Game News Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter Update #57: Shadowrun Has Returned

[Anthony Davis]

More thoughts after about 6 to 8 hours into the game. I'll organize it similar to VD.

Pros:
I continue to enjoy the art. I do find myself wishing I could zom in a bit more, especially on Cherry Bomb, ho ho ho. Seriously though, the art is very nice and really looks like ToEE was the inspiration.
I continue to enjoy the writing and the characters. I do get a slight NWN1 shallowness vibe to some of it, but the atmosphere helps carry it over any rough spots.
Mucho skill checks in dialogues. Almost a constant thing. It would take a second play through to see if the decisions/skill checks alter anything other than monetary rewards.
While combat so far is not exactly hard, it is still enjoyable. SOME fights are a lot more challenging, for example:

Spoiler

the first time you fight the indestructible insects while you have to protect the decker can be rough if you get trapped in the room or in a corner behind their corpses.

I have had shadowrunners "knocked down" and have had to jump start me with one of the kits. Bad guys critical hitting with shotguns can do 40 damage in a single hit. Taking that and any other hit in a round will it down out mages.
I like the interactions in the world, but I seriously could have used... 5 times more than there is.

Neutral:
Super linear. I list this as neutral as I don't believe RPGS need to be non linear to be good, any Kodexer worth his/her/it's salt can name plenty of good RPGs that are linear. If you hate linear plots, you will probably hate this too.
Toolset holds much promise for either incline or delicious decline. Only time will tell.

Cons:
Save system blows.
Drone system is kind of wasted.
Melee combat is kind of wasted. The damage can be good, but ranged weapons and spells start doing damage as soon as they see you.
There was clearly some attempts at more variety in combat scenarios, and I would have liked to have seen more of that. Not nearly enough missions where you have to split up your party, or have secondary goals to accomplish. Some of these exist,and they are great, but it leaves me wanting more missions like that.


I'll have more thoughts later.

 

[pusheax]

Not 1.2M - "Including PayPal, our final total is $1,895,772".
15 months development time -> ~$126,500/month. After taxes and rent they're left with 80-90 or less.
22 employees -> $3500/month per employee. That's $42,000/year. Right now average programmer salary is like $75,000/year.
Correct me if I'm wrong...

It's not the most profitable job in the world. So threads like this make me laugh.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Anthony Davis

Yes, there are great linear games, like PST and Bloodlines, but they offered a lot more than Shadowrun, which takes linearity to the next level. For example, you can't see or interact with the blood evidence, until you summon the spirits to tell you to look there. You can't talk to the hooker until you talk to the guard and you can't pick up the ladder until you took to the hooker. You can't even sell the gemstones to the fence guy until Paco tells you 'let's sell the gemstones!". Basically, every step, no matter how tiny, is firmly set in place and you can't do anything - can't talk, can't use, can't open, can't explore - until you go through a very linear sequence of actions and trigger it.

This kills replayability because you know exactly what you need to do and there is no deviation from the formula. Thus, even if you're replaying for combat, it's still annoying because you can't just jump to it - you need to jump through 10 hoops first.

 

[Monty]

Not 1.2M - "Including PayPal, our final total is $1,895,772".
15 months development time -> ~$126,500/month. After taxes and rent they're left with 80-90 or less.
22 employees -> $3500/month per employee. That's $42,000/year. Right now average programmer salary is like $75,000/year.
Correct me if I'm wrong...

It's not the most profitable job in the world. So threads like this make me laugh.

True, but that's just the advance funding from kickstarter. Now they're going to get ongoing sales revenue on top of that so it's reasonable to assume they initially put some of their own money in too, just as devs did in the pre-kickstarter days.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Not 1.2M - "Including PayPal, our final total is $1,895,772".
15 months development time -> ~$126,500/month. After taxes and rent they're left with 80-90 or less.

They wouldn't have to pay taxes on it, unless they are absolutely clueless (and nobody's that clueless). This isn't profit, it's an advance payment against work that needs to be done.

 

[likaq]

Not 1.2M - "Including PayPal, our final total is $1,895,772".
15 months development time -> ~$126,500/month. After taxes and rent they're left with 80-90 or less.
22 employees -> $3500/month per employee. That's $42,000/year. Right now average programmer salary is like $75,000/year.
Correct me if I'm wrong...

It's not the most profitable job in the world. So threads like this make me laugh.

So kickstarter and amazon cuts don't exists? Failed payments too? What about physical goods that needs to be manufactured and send ( manuals, t-shirts and so on )?
And of course any profit from kickstarter needs to be taxed.
So forget about 1.9 mln.

 

[subotaiy]

Despite all the cons, I can say i haven't enjoyed a new rpg so much since New Vegas.

 

[Trash]

Like the difficulty settings. On very hard the game still seems to start out quite easy due to the way the encounters are set up. Later on shit really does get hard as encounters become busier and more challenging. Also enjoy the fun amount of skill checks in the game. Save states suck but do force me to stick to my decisions. For instance I did not have enough money to bribe a cop. Will have to learn to live with that and its consequences now.

Am interested to see if there are consequences at all for something like that though. All the rest has been said already. Atmospheric graphics, good writing, great music, linear hubs and adorable nerds trying to look tough and who are obviously backer based portraits. What's also very important so far is that I've been having actual FUN with this game. Lots of it actually. Dunno why but this just clicks.

 

[felipepepe]

After 2 hours playing, game looks like a good iPad RPG... and nowhere near a good PC RPG.

- I'm not a hardcore min-max player, and even on Very Hard I faceroll through everything, only took one shot during the entire Steve Jackson fight...
- Inventory limitations are retarded, no slots, no ammo, no equipping 2 of the same gun...
- Non-intuitive, iPad interface. Doesn't even have tooltips for stuff like overwatch, and finding simple things like current/max HP is a pain.
- Linear. As. Fuck.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Anthony Davis

Yes, there are great linear games, like PST and Bloodlines, but they offered a lot more than Shadowrun, which takes linearity to the next level. For example, you can't see or interact with the blood evidence, until you summon the spirits to tell you to look there. You can't talk to the hooker until you talk to the guard and you can't pick up the ladder until you took to the hooker. You can't even sell the gemstones to the fence guy until Paco tells you 'let's sell the gemstones!". Basically, every step, no matter how tiny, is firmly set in place and you can't do anything - can't talk, can't use, can't open, can't explore - until you go through a very linear sequence of actions and trigger it.

This kills replayability because you know exactly what you need to do and there is no deviation from the formula. Thus, even if you're replaying for combat, it's still annoying because you can't just jump to it - you need to jump through 10 hoops first.

Agreed. This does limit eliminate replayability, but for the first run through, I'm enjoying it.

 

[tuluse]

Not 1.2M - "Including PayPal, our final total is $1,895,772".
15 months development time -> ~$126,500/month. After taxes and rent they're left with 80-90 or less.
22 employees -> $3500/month per employee. That's $42,000/year. Right now average programmer salary is like $75,000/year.
Correct me if I'm wrong...

It's not the most profitable job in the world. So threads like this make me laugh.

They announced after setting aside money for physical rewards they had 1.2 million. They also pumped money from their iCasual games into this.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Was there some bad blood between These guys and Steve Jackson, or was that just a joke or a coincidence?

 

[felipepepe]

Was there some bad blood between These guys and Steve Jackson, or was that just a joke or a coincidence?

Nah, Steve was a bro and actually paid $1,000 to get in: http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2012-04-07

At any rate, I just supported at the $1,000 level, which means that in some back alley of the digital Seattle, you may meet an Evil Stevie character.

 

[Drowed]

I have about 4-5 hours of gameplay, my impressions so far:

The good:
* The art. It is certainly a very nice game to look at.
* The music. Holy shit, it's good.
* The setting. It's very nice to have the chance to finally play something that is not based on medieval fantasy or a generic future.
* The atmosphere, dialogues, short descriptions, characters... Although it has its ups and downs, I can say without fear that overall I am very pleased with the presentation of the game.

The bad:
* The linearity. Fuck, this is the most linear RPG I have played up to today. And I play some JRPGs eventually.
* Little interaction with the environment. I understand that the scenarios are basically (beautiful) static background where characters wander, but it would be so hard to offer more things to look at / interact / explore?
* The interface is clearly targeted at tablets.

A missed opportunity:
* The combat. Although it is not deeply complex, it has enough variation; if tuned correctly, it could provide some interesting moments of challenge. But until now, basically, every fight follows the logic of "shoot till it's dead and heal when necessary".

---

Overall, this is an RPG-Lite in the Shadowrun setting. I cannot say that's the kind of game that I really dreamed of playing, but it also would be a lie to say that it isn't a fun little game. It's worth the price. And always remember, I have high hopes for the future MODs and campaigns created by the community. So, yeah, while it's not "great", it's certainly good.

 

[Mrowak]

After 2 hours playing, game looks like a good iPad RPG... and nowhere near a good PC RPG.

- I'm not a hardcore min-max player, and even on Very Hard I faceroll through everything, only took one shot during the entire Steve Jackson fight...
- Inventory limitations are retarded, no slots, no ammo, no equipping 2 of the same gun...
- Non-intuitive, iPad interface. Doesn't even have tooltips for stuff like overwatch, and finding simple things like current/max HP is a pain.
- Linear. As. Fuck.

All too true. As I progressed on somehow my first positive impressions lifted. It's a good budget title but nothing mindblowing, really. Then again I did not expect much so I am not disappointed.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Yeah, I should have mentioned the music, thumbs up on the score.

Drowed - see this is exactly what I meant. There were SOME interactions with the beautiful world, but I wanted about 5 times more than I got. They don't all need to be pick ups and loot, even the flavor text is great, when there is any.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Well spend 15 doritos, had the same impression Anthony and Drowned made let's hope the toolkit will be as popular as NWN1/2 were. Big for hand drawned 2D graphics this is the pretest RPG game since the ToEE.

 

[Trash]

Like the difficulty settings. On very hard the game still seems to start out quite easy due to the way the encounters are set up. Later on shit really does get hard as encounters become busier and more challenging. Also enjoy the fun amount of skill checks in the game. Save states suck but do force me to stick to my decisions. For instance I did not have enough money to bribe a cop. Will have to learn to live with that and its consequences now.

Am interested to see if there are consequences at all for something like that though. All the rest has been said already. Atmospheric graphics, good writing, great music, linear hubs and adorable nerds trying to look tough and who are obviously backer based portraits. What's also very important so far is that I've been having actual FUN with this game. Lots of it actually. Dunno why but this just clicks.

Found out why. The game itself is good fun but the setting is just something I've always loved. Together with the great music and art it just gels for me.

Combat is quite simplistic but can also be rather hard on very hard. Especially when the encounters get more intense. Most encounters keep quite simple 'kill 'em all' affairs but occiasionally you'll have stuff thrown in that really makes them memorable. Early on for instance you fight a room full of zoned out chipheads who get controlled and want to kill you while you're trying to save them. Get the controller and fight off his bodyguards while trying not to harm the chipheads. That was a fun one. You get more interesting ones later but I'd wish there would have been more.

 

[Indranys]

it has seperate states for each autosave checkpoint, so you don't have to wrorry.

Thank you so much.
It doesn't truly solve my problem, but still better than nothing.

 

[Luzur]

so, a simple verdict, is it shit and i have to go



or is it a Codex MUST BUY?

 

[Orma]

I just finished the game. It lasts like 8-9 hours

 

[Vault Dweller]

Early on for instance you fight a room full of zoned out chipheads who get controlled and want to kill you while you're trying to save them. Get the controller and fight off his bodyguards while trying not to harm the chipheads. That was a fun one. You get more interesting ones later but I'd wish there would have been more.

Unfortunately, they miss a lot and don't do much damage, so you can just ignore them or throw a concussion grenade at them, if they bother you too much. It's much simpler to run to the crouching guy who controls them and blast him in the face.

 

[Drowed]

Yeah, Anthony Davis, I agree! It was not necessarily needed to be loot, but anything that motivates exploration. It may just be a character hidden in an alley that has an interesting conversation, a little quick scene between two NPCs in a corridor, some descriptions about the objects you find around the environment... I think that it would be enough to choose a (talented) person to start adding this kind of thing and, with a month of work, most likely he would have created enough content to make the game more reactive.

But what's done, is done. It's a pity, but the game is still good even without it.

 

[Trash]

Early on for instance you fight a room full of zoned out chipheads who get controlled and want to kill you while you're trying to save them. Get the controller and fight off his bodyguards while trying not to harm the chipheads. That was a fun one. You get more interesting ones later but I'd wish there would have been more.

Unfortunately, they miss a lot and don't do much damage, so you can just ignore them or throw a concussion grenade at them, if they bother you too much. It's much simpler to run to the crouching guy who controls them and blast him in the face.

On VH one of them nearly took out my character with a critical. The real danger comes from the two mages and their bodyguards but when you get stuck in a bad position and get pinned there by the chipheads you're fucked. Plus, they chip away at your health at an alarming rate and can, as I said, get lucky. My fav early encounter.

Yeah, Anthony Davis, I agree! It was not necessarily needed to be loot, but anything that motivates exploration. It may just be a character hidden in an alley that has an interesting conversation, a little quick scene between two NPCs in a corridor, some descriptions about the objects you find around the environment... I think that it would be enough to choose a (talented) person to start adding this kind of thing and, with a month of work, most likely he would have created enough content to make the game more reactive.

But what's done, is done. It's a pity, but the game is still good even without it.

What little the game has is neat. Should just be loads more. Love the loading screens and the occasional description of an area btw.

 

[Excidium]

They should've chosen a (talented) person to design the game mechanics because I'd have preferred much more if they just implemented the rules of any shadowrun iteration 1:1 instead of this gamey shit.