Game News Tortured Hearts goes Kickstarter for $300k

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Teleport Games; Tortured Hearts - or, How I Saved The Universe. Again.

Just when you thought the KickStarter bandwagon jumping was over, another indie mob have hopped onboard:

Tortured Hearts: Or, How I Saved the Universe. Again. (TM)
is an epicly epic, light-hearted RPG, dedicated to the proposition that most RPGs take themselves far too seriously. Since almost every imaginable plot scenario and character has already been used and overused to the point that cliches are unavoidable, TH instead revels in pointing out that the life of adventurers is one endless heroic cliche, some sort of existential trap created by the gods of RPG worlds. In other word, it has everything every other RPG game ever had, and introspective humor too.​

For $1k you can be a boss monster and for $5k you get to be an in-game companion. It'll be interesting to see if people aren't KickStarted out yet...

Thanks HiddenX!

 

[sgc_meltdown]

ah yes, the light hearted, fourth wall breaking, humorous yet epic indie storyline

the ambitious floor-spanning whoopie cushion of videogame narratives

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I wish them well, but I think caution is needed. Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo are industry veterans who know how to bring projects to term. Likewise, the MCA-backed Obsidian kickstarter will likely do well. But a modding team like this? How do we know it won't just be vaporware?

 

[Zed]

With the Codex being prestigious as fuck and all that, and developers joining left and right, here's the Tortured Hearts GRPG thread (with developer answering questions and comments): www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?posts/2024513/

 

[Zed]

I think 300k is a little bit too ambitious with the current kickstarter page. They are updating it though.

 

[Alex]

I wish them well, but I think caution is needed. Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo are industry veterans who know how to bring projects to term. Likewise, the MCA-backed Obsidian kickstarter will likely do well. But a modding team like this? How do we know it won't just be vaporware?

While fr from the established name of these two, the team here have a few commercial games under their belt, as well as the original Newcomer to the C64 and the Tortured Hearts NWN game.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

ah yes, the light hearted, fourth wall breaking, humorous yet epic indie storyline
.
the ambitious floor-spanning whoopie cushion of videogame narratives

Yep, another indie game with horrible humor from people who think they're so witty.

Pass, and no way they can make a whole game with a graphical quality as consistent as in the demo

 

[CSM]

300k, way to aim low.

 

[Stabwound]

I really hope that none of these obvious money-grubbing attempts are successful.

 

[Noddy]

Optimistic.

From the updates it seems like they have no devolpment skills and just want money to pay someone else to make their game.

I'd rather fund this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/135802053/mermaid-adventures-an-rpg-of-undersea-fun?ref=card

 

[sgc_meltdown]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/135802053/mermaid-adventures-an-rpg-of-undersea-fun?ref=card

pfft. Not groundbreaking or ethical enough.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmitchum/zeal-disputatum?ref=category

Imagine plugging in this innovative conflict resolution system into GD.

 

[Excidium]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/135802053/mermaid-adventures-an-rpg-of-undersea-fun?ref=card

pfft. Not groundbreaking or ethical enough.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmitchum/zeal-disputatum?ref=category

Imagine plugging in this innovative conflict resolution system into GD.

What the hell is wrong with that girl?

 

[Stabwound]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/135802053/mermaid-adventures-an-rpg-of-undersea-fun?ref=card

pfft. Not groundbreaking or ethical enough.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mmitchum/zeal-disputatum?ref=category

Imagine plugging in this innovative conflict resolution system into GD.

What the hell is wrong with that girl?

"The micropayment system allows players to pay as little as a small amount... occasionally, to large amounts on a regular basis."

...really.

 

[Zed]

300k, way to aim low.

Thing is they can't change it either, and if it's not reached they won't get a dime.

FTL had a 10.000 goal and are soon ending their kickstarter run. 200% pledged in a day and soon closing in on 164k total. And that's with publicity like Notch tweeting, kotaku articles and shit like that. Also there seems to be this last hour rush of pledgers easily giving a project +10%. They are guaranteed the money they wanted + a fuckton more. With different tiers, maybe they could have gotten even more, who knows.

Let's do sloppy math.
Average pledge for Wasteland 2: 50 bucks.
Average pledge for double fine adventure: 38 doolars.
Average pledge for The Banner Saga: 36 oreos.
Average pledge for FTL: 20 kwacrowns.

Considering this is money going straight into the devs hands, those are nice price tags. I doubt costs for t-shirts, shipping and shit makes a bigger cut than a publisher cut would. I think especially the banner saga is making a big win from this.

Tortured Hearts would probably land at the same level as FTL (at most), because of how cheap their "get game digitally" pledge tier is: 10 doolars. This means they would have to out-do FTL in the amount of pledgers by a fair amount. Like 15k pledgers, minimum. Probably like 18k.
I doubt they will reach that. I don't see viral internet people like Notch waving their dicks at this. Maybe if the game was 15 kwacrowns and the other tiers were more lucrative and fun instead of in-game boost items, they could have had a reasonable chance.

Instead, chances are they won't get a single dingle. Unless 300k was a magic "let's do it!" goal, then I think it was a big mistake aiming that high. If the project was a-go regardless of any extra money from kickstarter, then why not have it be like 20k, max, and let what money you can make help development? Are they set on making the game fully voiced by the cast of Friends or something? What could be so fucking expensive?

It is possible to add to pledge rewards and update (even remake) your kickstarter page. So it's not entirely hopeless. But they've kind of set it up for failure.
If the game does indeed go turn-based and showcases some interesting gameplay, it would be a fucking shame too.

 

[Alex]

Zed

Their update #1 explains this:

We're happy to be live now on Kickstarter, and promise more concept graphics soon. Some feedback we have already had is "Why do you need so much money? when (other games) didn't ask for what I think is a proportional amount."
The cost of one game is no predictor of the cost of a totally different game done by totally different people. Basically the reason for the figure I picked is that while so much is already done, it was done as a labor of love and faith (i.e., for free) by two people, Zoltan Gonda and myself. But this was all writing, more or less. Even scripting is writing, in a way. Playing and testing is fun messing around. Now we need to get a lot of other professionals involved to do the parts we aren't expert enough to accomplish (and do a good job on) by ourselves. That's the graphics, the music and sounds, and better programming. This is a big, big game, like Baldur's Gate. Some of the 200+ areas are relatively small, like room interiors, but full of detail; some are very large and complex with dense scenery, like a city. There are already over 500 NPCs who will all look different. Making this concept into a game where the players can, for instance, customize the appearance of their characters, change armor, lop off heads, and so on, means many, many hand drawn, hand colored elements and that means many man hours of labor. Same with the music and sound effects. Same with managing the project and the rewards. The biggest single budget pitfall is that if you have a bunch of income in one year, you have to pay all the taxes on it in that year, even when your project is going to go beyond that year; you can't make all the expenses to offset the tax bite in that year because then there wouldn't be anything to pay people in the second. Believe me, this is not an estimate that will let us all retire to the beach, it's a very spare estimate which does not, for instance, pay me a penny. Pledges go to the game. Thank you.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

In other news, fuggetabootit.

Oh we're made the writing and scripting, we just need other people to craft everything else including all the high-res assets. Don't worry, our plan is realistic and foolproof; it's totally doable.

Pie in the sky projects like this are the beginning of the end, at least for any project without a big name attached to it.

 

[Zed]

Shit, forgot about Banner Saga, thanks for the tip

add http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...s-consulting-detective-adventure-mys?ref=card together with the list I wrote and you have my pledge list.
I feel like I'm the Multi-headed Cow of Kickstarter.

 

[Alex]

First, it really isn't up to Kickstarter to do this kind of screening. Nor should it be. It is up to fans and people enthused by the projects to get a gathering and fund it. Speaking of which, I really think people should try to show some support to the devs, at least if you liked Newcomer or Tortured Hearts. I agree that the target they are aiming at seems improbable, but by pledging and supporting the devs, it might help them gauge a more reasonable goal for the next time.

 

[Cassidy]

Making modules for Neverwinter Nights does not turn their maker into someone with any competence for developing a full game with its own engine and game mechanics.

 

[Alex]

Cassidy

Yeah, but they worked in plenty of other games, including Newcomer, which was built from the ground up. I mentioned Newcomer and Tortured Hearts because it seems to be the type of game they are aiming for here. I specially liked Newcomer, so I am willing to support them.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

This is a textbook example of how not to do a Kickstarter project. You don't ask for some sort of "ideal" budget. You make an assessment of how much money you can realistically raise with your set of assets (estimated audience size and whether they see your project as both worth the budget and possible to realize given the said budget, past credentials, how much is already done and how much of what is already done can be presented on your project page in an attractive way, etc.), then see if this number gets you anywhere (i.e. to some sort of finished product) within a reasonable time frame (no more than 18 months). You might find you'll need to scale the project down, or make it episodic, or wait until you have something more palpable than design documents and scripts (besides, a few pieces of quality concept art will always work better than several hundred pages' worth of dialogue). Then you need to start out with an extremely polished presentation on day one, as the first few days will most probably decide the fate of your project, especially if you're asking for a relatively large amount of money. No amount of updates will help if you start out with a lacklustre project page (cf. the Hardcore Tactical Shooter).

I doubt Banner Saga would have worked if they asked for $1,000,000 instead of $100,000 (even the $300,000 they've got now may not have worked). They have the credentials, an attractive presentation, good niche targeting, and, most importantly, based on all that, they chose the optimal amount to ask for. Age of Decadence, as an indie project roughly similar to TH, has already had quite a lot of press and attention, released two demos, can produce any amount of concept art, screenshots, music, gameplay and presentation videos complete with Oscar's salsa dancing and VD smashing peoples' heads in, but if they were to go Kickstarter, I'd still be scared to ask for more than $200,000. I wish the TH guys luck, but there's no way this is going to work out.

 

[Commissar Draco]

What this English Lord has said, Plus VD seems to be totaly uninterested in sellling his product, Reaping the XP and materials from Demo couse it made it too easy for experienced Beta testers is not best marketing I've seen. were whining and bitching imagine the reaction of unwashed masses.... Sorry broad consumers.

 

[SubBassman]

Hi there

I'm one of the makers of this game. (Zoltan Gonda)
I understand all your concerns and I'd like to clarify a few things.

First, the money.
As the FAQ points out:
We could have asked for less, hoping we'd be overpledged. But what if we weren't? We couldn't promise a finished game of the best quality. We are already on a very spare budget that we know is enough to finish. Update #1 explains this a little more.

Second, the team:
All the people who are supposed to work on this project, except Lenore, are industry veterans, with 10 to 20 years of experience. Everybody knows his own Trade. We have not just come from the Moon, so to speak. We are not "modders next door". On top of Newcomer and the 2 mods, there are 4 big games, 1 add-on and a couple of small titles behind me. That's about 10 years of game industry work.

Third, the project:
Since 2008, about 2.3 million characters of meaningful text has been written + hundreds of skill/ability checks, we have put 100+ quests together, hundreds of NPCs saying something interesting... the game is half done. The other half, the models, textures, musics, voices etc must be done by someone and these people won't work for free, like us.

By the way, don't worry about the English of the text, it was already proofread by Lenore.

Thank you for your time
If you have any questions, please go ahead
Zoltan

PS: there's gonna be an update soon with convo examples

 

[Metro]

Combat will be turn-based.

How can you bros resist?!?!

 

[Burning Bridges]

Third, the project:
Since 2008, about 2.3 million characters of meaningful text has been written + hundreds of skill/ability checks, we have put 100+ quests together, hundreds of NPCs saying something interesting... the game is half done. The other half, the models, textures, musics, voices etc must be done by someone and these people won't work for free, like us.

Bro you should work on your style. This talk about millions of characters is an insult to my intelligence.

Especially if you don't show anything else. Why not work on approximately 20 pages (that's like only 10.000 words or 50.000 characters) of meaningful information about the game, as well as 20 meaningful screenshots?