Game News Sacred Fire, a psychological RPG set in ancient Caledonia, now on Kickstarter

[A horse of course]

aw I missed the fun

 

[an Administrator]

Hello poetic are you on the writing team?

 

[vivec]

It's good to hear my voice again.

However, the voice over is too long, too wordy. Cut it down to size and make it pithy. More word != better quality.

 

[poetic]

Hello poetic are you on the writing team?

Yes, I am the writer and designer of Sacred Fire.

 

[poetic]

We are back with an in-depth update on combat in Sacred Fire

We are happy to have leading RPG designers and writers fighting on our side to make this campaign a success!

Larian’s Swen Vincke, Chris Avellone and even Robert Kirkman's Skybound tweeted about our campaign rallying the fans to support.

With more than 750 backers, as we are approaching 60%, we are starting to think about revealing our first stretch goal. We have a few value-adding production expansions of Sacred Fire in mind, but we want to hear your thoughts: what would add the most value to you?

What should be the first stretch goal at $60,000 in your opinion:

1) More character customization: more variety in male and female outfits, faces, hair and paint styles, more jewelry for female characters and more awesome beards for male characters.

2) Localization: based on countries of our backers as of now, reaching the stretch goal would bring a translation to German, French and Slovak language.

3) More voiceover: the base goal includes Doug Cockle as the Narrator adding voiceover to the intro, key story branching moments and the endings. With the stretch goal reached, we would add voiceover to the inner voice of your player character. Supporting our inward design, a male and female voice actor would narrate the inner dilemmas of the key story choices.

Thank you for letting us know and if you like any of the stretch goals, please keep spreading the word about the Sacred Fire Kickstarter campaign.

 

[an Administrator]

Hello poetic are you on the writing team?

Yes, I am the writer and designer of Sacred Fire.

I hope you write more carefully in the game

I come in peace My job with this post here is not to change someone's worldview or say mine is better, just to explain what the game is and what it isn't, so you can make an educated decision, weather to support in on Kickstarter or not.

In Sacred Fire your player character starts with an open-mind, weather to seek peace as described above, or weather to channel the rage of the tribes and go after Rome.

 

[MRY]

Actually, if you read the lore, a lot of the game revolves around weather magic. It's not a typo. If you forgo an open mind you can use the rage-storm, for example.

 

[poetic]

I hope you write more carefully in the game

Thank you, yes you are right, there is a difference between writing for the game and writing on a forum in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign

But what's important is, for the text in-game, it's not actually about me writing more carefully - the text goes trough 2 other people before it's final: a proofreader and an editor, a standard in the writing process.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

post

Because you are insane I need to be the voice of sanity.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...nally-balanced-rpg.114399/page-2#post-5041045

In global history there is no actual story of women participating in active combat by design. What you are doing is retarded. If you wanted it to be fictional, there's no problem. But don't pretend that there is any degree of realism there.

 

[Tigranes]

With more than 750 backers, as we are approaching 60%, we are starting to think about revealing our first stretch goal. We have a few value-adding production expansions of Sacred Fire in mind, but we want to hear your thoughts: what would add the most value to you?

What should be the first stretch goal at $60,000 in your opinion:

1) More character customization: more variety in male and female outfits, faces, hair and pain styles, more jewelry for female characters and more awesome beards for male characters.

2) Localization: based on countries of our backers as of now, reaching the stretch goal would bring a translation to German, French and Slovak language.

3) More voiceover: the base goal includes Doug Cockle as the Narrator adding voiceover to the intro, key story branching moments and the endings. With the stretch goal reached, we would add voiceover to the inner voice of your player character. Supporting our inward design, a male and female voice actor would narrate the inner dilemmas of the key story choices.

Thank you for letting us know and if you like any of the stretch goals, please keep spreading the word about the Sacred Fire Kickstarter campaign.

My frank wish: none of the above, but a stretch goal which (1) actually expands on the gameplay, and (2) does not feature creep the game with unwieldy additions. It's hard to say what would fulfil both categories without playing the game or being in the studio. Maybe there were plans for more expansive character development, or for an extra character and area as an organic part of the story, that you guys think is outside the original budget?

If we're talking about these 3, and what is more likely to bring you additional pledges, I doubt any Codexer would really be motivated by these - but plenty of gamers outside might be.

• To gain renown, you can intentionally dodge in the last possible moment, block arrows without dodging, or pull off a devastating attack.

Can we imagine a scenario where you are fighting to impress/intimidate onlooking soldiers/friends/etc, such that you know you can win easily, but you understand that winning with flair is the point to dissuade the rest of them from joining the fray - or perhaps you know you cannot win, but you show yourself as a brave fighter?

 

[poetic]

Tigranes Thank you for your feedback. I understand where you are coming from, but we already do the full fledged version of character development we envisioned, and all the story characters we want in the base goal. It would be strange to not to do it that way. Still, the more we raise, the more resources we have to implement and test it, the better the result. So I guess, as long as the stretch goal brings in more backers, someone with your preferences should profit too.

Regarding the combat scenarios: yes that's exactly the kind of thing we are going for with the combat psychology and opponents AI. Take risks, to make a spectacle of the first opponent and the others will think twice to join the fray. Show courage and pain resistance in a fight you can not win and the opponent may respect you and may spare you, or even see you as a worthy ally.

 

[Tigranes]

Yes, I'm not opposed to those goals, necessarily. I don't think voice acting would restrict the writing much in this case, and might even benefit it.

I love it. The more you can make player decisions within combat plug into situations and mechanics outside combat, the more you're going to teach the player not to think about the optimal path to kill enemy, get XP, etc. I'd expect in this kind of game to bear a broken arm and couple of friends I couldn't save along to the bitter end.

 

[poetic]

Tigranes I see the combat tactics interest you, so here is a part from the in-depth combat update:

These are the different strategies you may explore and build you character stats around.

Use psychological tactics to survive facing stronger opponents

• intimidate – develop a menacing appearance and a scary reputation, skill demonstration, force of attacks
• provoke – develop insight, beautiful appearance and a strong reputation, precision of attacks, to hit painful spots and dodge in the last possible moments
• enrage – develop anger, overcome fear and pain by going berserk
• wear out – develop vitality or willpower capacity and defense: let the opponent run out of sources to boost his chances, only then start attacking
• outsmart – develop cunning, let him underestimate you, fake defeat to lure opponents in
• spot a weakness – master the fighting techniques and develop perception, then study opponent's moves, spot a weakness and gain a bonus to attack and defense

Skipping an attack helps you reach a decisive opportunity faster
There is more you can do to intimidate your enemies and win respect and renown on the battlefield:

• radical moves: skip defense or pay with hit points to block a blade with your bare hand, take a hit without budging
• attack from behind as a valid tactic: if you pull it off, the display of confidence and skill intimidates your opponents and affects their performance. Furthermore, showing control and courage will earn you the respect of NPCs.
• turn the tide of a losing battle with one single super-charged opportunity: every 100% makes the opportunity chances better and better
• come back from a defeat: a charged opportunity you saved up gives you one last chance after being defeated

 

[poetic]

With 10 days left, we are working hard to prepare a big ending for the campaign and preparing more update and perks to spicy up the rewards.

The first thing is, based on feedback from our backers, we have revealed our stretch goals in our last update:

One of Sacred Fire’s strengths is its unique visual style and focus on character creation. It’s the deepest and most thought out design aspect of Sacred Fire, as it allows you to develop your own playstyle and create your own hero. So our first stretch goal expands this fundamental part of the game and gives you even more self-expression options with focus on variety of:
- colors, outfits and hairstyles,
- faces, scars and paint patterns,
- jewelry and more awesome beards.

The design of Sacred Fire is oriented inwards, exploring the motives, emotions and conflicts of the protagonist. In key story choices, you lead an inner monologue detailing your thoughts and motives, why you made a choice and how you process the consequences.

To support this design, this stretch goals adds narration of inner dilemmas to immerse you deeper into your role. What’s interesting, we have some of the most distinct voices in gaming showing early interest in joining the Sacred Fire team (on our indie budget!), as the male and female voice of your character.

Based on your suggestions, we realized things don’t have to be black and white. While we can’t promise full voice-over for our varied cast, we can use it in character defining moments to make your favorite Sacred Fire characters come alive and immerse you deeper into the story. This stretch goal ads partial voice-over for the 10 main story characters: the 8 potential allies and the 2 powerful villains.

REDDIT

To help us reach these stretch goals, we have also prepared a list of short videos https://imgur.com/a/qoylG to post on reddit, for example at /r/gaming/ or your favorite gaming reddit. Just select a 'Submit a new link' and into the url field enter the video link (on imgur right-click the video and select copy video address) and add a short fun description in the title, for example "Have fun smashing an axe in political debates in Sacred Fire".

PRAISE FOR SACRED FIRE

Sacred Fire caught the eye of another game writer and we got a nod from Rhianna Pratchett:

I invite you to have a look at what my peers find so interesting and decide for yourself. Check out our campaign now.

 

[poetic]

We got covered by Kotaku by Nathan Grayson!

The article stayed above the fold for many hours and strong traffic is still coming in. So here we are, approaching 75% and 1,000 backers. How great is that?

With 8 days still to go and other big sites picking up the Kotaku article, we are trending way past our base goal. Kicktraq even lists us in the top 10 on their Video Games Hot List.

So if you like the premise of Sacred Fire, now is a good time to support us and help us reach all the customization and voice-over stretch goals.

 

[poetic]

Today we had another big day and we are over 1,000 backers strong! With 1 week to go things are looking really good, thank you all! This is really exciting, to be so close to the goal after all the work and preparation that went into the game and the campaign.

We published a big update on Characters and Romance in Sacred Fire.



We launched the 'Bring a Friend' initiative - bring a friend to back Sacred Fire and you both get a special in-game Personality Trait. For more details how to get this special in-game reward see the update.

With 84% funded the goal is withing our grasp.

Thank you for your support.

 

[poetic]

We just posted a fun take on our personal indie development story "What do you need to develop a psychological RPG - a recipe."

https://imgur.com/t/gaming/h7l93

Check it out and if you enjoyed it, please upvote it and share it with your friends.

Thank you.

EDIT: The story is now on reddit too.

 

[daveyd]

We launched the 'Bring a Friend' initiative - bring a friend to back Sacred Fire and you both get a special in-game Personality Trait. For more details how to get this special in-game reward see the update.

With 84% funded the goal is withing our grasp.

Thank you for your support.

Anyone here who hasn't backed it yet want to be my friend?

In all seriousness, I wish I had friends who played CRPGs. Of my friends and co-workers who even play games, they mostly play shitty shooters, sports games, and actions titles. I can sometimes convince my wife to play RPGs but she tends to gravitate more towards sims and strategy games. I think she may like Sacred Fire though.

Anyway, I hope I can convince some more people on various forums to back this over the next few days.

 

[poetic]

We've posted a new in-depth update focusing on Character Creation in Sacred Fire.

It got picked up by the official Playstation Blog, so you can read all the character creation details there.

As a reaction to Sony’s interest, we decided to enable you to pledge for a digital PS4 version in addition to the PC version. The work on the PS4 version will start after the PC release.

 

[luj1]

You have some cool concepts but , fuck, every time I read "psychological RPG" somewhere it tends to put me off.


And why waste yourself on VO and localization? To bring more backers? Expand your gameplay FFS, as others have said. If you haven't ideas, well, that's another topic completely. Go fishing or smoke some smack. Or both at the same time.

 

[MRY]

You have some cool concepts but , fuck, every time I read "psychological RPG" somewhere it tends to put me off.

And why waste yourself on VO and localization? To bring more backers? Expand your gameplay FFS, as others have said. If you haven't ideas, well, that's another topic completely. Go fishing or smoke some smack. Or both at the same time.

I agree with the first point, particularly because the notion of "psychology" -- even, I think, in term of "humors" -- would be alien to this setting. Actually, in some sense I wonder if this is the game's genius or a fatal flaw, but now that I reflect on its gameplay, it is probably the most "metagamey" RPG I've ever seen: it basically takes the nagging feeling that a game like Mass Effect has ("I guess I need to take the Renegage option to max my Renegade point for later cooler options") and makes it a core feature. Rather than choosing an option because the option is appealing, and then having to live with the reputational or social consequences with factions and other characters, you choose an option because the consequences are necessary for your overall strategy. Faction/companion min-maxing goes from degenerate to eugenerate or something. It's unclear whether this is brilliant or doomed to alienate (to use another anachronistic psych term) the player completely from the player-character. Maybe both.

But as to the second point, I couldn't disagree more. A classic Kickstarter disaster is, "We have this great idea for a game! But give us more money and we'll change the idea around and that feature bloat will doom everything." Purely cosmetic additions to the game design won't derail anything, whereas "expand your gameplay" will unbalance the project. In any event, are this seems unlikely to be a stretch goal bonanza.

 

[luj1]

Alright but I didn't suggest to twist the core gameplay in any way. You could always use more polish or increase replay value, if nothing else. There just isn't a good excuse for prioritizing Sims-level rubbish like "more jewelry and more awesome beards" over real substance, imho.

 

[MRY]

I think voice over can make a big difference, actually, particularly in a game about characters' personalities and mental states. That said, to really pull it off you'd want to have a lot of VO, which starts to cause design trouble.

 

[daveyd]

Alright but I didn't suggest to twist the core gameplay in any way. You could always use more polish or increase replay value, if nothing else. There just isn't a good excuse for prioritizing Sims-level rubbish like "more jewelry and more awesome beards" over real substance, imho.

But isn't that what the base goal ($50K) is for? Andrej has been working on it for quite some time so I assume he'd find a way to finish the game eventually, even if the KS had failed. However, once the game is funded on KS that buys Poetic some time to actually finish the game in the reasonably near future. I mean, "more polish" isn't really a concrete stretch goal that will excite backers... It goes without saying that they're going to polish it. Stretch goals are something about crowdfunding I'm rather ambivalent about. Promising vague stuff like "more__" is largely meaningless when we don't know how much content was going to be in the game in the first place.. because it's not a finished game. At least additional voice acting is a tangible stretch goal. It adds something to the game. Whereas saying "increasing replay value" doesn't really tell us anything at this point.

 

[daveyd]

You have some cool concepts but , fuck, every time I read "psychological RPG" somewhere it tends to put me off.

And why waste yourself on VO and localization? To bring more backers? Expand your gameplay FFS, as others have said. If you haven't ideas, well, that's another topic completely. Go fishing or smoke some smack. Or both at the same time.

I agree with the first point, particularly because the notion of "psychology" -- even, I think, in term of "humors" -- would be alien to this setting. Actually, in some sense I wonder if this is the game's genius or a fatal flaw, but now that I reflect on its gameplay, it is probably the most "metagamey" RPG I've ever seen: it basically takes the nagging feeling that a game like Mass Effect has ("I guess I need to take the Renegage option to max my Renegade point for later cooler options") and makes it a core feature. Rather than choosing an option because the option is appealing, and then having to live with the reputational or social consequences with factions and other characters, you choose an option because the consequences are necessary for your overall strategy. Faction/companion min-maxing goes from degenerate to eugenerate or something. It's unclear whether this is brilliant or doomed to alienate (to use another anachronistic psych term) the player completely from the player-character. Maybe both.

But as to the second point, I couldn't disagree more. A classic Kickstarter disaster is, "We have this great idea for a game! But give us more money and we'll change the idea around and that feature bloat will doom everything." Purely cosmetic additions to the game design won't derail anything, whereas "expand your gameplay" will unbalance the project. In any event, are this seems unlikely to be a stretch goal bonanza.

While psychology didn't exist as a formal field of study in the 2nd century, I'm not really sure how that is in any way relevant to the game. I mean, the characters aren't literally sitting on a couch psychoanalyzing eachother, they're just fighting (where emotions, personality traits, and other "psychological" stuff affects the outcome).

Anyway, I can see the point about the game potentially being metagamey... but it's hard for me to tell without actually playing the game how it will work... I think that perhaps in practice it won't feel all that different from any other turn-based where you have multiple options (e.g., weak slash, power attack, aimed strike, etc.) You have the options which have a high probability of success but do less damage, the high risk-high reward option, and some things in the middle. Only difference is in Sacred Fire the focus is on emotional stuff is at the forefront. I can taunt the soldier to try to make him angry- which might have pros and cons; like lowering his defense or accuracy % but increasing the force of his blows... The outcome of the actions has to be at least somewhat predictable, or it wouldn't be tactical combat, it would just be a "Choose Your Own Adventure" system. I could be off, but that's how I'm interpreting it based on what I've seen in the updates / videos.