KickStarter Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption - adventure-RPG from the creators of Quest for Glory

[Jaesun]

Chris Pope ‏@TheChrisPope
Live podcast with the makers of Pledge Quest 1 and 2 in one minute! http://www.twitch.tv/andromedaguys @andromedaguys

 

[Corey Cole]

Wow, I'm really impressed by the obliviousness of some of these posters who insist that the Sierra 2.5D look was the essence of Quest for Glory. And that we're "raping" our own babies by using top-down graphics in Hero-U. Our games were *never* about the background graphics. We could as easily have moderated Quest for Glory in our living room as on the SCI engine. In fact, it would have been better, because that would allow more input responses. All the graphics do is help establish the setting. Lori and I were originally intending to do our School for Heroes game as a straight text adventure using Inform 6 or 7. That wasn't quite enough, but the top-down engine will be.

We could have lied and said we'd make a new Quest for Glory for a fraction of what it cost to make them 20 years ago when everyone at Sierra made $30K/year or less. We chose to raise a reasonable amount of money and make a game with all of the story, puzzle, and combat elements of Quest for Glory, but without needing 40-50 artists like we had on Quest for Glory 5. Hero-U is designed to play like a great tabletop RPG, but on a computer. If that isn't good enough for you, then you obviously care much more about the "sizzle" than about the steak. There isn't room in a $260K budget (what's left over from $400K Kickstarter after fees and rewards) to have both. Hero-U is a steak game.

Seriously, guys, we're talking literally 1% of a AAA game budget. (http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_9268/Game_Development_Budget_Somewhere_Around_25_Million). Walk-around rooms with every possible action animated, or all the same game play without them. Take your choice, but you don't get both.

 

[Corey Cole]

The MacGuffin's Curse guy has technical skills and pre-existing art/engine assets, yeah. The Coles can't draw or program.

Actually, Lori can draw and I can program; I programmed all the underlying role-playing systems and first example rooms in our games. We just think our time is better spent designing and writing. It's called delegation. Besides, our artists on Hero-U are really talented, and Andrew is an excellent programmer who also understands game design.

 

[suejak]

You let the rewards cut $120k out of your $400k budget?? What the hell?

Anyway, yeah, your art style (and interface) was a big deal to the QfG games. Literally, it was perhaps one of the most important things. It was never ever primarily about your brilliant game design or brilliant writing. It was absolutely a combination of fun gameplay and fun writing with a beautiful landscape and great music.

I'm in for $20, but that ain't gonna change at this rate. Good luck.

 

[suejak]

The MacGuffin's Curse guy has technical skills and pre-existing art/engine assets, yeah. The Coles can't draw or program.

Actually, Lori can draw and I can program; I programmed all the underlying role-playing systems and first example rooms in our games. We just think our time is better spent designing and writing. It's called delegation. Besides, our artists on Hero-U are really talented, and Andrew is an excellent programmer who also understands game design.

My bad! I guess I was dragging along an image I'd held from the old days, when the Space Quest guys would draw/program Space Quest, Al Lowe programmed Leisure Suit Larry, and Ken Williams programmed what Roberta designed -- but you guys always had teams on board to do all of the programming and art for you. For example, the QfG 2 credits: http://www.mobygames.com/game/quest-for-glory-ii-trial-by-fire.

Anyway, good on you.

 

[Corey Cole]

That's pretty funny, suejak. First, you will note that I'm listed in two programming roles on QfG2 (and was originally the lead programmer, but passed it off when I got too busy with design). Now look at the same site for the SQ4 credits. SQ4 was developed at the same time as QG2, but they ran 6 months over schedule so released the following year. http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/space-quest-iv-roger-wilco-and-the-time-rippers/credits. That was a million-dollar project including 14 artists other than Mark, and 8 other programmers than Scott - about twice the size of the QG2 team.

So Mark Crowe did all the art, and Scott all the programming? Heh. That's like saying Roberta did either on any of her games after Mystery House or so.

 

[suejak]

That's pretty funny, suejak. First, you will note that I'm listed in two programming roles on QfG2 (and was originally the lead programmer, but passed it off when I got too busy with design). Now look at the same site for the SQ4 credits. SQ4 was developed at the same time as QG2, but they ran 6 months over schedule so released the following year. http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/space-quest-iv-roger-wilco-and-the-time-rippers/credits. That was a million-dollar project including 14 artists other than Mark, and 8 other programmers than Scott - about twice the size of the QG2 team.

So Mark Crowe did all the art, and Scott all the programming? Heh. That's like saying Roberta did either on any of her games after Mystery House or so.

Hey, this is a petty argument, but I'll take you up on it.

You're comparing a mouse-driven icon-based game, one of the first with full voice acting, hand-painted backgrounds and a brand new interface, "the first Space Quest to feature Sierra's icon-based SCI interface and 256-color graphics," to QfG 2, which was a parser-based game with 16-colour pixel graphics on the engine an entire previous generation of games had used?

Wouldn't it make more sense to compare the game to LSL3 or SQ3, which used the same engine as QfG2?

 

[suejak]

Anyway, I actually PREFER the top image's style, but come on. No need to be disingenuous. Al Lowe did almost all of LSL's programming himself until he entered the 256-colour mouse-driven era with Larry 5. Mark Crowe drew everything in Space Quest 3, and Scott Murphy did a lot of the programming. That's all I'm saying: you guys were primarily "designers" when such things were new to Sierra, and so I assumed you didn't really have programming/art skills. My apologies for the mistake.

 

[Blaine]

Wow, I'm really impressed by the obliviousness of some of these posters who insist that the Sierra 2.5D look was the essence of Quest for Glory. And that we're "raping" our own babies by using top-down graphics in Hero-U. Our games were *never* about the background graphics. We could as easily have moderated Quest for Glory in our living room as on the SCI engine. In fact, it would have been better, because that would allow more input responses. All the graphics do is help establish the setting. Lori and I were originally intending to do our School for Heroes game as a straight text adventure using Inform 6 or 7. That wasn't quite enough, but the top-down engine will be.

We could have lied and said we'd make a new Quest for Glory for a fraction of what it cost to make them 20 years ago when everyone at Sierra made $30K/year or less. We chose to raise a reasonable amount of money and make a game with all of the story, puzzle, and combat elements of Quest for Glory, but without needing 40-50 artists like we had on Quest for Glory 5. Hero-U is designed to play like a great tabletop RPG, but on a computer. If that isn't good enough for you, then you obviously care much more about the "sizzle" than about the steak. There isn't room in a $260K budget (what's left over from $400K Kickstarter after fees and rewards) to have both. Hero-U is a steak game.

Seriously, guys, we're talking literally 1% of a AAA game budget. (http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_9268/Game_Development_Budget_Somewhere_Around_25_Million). Walk-around rooms with every possible action animated, or all the same game play without them. Take your choice, but you don't get both.

I do agree that anyone who equates the essence of Quest for Glory with the engine used is being ridiculous, but there's a little more to the kvetching in this thread than that alone. Nearly your entire fan base consists of people just like me—folks who played and loved your games when they were new. You two are all Hero-U really has going for it, but that may not be enough. The other team members you've brought on board and to whom you're delegating tasks are relative unknowns, and while MacGuffin's Curse appears to have been mildly successful, it's nevertheless fairly obscure and almost certainly falls under the category of a casual game. I have no doubt that you and Lori can develop an excellent and completely distinct game using very similar assets, and I furthermore don't doubt the basic competence of your additional team members, but not everyone will get all of that. What they'll get is that this made-for-iOS game they've never heard of is associated with Hero-U.

Furthermore, I don't believe most people have a particularly clear picture of what the end product will be just yet. You've described it in exact detail in the Kickstarter text and elsewhere, but taken as a whole, the game appears to be a motley affair. You cite Persona as an example of how character relationships will work, for instance. I personally have played one of the later Persona games (due to being a fan of Shin Megami Tensei since its inception), but in my opinion, it's a not a fantastic idea to use a Japanese console game as a comparison point for a spiritual successor to Quest for Glory. It's a good basis for comparison if the reader happens to be familiar with Persona; otherwise, it's just plain confusing. Fans of Western and Japanese RPGs often overlap, but not excessively so. There's also the fact the the art style used in all of your publicity material is quite cartoony, and very similar to the MacGuffin's curse art style. While the "fanciness" of the graphics used to describe a game may not matter (I've played and enjoyed many text-only games by now), if you do choose to use art, then the art direction (and execution) definitely does matter.

I posted some mean things earlier (this is the Internet, after all... also, I didn't realize you'd see them), but I donated to your Kickstarter on day one. I was and still am rather confused about just what the end product's going to be, I do think the Kickstarter is a bit lackluster, and I wonder what wacky ideas you two might have developed over the past fifteen years... but I've got plenty of goodwill leftover from the old days. I hope you meet your goal.

 

[Corey Cole]

Nice post, Blaine. Yes, the character art style is (and will probably stay) cartoony - That's what Lori requested as the most likely to look good in the tiled interface. We've actually only seen a little more of the art than anyone else - There are some great B&W monster sketches, but if we posted them people would undoubtedly say, "What? A Black & White game?" Several people on the art team worked on the QfG2 VGA remake, and we have a lot of respect for them. They are all currently making stuff for us for no money in their spare time, so we are not going to tell them to drop their day jobs to give us art before the Kickstarter funds.

There will be a major art update within a week including a video by art director Eriq Chang, more polished scenes than any of us have seen yet, and a mockup of the game with real art. I'm looking forward to it. We actually think the game is going to be beautiful, but we have to trust our artists on that because we haven't been able to pay anyone to work full time on art yet (or pay them or ourselves anything at all, for that matter).

More historical notes:

I equated QfG2 and SQ4 because they started at the same time under the same initial conditions. Two months into both projects, Sierra management decided to rush QfG2 out in time for Christmas 1990 by using the old EGA+parser system, and postponed SQ4 until 1991 to let it use the new parserless VGA system.

Space Quest 3 was developed at the same time as Hero's Quest, so there's an apples-to-apples comparison. SQ3 is credited with 5 programmers, Hero's Quest with 4. Mark Crowe apparently did do all the art for SQ3, which was very unusual at Sierra. Roberta Williams and Jim Walls were both game designers who did neither art nor programming. Lori and I designed - with her as lead, full-time designer - and I programmed our early games until Sierra assigned me to a systems programming project during QfG3. Lori could have done our art, but Sierra put her in the Roberta Williams category and let her focus on game design, writing, and directing the project.

Teams at Sierra had 6-10 people in the EGA era, 20-50 for the VGA games, and 50-100 for the 3D adventures. By that time, the budgets crept up into the millions, and sales still topped out at a few hundred thousand sales, so they stopped being profitable (Sierra made about $10 per unit sold).

 

[suejak]

LSL3 is credited with 2 programmers, and LSL2 (same engine as QfG 1/2) with 1! Anyway, Space Quest used to be a 2-man project, and those guys did everything.

You guys, the Coles, did not have an era like that, so it invites misunderstanding. I apologize if you were and continue to be a for-trade programmer like the other Sierra original series' designers tended to be.

 

[iamlindoro]

Corey, thanks for taking the time to respond here.

In my estimation, there's a problem problem with the "It's too expensive to give our fans what they want" argument. It's that Kickstarter isn't meant to represent your entire profits for a game, even though it's become the de facto standard for the Kickstarter to effectively be a "very very advance" preorder. Kickstarter is supposed to cover your bare-minimum costs, and your profits from actually selling the end product are meant to reward you for your investment of time. Now, I do think that you should be paid a reasonable wage, but I strongly feel that you and the entire team should be forgoing your expectations of "full" compensation until the project is complete. Fan teams of your size and smaller regularly produce graphic adventures-- including AGDIs remake of your of classic QfG2. Might it take more time? Sure. Might that mean the entire team giving a little more than they expect for less up-front pay? Yes. But that's entrepreneurism for you. Kickstarting the project yourself gives you an opportunity to reap far more of the profit of the actual sale of the game to people like me at the end, people who didn't hear or wanted to wait and see. You'll doubtless be making far more on a sold copy of Hero U than you ever made on a copy of Quest for Glory.

Everyone posting in this thread loved your games-- some of us are yearning for something different than the Kickstarter shows that we hope will recapture the magic of those games. If you and Lori invited me to your house to game-play a "Quest for Glory VI," I'd go, but it wouldn't be Quest for Glory to me. Quest for Glory was that perfect storm of beautiful environments, humor, story, gameplay, and countless other difficult-to-describe traits. But to me, the environments and "2.5D style" gameplay were amongs the most important ones-- they massively enhance the fantasy and scope of the experience.

Don't take the skepticism as negativity. It's not. It's criticism that (however it's taken) is intended as constructive. I sincerely do hope that if you have trouble making your goal, you'll consider another approach given the relatively wide-spread nature of this opinion.

 

[Corey Cole]

Good points, iamlindoro. Our budget is, of course, already bare-minimum cost-of-living level - There are no profits coming from the Kickstarter. There are in fact no "reasonable wages" - Lori and I will be paying our bills, and that barely. In fact, we will make very little after the game ships too, since we intend to pour most of that income into the sequel. We aren't making this game to get rich, or even to make a full salary. We're making it because we care about the game and have stories to tell. The Kickstarter is so we don't lose our house to do it, and won't have to ask the rest of our team members to lose their homes.

But you make a good point that we may be able to add funding later to enhance the game. Once we have proven our ability to attract players and raise funds on Kickstarter, other investors and lenders will be more willing to take a chance on us and our projects. Maybe eventually we'll be able to raise the several million dollars it will take to make a worthy Quest for Glory VI. For now, we are making a fun game with a much smaller budget.

 

[suejak]

Thanks for your posts on the forum.

Am I the only one who thinks it wouldn't take several millions of dollars to make a worthy Quest for Glory VI? Granted, it would probably take more that $250k (still don't get why Kickstarter rewards are taking 30% of the budget), but small teams have made Sierra-worthy games, notably QfG 2, in their spare time.

 

[Corey Cole]

Well, since you asked twice, suejak... I posted the breakdown on the Kickstarter page, but here it is again. Everyone else - Please be nice, I'm just answering suejak's question. 10% Kickstarter fees, between 10-20% for rewards depending on how much of our funding comes from higher tiers with physical rewards, 10% for marketing and project overhead, and 5% to repay loans and expenses we incurred setting up the project.

We know that you are taking a leap of faith by supporting our new game, and we want to assure you that we will use the money wisely. Our goal is the minimum budget with which we can make a high-quality game. Here's our breakdown based on reaching our minimum goal:

• 65% - Art, programming, music, and design of the game
• 10% - Kickstarter and Amazon Payments fees
• 10% - Reward Premiums and Shipping Costs
• 5% - Repayment of pre-Kickstarter loans and expenses
• 10% - Marketing and Project Overhead

If your generosity helps this project exceed its minimum goal, it is likely that a higher percentage (possibly as much as 20%) of the funding will go into reward premiums, but most of your support will go directly into the game. We will add features such as voice acting, and we will add more content including additional art, music, locations, story, and dialogue.

 

[suejak]

They've won me over with the newest awkward vid. Also, this answer in their Kickstarter Update:

We intend to let players save their status, then "import" that into future games. But it won't work like a Quest for Glory import. Shawn will be present in the later games, and what you did in the first one will affect his personality and elements of the story, but you'll be playing a different character with a completely different backstory and character abilities by then.

In the last game, all of that will come together through a Cunning and Subtle Plan that Lori and I hope we'll know how to pull off by then.

I'm not really inspired to up my pledge from $25 or whatever it is, but I do hope they get a chance to make a couple of these games.

The screenshot looks cool, actually, although I really don't like the whole "hotkey-based" rogue-like dungeon romp feel. The fireball icon along with the three icons at the bottom are real hard-on-killers for me.

BUT, their overall vision sounds cool, and I want these two to get back into the games industry.

 

[Blackthorne]

Thanks for your posts on the forum.

Am I the only one who thinks it wouldn't take several millions of dollars to make a worthy Quest for Glory VI? Granted, it would probably take more that $250k (still don't get why Kickstarter rewards are taking 30% of the budget), but small teams have made Sierra-worthy games, notably QfG 2, in their spare time.

Yeah. It takes years to do, though and adds lots of miles to your body! Trust me!


Bt

 

[Zed]

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/
The KS needs like 20k a day now to succeed. Won't happen. I hope they will develop the game anyway, and perhaps Kickstart again for 200k or something.

 

[Zed]

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/
The KS needs like 20k a day now to succeed. Won't happen. I hope they will develop the game anyway, and perhaps Kickstart again for 200k or something.

There's something called a self-fulfilling prophecy or bandwagon effect. The more people believe in something, the more people want to be a part of it. The converse is also true.

I believe the campaign will succeed because I'm doing my part to help, and I think it's worth my time and effort to. There are many ways to support the campaign, and not just through pledges.

I'm sure republicans thought the exact same thing.

I've seen projects with bad projections make it in the nick of time. But those projects weren't looking to be around 100k short.
The pledges need to double from today and onward, or have a miraculous influx near the end.

 

[ghostdog]

So far I suspect that almost all of the "known developers" campaigns have some heavy funders on the side that they throw in at the last day, because :
1) It makes sense that these people can get such heavy donations from people that they know, or they've approached prior to making the kickstarter.
2) The huge amount of money all these projects have gained on their last moments is too much to be attributed only to the "last minute craze".

If Hero-U has some aces on its sleeve it could be successful, if not, I too don't think it will reach its goal.


It's funny because I think that if they kept the 2D-isometric adventure-like looks of their QFG games it would definitely be successful, even if the new game will be different than QFG.


Also kickstarter fatigue certainly has played a role. Both hero-u and the "old-school rpg" appeared right after the Project Eternity madness and they were asking for big bucks too. Their target audience is roughly the same and this made things difficult for them. Not to mention cleve got spooked about an upcoming wizardry-like game and rushed to an indiegogo campaign.

 

[FeelTheRads]

2D-isometric adventure-like looks of their

???
There was nothing even close to isometric in any QFG. And did you see their last screenshot mock-up? I don't know why Kickstarter no longer notifies of updates on starred but not pledged to projects. Anyway, here it is:

 

[Zed]

Also kickstarter fatigue certainly has played a role. Both hero-u and the "old-school rpg" appeared right after the Project Eternity madness and they were asking for big bucks too. Their target audience is roughly the same and this made things difficult for them. Not to mention cleve got spooked about an upcoming wizardry-like game and rushed to an indiegogo campaign.

I wouldn't say their target audience is roughly the same. Project Eternity has everything from Codex trolls to BioDrones backing it. Compared to Project Eternity, this looks like an interactive storybook for children. I know it isn't, and I think this games seems interesting, but I'm just saying what I think it may look like from the outside looking in.

It's funny because I think that if they kept the 2D-isometric adventure-like looks of their QFG games it would definitely be successful, even if the new game will be different than QFG.

Yeah. Kickstarter is a unique market in which niche games blossoms, but the hybrid aspect of this game is probably confusing to some people. I think people want to know exactly what it is they will playing. That's why name-dropping is incredibly powerful. But saying "it's like QfG but not entirely", and at the same time mention completely unknown games that sounds like children's games ("mcgruff's quest" or whatever), does not have the same effect as "we want to make a full spiritual successor to the QfG games. expect the exact same sort of stuff."

 

[Dexter]

2D-isometric adventure-like looks of their

???
There was nothing even close to isometric in any QFG. And did you see their last screenshot mock-up? I don't know why Kickstarter no longer notifies of updates on starred but not pledged to projects. Anyway, here it is:

I don't really have any horse in this race since I haven't played any of the QFG games, a fact that I want to rectify at some point, maybe even when I'm done with all the "Wadjet Eye" games I'm playing through right now (bought Blackwell: Deception and finished that recently, bought Resonance after and playing it right now), but that certainly still looks social/mobile game-y to me, although better than before.

Now something like this, even at that resolution, I would want:

 

[Blaine]

They've stated they can't afford the caliber of artwork necessary to have hand-painted backgrounds for each room. That's the way many of the old Sierra On-Line adventure games were done. I remember reading an article in InterAction magazine in the 1990s about the making of Space Quest V, and sure enough it featured photographs of artists hand-painting several rooms. Most adventure games of that type featured 40-60 different rooms, and for a game like Hero-U, they might need as many as 100 rooms or more.

I'm not sure why they feel they can't find a perfectly adequate artist who'll charge something like $300 per room, though, which would translate to a fairly reasonable cost of $30,000 plus about $10,000 for the character and other artwork. Add in another $10,000 on top (in case $40,000 is a lowball figure), and that still leaves a budget of $210,000 if they'd met their goal. There are some very good artists who post their work on deviantART (for example), and a fair few will take commissions from the public for significantly less than $300, though it depends on the medium and subject matter. Knocking out one background painting per day for three months, with weekends off, and getting paid $30,000 for it seems seems reasonable to me. Month for month, that ($120,000 per annum) is nothing to sniff at.

This is almost baseless speculation on my part, though. Maybe they'd need far more than 100 rooms, maybe $50,000 for art assets is too much, maybe finding the right artist(s) for the right price is much harder than I think, et cetera.

Edit: Fixed my failure at simple mathematics.

 

[Mother Russia]

Why are they going with a top down 2d look? Why not isometric?