KickStarter Guido Henkel's Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore - CANCELLED

[Infinitron]

Guido Henkel Does anyone have ideas how I could increase exposure for DEATHFIRE? Despite the Development Diary blog updates and my constant tweeting, I can't seem to get any real traction.

Guido HenkelI don't know about RPGCodex, but RPGWatch and GameBanshee are actually putting up news blurps usually when I post updates, but it's clearly not enough.

Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.

 

[Excidium]

My suggestion is to have an actual game.

 

[Jasede]

I feel bad for him.
But that's not a good thing. When your behavior or strategy elicits pity there's something fundamentally wrong with it.

 

[tindrli]

"Item binds when equipped"?!

why the hell "club" need lvl 5 to wield??

 

[Excidium]

Same reason it binds on equip.

 

[Kz3r0]

Guido Henkel Does anyone have ideas how I could increase exposure for DEATHFIRE? Despite the Development Diary blog updates and my constant tweeting, I can't seem to get any real traction.

Guido HenkelI don't know about RPGCodex, but RPGWatch and GameBanshee are actually putting up news blurps usually when I post updates, but it's clearly not enough.

 

[himmy]

Guido Henkel Does anyone have ideas how I could increase exposure for DEATHFIRE? Despite the Development Diary blog updates and my constant tweeting, I can't seem to get any real traction.

Omegle?

 

[Lady_Error]

I also think that having more screenshots of the actual game might help. Looks like the 3D part is still largely unfinished. Plus, not sure if the name Deathfire is all too appealing to many people.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Deathfire is a terrible name.

And Guido Henkel really sucks at both marketing and learning from his past mistakes.

 

[Charles-cgr]

"Item binds when equipped"?!

why the hell "club" need lvl 5 to wield??

Probably because it is poisoned. Also it increases strength and experience while decreasing stamina so it is probably a little more special than the name and crudeness suggest. Which would also explain why this particular item binds when equipped.

Deathfire is a terrible name.

And Guido Henkel really sucks at both marketing and learning from his past mistakes.

He said early on that Deathfire was a project name, subject to change.

 

[Lady_Error]

Deathfire is a terrible name.

And Guido Henkel really sucks at both marketing and learning from his past mistakes.

Well, at least he decided to go with TB combat instead of the Grimrock RT that was originally planned. In other words, the game itself might turn out really good.

If you look at other big names like Garriott or D.W. Bradley, those people are so far gone that it is not funny anymore.

 

[Zed]

Deathfire is a terrible name.

And Guido Henkel really sucks at both marketing and learning from his past mistakes.

I don't understand why he'd market the game at this point?
It sounds like he will attempt another Kickstarter.. which will fail because he will put the goal at like 300k and the game will only raise 20-30k.
EDIT: unless, of course, he can admit to some errors he made with thorvalla and actually learned something.

 

[Lady_Error]

http://www.thenerdcave.com/guido-henkel-interview/

Some more interesting parts of this interview:

“Deathfire” is a hardcore role-playing game that is heavily influenced by games of, what I call, the Golden Era of computer role-playing games.

Hmm, this is also how Cleve calls it. Even named his company Golden Era Games.

Using modern day technology for the visual presentation, under the hood we’re building a game that is every bit as detailed and intricate as the “Realms of Arkania” games used to be

That certainly sounds good. You don't see D.W. Bradley wanting to recreate the Wizardry 7 experience.

The biggest departure from the old games will be the interaction between characters. In “Deathfire,” the members of your party will talk to each other and interact with each other, depending on their character traits. They will have conversations, insult each other, possibly even get at each others’ throats, depending on the situation. We currently have 34 character traits in the game, aside from the base attributes, all of which will be used to define the personalities of all player and non-player characters. With the help of these traits we will create a gaming experience that is as rich on a character level, as it is on a story and world level.

I like that. Character interactions were one of the few new features in Wizardry 8 that I liked a lot.

In addition to that we’re also bringing back true turn-based combat to the genre. The industry has largely abandoned turn-based combat in the last decade in favor for more action-oriented real time combat. However, we felt that in order to create a true role-playing experience that has the depth and flexibility, as well as the strategic elements, we were looking for, turn-based combat was the only feasible way to go.

If that isn't music in the Codex's ears, I don't know what is.

 

[Irenaeus]

Sounds great, would pledge again. However, I still remember the bad experience of the Thorvalla kickstarter.

 

[Irenaeus]

The main issue was about the execution of the kickstarter campaign, from the prelaunch hype to the day 1 pitch, and his ability to convince backers beyond the hardcore fan base to the 20k +++ backer range.

And the combat cards thing.

 

[HobGoblin42]

...and the lack of a development team

 

[Jaesun]

Guido Henkel ‏@GuidoHenkel46s
Just for the record, attuned/binding items in #DEATHFIRE will be EXTREMELY RARE! There may be one or two in the entire game. That's it!

 

[Irenaeus]

Good, then.

 

[Excidium]

Hey at least he's flexible.

 

[Irenaeus]

More like desperate.

 

[theSavant]

It really begins to sound interesting... also I like the thing with interaction of party members. I start to have hope in this title. Though I still think in one of his screenshots characters skills are somehow loaded with crap useless skills. Wizardry 8 made that better, because practically every skill was useful there.

 

[Lady_Error]

It really begins to sound interesting... also I like the thing with interaction of party members. I start to have hope in this title. Though I still think in one of his screenshots characters skills are somehow loaded with crap useless skills. Wizardry 8 made that better, because practically every skill was useful there.

How do you know that they are "crap useless skills" if you do not know whether they will appear in the game?

 

[Blaine]

Guido Henkel ‏@GuidoHenkel46s
Just for the record, attuned/binding items in #DEATHFIRE will be EXTREMELY RARE! There may be one or two in the entire game. That's it!

All of the items in Deathfire will be extremely rare. You have to actually release a game in order for people to acquire items, and I don't think that's going to happen.

Whatever creative spark this twiggy dork with a silly name once had in the 1990s appears to have departed. I recall that in the Thorvalla pitch video, he said something along the lines of: "It's a fantasy game, so it's gotta have dragons in it... everyone likes dragons, right?"

And as others have noted, his wife is a pretty crappy artist. You could quite literally commission a third-rate DeviantART user for cigarette and Starbucks money and get much better results. In fact, I'm going over to DeviantART's commissions forum right now to prove it.

 

[Zed]

In fact, I'm going over to DeviantART's commissions forum right now to prove it.

I had this little daydream playing in my head just now of you going though with developing an entire game just to prove you can make more out of a small budget than Henkel, and your game becomes GOTY.
It was a good daydream.

 

[Lady_Error]

Realms of Arkania had plenty of crap useless skills and crap useless spells. Part of metagaming was trying to figure out which skills/spells had any use in the games.

Realms of Arkania was different, because they took all the skills from the PnP version of the game - so there were more skills than what was actually used in each game. In this new game there is no need for that.