater influence in the game compared to previous RPGs.
• While Plant Item is tremendously useful in the right hands, it's not always predictable. Some NPCs may react in unexpected ways when you try to incriminate or fool them. E.g. drunks in taverns may simply ignore you.

Brewing and Drying with dozens of ingredients
Healing potions too expensive due to greedy merchants? Brew your own! Can't enter a building because the guards are too powerful? Use the Plant Item skill and surprise them with something poisonous!

• You can brew potions from a large variety of plant and insect ingredients. Being creative or open to dabbling in the dark arts can reveal new and unusual ingredients.
• Drying plants and insects allows you to create powders. You can use powders directly as an attack in combat, or for non-combat purposes. For example, powders can be put on the skin of unsuspecting creatures by using the Plant Item skill.
• You can combine (mix) powders to create new powders.
• Brewing & Drying is available to all classes (class-specific bonuses apply).

Forests are a great place to collect herbs, but rare ones may be guarded by locals.

Throwing as a short-ranged attack
Can't create your favorite combat powders due to missing or overpriced ingredients? Then use what nature gives you, for free. Throwing a handful of sand at your enemy may cause temporary blindness upon a successful hit. Other substances, such as salt, will cause a prolonged pain effect for severely injured opponents after the substance enters their wounds.

Throwing powder at your enemies can be effective, be it ordinary sand or a powerful magical essence. For example, Powder of Stunning is an easy way to knock low-level opponents unconscious.

Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness offers carefully designed, engaging quests with different outcomes and long-term consequences.

When you receive quests from NPCs, there is a good chance they are already infected by greed to some extent. Since it's often impossible to tell the severity of their obsession, you should take everything they say with a grain of salt. Intelligent NPCs may be well-aware of their obsession and able to disguise it while manipulating others.

This famous tavern was built among the roots of an ancient tree. Taverns offer the easiest, but also the most unreliable way to gather information and get new quests. Hints are typically inaccurate, and quests are often not what they seem to be.
If you aren't careful, you can easily find yourself misled or double-crossed, resulting in an outcome you wouldn't want (for example, innocents have died while you want to play good in your current walkthrough).

Very few creatures are unaffected by the divine curse. These include spirits (souls) and mortals who were already insane before the era of greed. It's not easy to understand what they say or want from you, but they are unlikely to lie to you; their hints and quests are expected to be more genuine.

An insane wizard, whose greed is not divinely inspired and is restricted exclusively to a single fetish. This NPC will help you greatly, if you can speak his language.

Though you may choose to play lone wolf, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness allows for a party of up to five characters, with player assignable party formations.

Yerengal is filled with deep, engaging joinable NPCs with extensive backstories and rich personalities. Some who join your party may even be famous characters of Isilmerald.

Keep in mind that greed will affect your party members as well—in different ways and to a different extent, depending on their characters and personal desires. This may result in unexpected situations and conflicts within your party.

Tactical combat is one of the key features enabled by a good party.

Yerengal
When the mother and father supreme gods forged the universe, one planet stood out among them all... Yerengal. Rich with diversity of life, terrain and climate, the gods swelled with pride over their creation. In time, it seemed only fitting they would choose Yerengal as their testing ground for intelligent life. Filled with hope and excitement, they gave birth to the mortal races including: humans, dwarves, elves, feldegugs (white elves) and the mysterious rillows.

Yerengal gives home to several civilized races
In time, the children of the gods spread out populating every corner of Yerengal. From the northern icy tundra of the Jotnar, to the burning dunes of the Eastern Empires and beyond the endless Zarndur Sea.

Isilmerald, a kingdom of mortal lineage
As mortal races proliferated in Yerengal, gods often intervened... Some acted benevolent, others sought only amusement, while yet others held dark motives all their own. Over the years this godly interference led to various demigods coming to power across the land.

A melting pot of mortal races, Isilmerald found strength in their differences, united together and resisted demigod influence at every turn. Truly impressed by the people's valor, the supreme father god blessed the kingdom, granting them good fortune for as long as they remained a harmonious people. Ruled throughout the centuries by a purely mortal human lineage, the kingdom has come to represent justice, righteousness and freedom in Yerengal.

Isilmerald awaits you with dozens of known and unknown wilderness areas to explore.
A capital city preparing for war
Isilmerald and its capital city, Isilbright, are central to the game. The royal court, King Velianrick and its inhabitants will all be familiar recurring elements to players.

Though Isilmerald has enjoyed its godly blessing of good fortune, it has not gone unaffected by the greed sweeping across Yerengal. Like all other kingdoms, its people fall prey to the uncanny affliction. In recent days tensions have splintered the kingdom in two—Isilbright controlling the northern half, the wealthy mining town, Deron-Guld claiming authority over the south. With the kingdom's harmony shattered, the factions stand on the verge of war.

Your actions in the game may decide whether the only kingdom of mortal lineage rekindles its kinship or collapses into ruin!

When greed infests a region, vineyards are almost always the first victims in one way or another.

A tremendous amount of time, money, and resources have already gone into the development of Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness. We are not launching this campaign to start from scratch, but to get through the finish line.

The engine (a tailored, extended version of Unity) and the most important features of the game are already finished.

Most of the game content is also done. But there is still significant additional work necessary to make Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness a true, full-featured RPG. We need to complete the missing parts, refine and balance every aspect of the game, and do all the Quality Assurance. This is possible only with your help and participation.

Every cent we raise above the base funding goal will be used to enhance the game with extra content, including brand-new monsters, character art, and tons of subquests. And your voice will help us make these enhancements manifest Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness into something far greater than we could have imagined on our own.

The estimated release date of the game is August 2019.

Your feedback is essential
We love this project and we want to do it right. The best traditional tabletop RPGs take place with a group of close friends that come together and develop house rules—they make the game their own. We want to capture something similar with Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness, asking you to be our gaming group.

We want to involve you in the development as much as possible, giving a behind the scenes look at the game's creation. For example, when you reached out to us last year and asked for a more ornamented, old school UI, we listened and integrated the changes. Your feedback isn't just always welcome, it's required to make the game we're passionate about making.

We need your help to finish the game
Years of hard work and a lot of money have been invested into Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness. As a new studio specializing in role-playing games, we are grateful to our investors who have funded development so far.

A successful Kickstarter campaign is now required, a proof of interest to our investors that will secure their final round of funds. These funds, combined with the money raised on Kickstarter, will ensure the completion of Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness.

Preserving our creative freedom
As large as the gaming industry is, in some respects, it's very much a tight-knit community. Word got out pretty quick what we've been up to, and we've already received inquiries from publishers interested in Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness. We concluded that involving a game publisher for funding the completion of the game would tie our hands, limit our creative freedom and restrict our ability to customize the game based on your feedback. On the contrary, a successful Kickstarter lets us keep our freedom and directly involve you in the project.

At the end of the day we only want to answer to one person, (the collective) you.

GrapeOcean Technologies was established by a small group of life-long RPG fans. Since formation, more than 15 people have joined our team—all fully devoted to bringing Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness to market. While our team is diverse in many respects, we all have two fundamental things in common: we are insanely passionate about classic-style RPGs and we have experience dealing with large-scale, complex projects.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

And backed.

 

[Anomander Rake]

why the fuck was a topic made on april 2015 if this game is getting kickstarted three years later. Are you into vaporware? Topic should have been closed in the second post and the actual creator of the topic forbidden from publishing any post until the kickstarter of the game itself, so three years. And he even posted in april 2015 "KICKSTARTER SOON"

 

[Sacred82]

Ok this has come to an end now; I've have forbidden ALL email notification from this website. Stop spamming my cellphone please.

every Kodex female ever

 

[Sacred82]

why the fuck was a topic made on april 2015 if this game is getting kickstarted three years later. Are you into vaporware? Topic should have been closed in the second post and the actual creator of the topic forbidden from publishing any post until the kickstarter of the game itself, so three years. And he even posted in april 2015 "KICKSTARTER SOON"

sheeple gonna sheeple, censorship can't change anything. Noone's telling anyone to donate to the kickstarter. If a piece of crap comes out of it that makes me laugh at the suckers who bought it, all the better.

 

[Infinitron]

Wow, they actually did it.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I can’t believe they launched this without changing the name. Makes the Bevontule guys look like geniuses.

Crushmaster is problematic and needs to be changed, but Black Geyser doesn’t set off any alarm bells? This is what they get for only consorting with RPGWatch.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Ironic Codex fundraiser when? It's only fair given the entertainment provided so far.

Backed. I've made worse decisions.

 

[Abu Antar]

Nice UI. Very balanced.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Holy fuck I want to help them with kickstarter, but I'm poor as fuck

 

[agris]

Lame, you can't back it for more than $10k USD after Kickstarter's cut.

 

[fantadomat]

I can’t believe they launched this without changing the name. Makes the Bevontule guys look like geniuses.

Crushmaster is problematic and needs to be changed, but Black Geyser doesn’t set off any alarm bells? This is what they get for only consorting with RPGWatch.

To me it sounds like a nigger gay orgy.

Holy fuck I want to help them with kickstarter, but I'm poor as fuck

You still have your organs,sell them!

 

[Mustawd]

If this gets made, will it become the new BG?

 

[Anomander Rake]

I doubt it, but because the budget they are asking for is really low. If I had the money I would donate around 150k right before the ending of the kickstarter, but now that I think about it, maybe my decision making (including the decision of wishing to kickstart this) is what makes me poor

 

[fantadomat]

If this gets made, will it become the new BG?

I depends on how many years would take making it. By the time of release PoE and DOS2 could be the classics.

 

[Mustawd]

If this gets made, will it become the new BG?

I doubt it

Black Geyser....

Black Geyser

 

[fantadomat]

mustawd.

 

[Cael]

I can’t believe they launched this without changing the name. Makes the Bevontule guys look like geniuses.

Crushmaster is problematic and needs to be changed, but Black Geyser doesn’t set off any alarm bells? This is what they get for only consorting with RPGWatch.

I thought my post last page would have set off alarm bells, but apparently not. Oh well, bring on the explosive diarrhea jokes.

 

[ArchAngel]

This project and KS seems so amateur even Obsidian has a bigger chance to produce a good game than these guys.

EDIT: But considering UI and general look of the game looks like a PoE ripoff maybe it is a Obsidian level product :D

 

[Mustawd]

This project and KS seems so amateur even Obsidian has a bigger chance to produce a good game than these guys.

The handling of the project going bakc to the beginning of this thread is p. amateurish. Their KS was a lot better than I thought it'd be. Yah it's not Obsidian levels polished but the pitch was p. good for such a small studio I thought.

 

[ArchAngel]

This project and KS seems so amateur even Obsidian has a bigger chance to produce a good game than these guys.

The handling of the project going bakc to the beginning of this thread is p. amateurish. Their KS was a lot better than I thought it'd be. Yah it's not Obsidian levels polished but the pitch was p. good for such a small studio I thought.

For me the video was very try hard but bad. The had a good enough VO in the first part, everything else was not good.

Then later they show some ice spell effects on group of enemies that get frozen. That is nice and cool but watch the casting animation, caster looks like it is having a seizure lol

 

[Anomander Rake]