Alternate Planes: Many dimensions lurk beneath the fabric of reality. Lured by the promise of untold riches and arcane secrets, your bravest townsfolk open portals to previously unknown realms. What could possibly go wrong?
[I]
Through the door I saw… the sky. The sky at night, when the stars fill one end of the horizon to the other. Except… the stars were ordered in perfect rows, like corn in the field. And little round plates studded with rubies dashed around between them, jabbing lances of light at each other. One of the plates… flew apart as I watched. In a ball of fire!
Looking at what they’re aiming for along with the stretch goals, I haven’t been this interested in a kickstarter game since Planetary Annihilation. It does have me curious about what else they could possibly add after the playable kingdoms at 600k
Given that there is now co-op multiplayer, I would love to see a “PvP” multiplayer, where one player could be in charge of a monster faction, or if not a monster faction have some way of triggering monster attacks against another player while trying to build up your own defenses.
If you’re interested in modeling, you can see Tom developing new models while answering questions on their Twitch channel. Tony also has one where he shows how to integrate a model into the environment. Although my impression is that Tom is actually getting real work done during his broadcasts, whereas Tony was mostly doing a tutorial showing how the scripting environment works.
I found the broadcasts very interesting, although they are quite long. I tend to run them in the background when I’m doing something else.
With just over 36 hours left they are now over $650,000 (including Paypal contributions). New Stretch Goals both of which are “Post-Release” due to their concern about overstretching on development “[T]he issue is that we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew, and end up skimping on the core game to reach even more goals by release. Our plate is pretty full right now!”
New Playable Race: Dwarves ($750,000): While the Three Kingdoms of humans spread across the world’s surface, the dwarves build their own empire deep in the mountains and bedrock below.
This dwarven race will come complete with new art, entirely new play mechanics more suited to a dwarven disposition, and new classes and crafting recipes.
[i]Help! All driven underground by fire and trapped by rocks. The ground shakes; Dwarven drums in the deep. We cannot get out… they are coming!
–Jiruk Firestarter, Goblin Shaman[/i]
Persistent, Connected World ($1,000,000): We’ll offer the option to host your game on our own servers (this may require a fee). All hosted games can choose to participate in entirely new gameplay modes with other hosted cities!
Here are some of the things we’re thinking about:
[ul][li]Your cooperative games will be available all the time, not just when the computer serving the game is on.[/li][li]Establish alliances and supply-routes between friendly, player controlled cities.[/li][li]Trade in the global economy that spans all hosted games.[/li][*]Band several cities together to create your own Empires[/ul]
They’ve gone up $20,000 since they announced the stretch goals an hour ago!!! $1,000,000 still seems a long way off. But the Dwarves seems fairly likely (they still need an very strong end push to even get those though).
This is not a rhetorical question: Why is this Kickstarter so successful? Personally, I backed the project because a DF-style simulation in coop multiplayer sounds awesome to me. I’m just amazed at how much money they’re raising, especially in relation to their original goal.
So what’s the lesson here? What are they doing that’s making this campaign so successful?
I think it’s a combination of pent up desire for a good Dwarf-Fortress-alike combined with a really cute look. AIUI Gnomoria is actually pretty decent, but this one certainly looks better graphically and from a “just watching your citizens carry out their day” perspective this one looks a lot more enjoyable (at least based on their Kickstarter videos).
I’ve been on the fence with this one, as I kind of felt that I had reached my limit for backing kickstarters. But then i realized, that I wouldn’t be able to bear listening to you guys discussing the beta half a year from now, without being able to participate. So I caved in. Again.
Ah interesting. Just saw this, and will take a closer look once I get home. It’s been a year or two since my last Dwarf Fortressing, and this looks like it’s attempting to capture more of the complexity of DF that others are eschewing, hopefully with principled UI design. Cool.
Definitely a sign that this genre is high in demand. Their presentation shows a clean looking interface with a great deal of possibilities. It is definitely one to watch.
