Vapourware Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen - Chaos Chronicles reborn and dead again

[The Wall]

Should have refunded while I could, tbh

 

[NJClaw]

Are you referring to Chaos Chronicles? If so, I thought that was a different team.

https://www.realms-beyond.com/welcome-realms-beyond-rpg/

The idea for Chaos Chronicles sprang from one simple fact: We sat together at lunch one day and discussed a couple of recent RPGs like Dragon Age, Oblivion or Witcher and while we agreed that those were great games, we missed many of the elements that you could find in the roleplaying games we played back in the late 80s and early 90s on our C64s and Amigas. Those were very different kinds of games and we missed many of the elements that made those games so exciting.

This was the very first blog post back in 2010, dedicated to a game project called Chaos Chronicles, a cRPG that we had under development at our former game studio, Coreplay, back then. At the time we started that blog, we were unaware of the dark clouds that loomed on the horizon and the tragic destiny that would befall our cherished game project. What happened? After months of friction and conflict with our former publisher, the project was eventually terminated by mid-2013 as a result of various legal uncertainties. Shortly thereafter, our game studio Coreplay, as well as the aforementioned publisher, went bankrupt. Naturally, no one doubted that these events were the final nail in the coffin of the project Chaos Chronicles.

Time passed and the coffin that lay buried deep in the tomb was all but forgotten…
Then, many years later, it so happened that an innocent group of adventurers recovered the ancient treasure and, with a little help from their Gnomish counselors, they unearthed and reclaimed it in one piece, much to everyone’s surprise.

Thus, on that day, Realms Beyond was born and although it is very much influenced by our previous efforts with Chaos Chronicles, Realms Beyond is entirely its own game. The world, the story, the content, the technology, and the visual presentation have evolved and much of it has changed entirely since then.

Nonetheless, let us now continue where we left off 4 years ago…

Classic RPGs remembered

We couldn’t help but wonder if there were others who, like us, remember games such as the Goldbox D&D series by SSI, or even older games, like Phantasie, or the early Ultima and Wizardry titles. Games that put a focus on the world and its locations rather than the fate of a single character whose destiny is told in a cinematic storyline. The kind of RPG in which you created your own party and occasionally had to live with the fact that one of its members didn’t make it back from a dungeon. You had to move on, but every time you were leveling up its replacement you would remember that knight or wizard and the epic battle where they fell. Remember, how that hero was protecting other party members or casting that one critical spell that finally turned the tide of the battle in favor of your party. Characters had meaning!

Realms Beyond became some sort of an idea that we carried around with us for some time. We dug out old game manuals and emulators and discussed our experience with those classic games from a modern point of view. We took notice of other games that gathered some recognition for being old-school, such as Etrian Odyssey or The Dark Spire on the Nintendo DS. Games that appealed to a particular niche audience but at the same time proved that there must be many other gamers around with fond memories of the golden days of computer RPGs.

In some of the upcoming blog posts, called Source of Inspiration, we will take you through a few of the games that inspired us to work on Realms Beyond. These posts will be the perfect background to help you understand some of the elements in our game and where they originated. But it’s not all about us! If you are an old-school RPGs player, like us, feel free to comment and contribute your very own memories of these classic games and how these RPGs have impacted you as a gamer.

 

[The Wall]

The more years I collect on Earth, the more I see Nerds deserved all the bullying in high school. And I was one of them/us

 

[Catacombs]

The more years I collect on Earth, the more I see Nerds deserved all the bullying in high school. And I was still am one of them/us

 

[NJClaw]

"We asked for money saying that we needed 100k to make this game, but we obviously knew we needed far more than that. It's not that we are scammers, it's all on you for believing us."

The only remaining question now is: what will their next project be called?

 

[The Wall]

Why? Cause they/us were such little passive weak bitches. These fellaz will wait for unknown amount of time to pass until their CEO is finished with dealmaking thou they havent heared from him in months, he ghosted them and have no reason to believe he's making any deals except spending their money on migrant shelters, kebab meals, german beer, Microsoft Excell 2020 Pro and OnlyFans subscriptions

Also this CEO owns 50% of company, other half is in Devs' hands and all decision and contract making power is in hands of this ghost CEO. Balanced!

 

[Hobo Elf]

"We asked for money saying that we needed 100k to make this game, but we obviously knew we needed far more than that. It's not that we are scammers, it's all on you for believing us."

The only remaining question now is: what will their next project be called?

"You stupid paypigs didn't give us enough!!!"

 

[Desiderius]

The more years I collect on Earth, the more I see Nerds deserved all the bullying in high school. And I was still am one of them/us

Anti-bullying = anti-vaxxing for social infections.

 

[The Wall]

Dev lamented how they hoped for 200k instead of 120k. Except they got more then 200k (thanks to Merkel's generosity and promise to portray orc rape gangs in respectful way towards migrating orcs)

120k€ (from Kickstarter)
100k€ (from RPG Mutti Merkel)
=220k€
But spent (more then 8months ago). On what?

 

[NJClaw]

Dev lamented how they hoped for 200k instead of 120k. Except they got more then 200k (thanks to Merkel's generousity and promise to portray orc rape gangs in respectful way towards migrating orcs)

120k€ (from Kickstarter)
100k€ (from RPG Mutti Merkel)
=220k€
But spent (more then 8months ago). On what?

The guy said they hoped to get at least 200k from Kickstarter, but they would still have needed external funding on top of that.

Jeez, poor souls. There's no way they could have communicated that better to their customers. It's not like in every Kickstarter page there's a RISK AND CHALLENGES section, where they basically said "Yeah, we are sure about this, trust us! At worst we will delay the release a bit!".

As always, rusty_shackleford was right: videogame developers are the worst. I still think they are a cut above journalists, but I'm starting to doubt even that.

 

[The Wall]

I truly wish them best but they are just too nice people. Thara and Hob (Devs). They're not stupid, they have eyes connected to working brain, they have just been trained by german society from birth to be nice to their own fault

 

[The Wall]

The guy said they hoped to get at least 200k from Kickstarter, but they would still have needed external funding on top of that.

Yeah, all they needed was just enough $$$ to reach Steam Early Access with working, deep and fun BaldursGate/Arcanum game. That was The Plan

 

[Aemar]

120k€ (from Kickstarter)
100k€ (from RPG Mutti Merkel)
=220k€
But spent (more then 8months ago). On what?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Developers unwilling to sacrifice everything and subsist on ginger and tumeric roots will never create anything of value.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Developers unwilling to sacrifice everything and subsist on ginger and tumeric roots will never create anything of value.

Hello, have you heard of Knights of the Chalice 2?

 

[The Wall]

120k€ (from Kickstarter)
100k€ (from RPG Mutti Merkel)
=220k€
But spent (more then 8months ago). On what?

Money well swindled & spent!

Developers unwilling to sacrifice everything and subsist on ginger and tumeric roots will never create anything of value.

This. Unironically. Poor costs management

 

[Desiderius]

Wasn’t Soyer just playing a demo of this?

If he could salvage this thing he could redeem himself and resolve his body image issues all in one fell swoop.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Realms Beyond, more like... Realms Beyond Hope lol

At this point, the supposed-meme game Black Geyser has much more chance of materialize than this once-Codex's darling scam

 

[The Wall]

Realms Beyond: Ashes of Hope

 

[underground nymph]

Guess from now on here’ll be nothing but whining and complaining. Moving along and looking forward to any good news from the devs.

 

[The Wall]

Whining is for women of your enemies, when you pay them a visit. Itz for elves. Fuck whining and fuck elves! I offered some solutions to devs and asked for further details. Devs think problem will solve itself and this CEO will come back one day, with tear in his eye, beer and two fat bags full of $$$

SPOILERS!

ain't gonna happen

 

[Ghulgothas]

Realms Beyond the Scope of Our Ability.

 

[Grunker]

The more years I collect on Earth, the more I see Nerds deserved all the bullying in high school. And I was one of them/us

Tbh this became clear to me very early in adulthood

 

[Night Goat]

There's something we're not being told here, no one just loses all contact with the manager and co-owner of his company for months and thinks "this is fine".

 

[:Flash:]

"We asked for money saying that we needed 100k to make this game, but we obviously knew we needed far more than that. It's not that we are scammers, it's all on you for believing us."

The only remaining question now is: what will their next project be called?

Anyone who thought they needed only 100k to make this game (or claimed that was the case) is even more naive than HobGoblin42 seems to be.

It seems they haven't spent the entirety of the government funding, but knowing how these things works, it is unclear whether they even would still have access to it. You don't get a dump of cash into your account, you can hand in a certain fraction of your operational costs (salaries, etc.) up to the granted amount *during a certain period*, so it might be that they lost access to the other funds due to being inoperational.

What I don't get is why HobGoblin42 had this Timothy Drude guy be 50% owner and managing director of the company. HobGob has a lot of credit to his name in the game industry, and he has delivered on several projects in the past, behind which he was the main guy in a small team. It's also clear that this was his dream game. The Drude guy has level design credits for two of HobGoblin's former companies, and that's it. When he was interviewed by German magazine GameStar and asked a simple D&D mechanics question, he was like "uhh, I'm not the rules guy in our company, I would have to ask someone else about that". It was clear he didn't have the slightest idea about D&D rules, so this certainly wasn't his dream game.

To make matter worse, a Robert Andreas Drude (I guess Timothy's brother?) with similar credits was also 50% owner and managing director of coreplay, the Chaos Chronicles company.

Now HobGob says on discord:

That's the problem with 50/50 owned companies, there is no real decision maker.
If you don't agree, someone has to leave the decision role or it will be chaos.
In that situation, I decided to focus on development which was quite important for the upcoming combat beta.

Uh, yes, you described the problem perfectly well, why did you enter into such an agreement for the (at least) the second time? Do the Drudes have Kompromat on you?