KickStarter Late To The Party, a Cold War Espionage RPG from the developers of Unrest - Failed

[LESS T_T]

Pyrodactyl Games, the developer of Unrest, started their second Kickstarter campaign.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pyrodactyl/late-to-the-party-a-cold-war-espionage-rpg-in-the

Late to the Party is an espionage RPG about the struggles, fears, and turmoil of the oppressed during the dying days of the Soviet Union. Use your contacts, tools, and wits to stay alive in the midst of a dangerous historically-inspired conspiracy.

• Play it safe and fudge the facts, or stick your neck out to uncover every last link of the conspiracy in a branching storyline.
• Use your character traits, KGB spy tools, and improvised equipment to cover your tracks and further the investigation.
• Balance your allegiances and always cover your tracks if you want to stay alive.
• See the Baltics come to life with locally inspired art and music.
• Enjoy dialogue and scenarios dripping with dark humor from the makers of Unrest, a critically acclaimed narrative RPG funded via Kickstarter.
• Full mod support lets you create your own worlds and adventures.
• Late to the Party will be available DRM-Free on multiple digital stores, without any DLC or microtransactions.

1991. The Baltics have suffered the casual contempt of Communist occupiers for more than half a century. Goods are scarce, jobs are reserved for Russian transplants, and a bottle of liquor in the right hands could mean the difference between safety and death for your family.

Resources are stretched thin. The oppressed are striking back. And those in power are growing increasingly desperate.

You are a local woman groomed by the KGB to investigate your own country. Your smarts, drive, and history of criminal behavior make you an ideal recruit - assuming you remain loyal to your crafty superiors, your power-mad coworkers, and the crooks that make up your intelligence network.

Revolution is brewing. With the right information, you can be the Soviets' greatest agent - but with the right reason to fight, you might just be their greatest miscalculation.

At the start of Late to the Party, you will compile a dossier for your character that outlines your history, criminal record, strengths and weaknesses. Your position as an agent means you have access to state of the art equipment such as wiretaps, untraceable poison, "truth serum" injections, and more.

You'll need every resource you can get. No matter how safe you play it, there's danger everywhere, and every fact you learn could give you one moment's grace.

A conversation showing Disposition, State and Intent in action.

Late to the Party is an evolution of the systems introduced in Pyrodactyl's previous titles,Unrest and Will Fight for Food. Every NPC has two opinion values - Disposition, or how they currently seem to feel about you, and State, or what they seem to be feeling generally. Furthermore, each of your dialogue options is marked with an Intent that describes which direction that option is taking the conversation in.To give an example:

• You're meeting with a fellow KGB agent. This agent already hates and mistrusts you, but is smart enough to cover it up.
• To you, his Disposition appears as "Polite." However, he's clearly a little on edge, and his State is "Tense." Rather than let him be, you decide to probe at the source of his tension.
• You select a dialogue option that seems to be subtly looking into his attitude, but just to be sure, you check the Intent. Which - sure enough - is marked "Pry."
• A few probing questions later, and the facade drops, altering his Disposition to "Contemptuous" and his State to "Irritated."

Your work will take you from high-class hotels to the squalor of the city projects.

Over the course of the game, you will conduct multiple investigations into the suspicious events happening in your city. The outcome of the plot depends not only on how well you resolve the cases, but also on how well you cover your tracks (if you choose to align yourself with the revolutionaries) and how well you please your superiors (if you don't want to be executed). You will constantly juggle safety, ideology, present needs, and the needs of the future.

Tell me about the moment-to-moment gameplay of Late to the Party.

During most of the game, you will investigate peculiar cases handed to you by the KGB. Your job will be to visit various locations in the city and conduct your investigation by studying your environment, deploying spy equipment (such as planting a microphone on a suspect, or pickpocketing a bystander) and skillfully navigating conversations.

What games can I compare it to?

In terms of the dialog, plot and hard choices, Late to the Party is like our previous game, Unrest (which in turn was inspired by Planescape: Torment). In terms of the amount of branching in the plot, we were inspired by the story segments of Obsidian’s Alpha Protocol.

Is there combat in Late to the Party?

You’re a spy, not a soldier, and you’ve never been in a pitched gunfight. Any violence you’ll be involved with will be over in a few shots – one way or the other. The combat system uses a point-and-click style interface – but the amount of combat scenarios are only a handful, and are a last resort that happen only if you mess things up beyond repair.

How long will one playthrough last? How replayable is the game?

Based on our estimates, one playthrough will take 4-5 hours to complete. There are many wholly unique endings, but if you really optimize your choices you should be able to see most of the game’s content in 3-4 playthroughs.

Inspired by Alpha Protocol, huh?

I'd always love to see someone developing more social aspects of gameplay in RPG (or computer games in general.) I'll pledge soon

 

[Starwars]

I'm in for 15 bucks.

 

[pyroary]

We were inspired by only the good parts of Alpha Protocol, though.

 

[Infinitron]

http://pyrodactyl.com/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pyrodactyl/late-to-the-party-a-cold-war-espionage-rpg-in-the

Funding goal: 50,000 Canadian dollars

Arrest, interrogate, and uncover the truth as a local recruited by the KGB. For Windows, Mac & Linux.

Late to the Party is an espionage RPG about the struggles, fears, and turmoil of the oppressed during the dying days of the Soviet Union. Use your contacts, tools, and wits to stay alive in the midst of a dangerous historically-inspired conspiracy.

• Play it safe and fudge the facts, or stick your neck out to uncover every last link of the conspiracy in a branching storyline.
• Use your character traits, KGB spy tools, and improvised equipment to cover your tracks and further the investigation.
• Balance your allegiances and always cover your tracks if you want to stay alive.
• See the Baltics come to life with locally inspired art and music.
• Enjoy dialogue and scenarios dripping with dark humor from the makers of Unrest, a critically acclaimed narrative RPG funded via Kickstarter.
• Full mod support lets you create your own worlds and adventures.
• Late to the Party will be available DRM-Free on multiple digital stores, without any DLC or microtransactions.

1991. The Baltics have suffered the casual contempt of Communist occupiers for more than half a century. Goods are scarce, jobs are reserved for Russian transplants, and a bottle of liquor in the right hands could mean the difference between safety and death for your family.

Resources are stretched thin. The oppressed are striking back. And those in power are growing increasingly desperate.

You are a local woman groomed by the KGB to investigate your own country. Your smarts, drive, and history of criminal behavior make you an ideal recruit - assuming you remain loyal to your crafty superiors, your power-mad coworkers, and the crooks that make up your intelligence network.

Revolution is brewing. With the right information, you can be the Soviets' greatest agent - but with the right reason to fight, you might just be their greatest miscalculation.

At the start of Late to the Party, you will compile a dossier for your character that outlines your history, criminal record, strengths and weaknesses. Your position as an agent means you have access to state of the art equipment such as wiretaps, untraceable poison, "truth serum" injections, and more.

You'll need every resource you can get. No matter how safe you play it, there's danger everywhere, and every fact you learn could give you one moment's grace.

A conversation showing Disposition, State and Intent in action.

Late to the Party is an evolution of the systems introduced in Pyrodactyl's previous titles,Unrest and Will Fight for Food. Every NPC has two opinion values - Disposition, or how they currently seem to feel about you, and State, or what they seem to be feeling generally. Furthermore, each of your dialogue options is marked with an Intent that describes which direction that option is taking the conversation in.To give an example:

• You're meeting with a fellow KGB agent. This agent already hates and mistrusts you, but is smart enough to cover it up.
• To you, his Disposition appears as "Polite." However, he's clearly a little on edge, and his State is "Tense." Rather than let him be, you decide to probe at the source of his tension.
• You select a dialogue option that seems to be subtly looking into his attitude, but just to be sure, you check the Intent. Which - sure enough - is marked "Pry."
• A few probing questions later, and the facade drops, altering his Disposition to "Contemptuous" and his State to "Irritated."

Your work will take you from high-class hotels to the squalor of the city projects.

Over the course of the game, you will conduct multiple investigations into the suspicious events happening in your city. The outcome of the plot depends not only on how well you resolve the cases, but also on how well you cover your tracks (if you choose to align yourself with the revolutionaries) and how well you please your superiors (if you don't want to be executed). You will constantly juggle safety, ideology, present needs, and the needs of the future.

 

[Shaewaroz]

Let me guess - the guy behind the conspiracy is... Vladimir Putin?

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=24910

A Pyrodactyl Postmortem Postmortem

This post is a follow up to “Unrest: An Honest Postmortem of a Kickstarter Success.”

I really don’t know how it is for your big studio-renting, T-shirt-printing, San Francisc-ing game development studios when their magnum opus wraps. I imagine many of them do schedule a few months to tear through feedback, patch, run tech support, and wrangle the convention circuit. But barring an ongoing investment, like an MMO or MOBA, that’s all sideline stuff. You can bet in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases the development leads get together right away, stick another figurative sheet of paper in the typewriter, and start on the next project.

Part of this is a matter of principle. You’re only as good as your last good title, and dwelling on success or failure doesn’t help your studio. But there’s a much more far-reaching practical side to it than that, and it’s one you don’t appreciate until you try to survive as a developer: it’s the fact that every month not working on a game is a catastrophic and potentially fatal waste of your precious resources.

You can embrace it or hate it, but the formula is simple: games are profit, profit is time, time is games. Having a smash hit release isn’t an “and then they lived happily ever after” success story. It’s the equivalent of winning extra time by executing a flawless lap in a beat-the-clock racing game. You’ve won a buffer–a grace period to work on your next project. And that’s if your game’s successful. If it isn’t, then you’ve really got to hustle.

This scales naturally to visibility and pay grades. Bigger studios have bigger PR budgets, bigger launches, and (I’m presuming) longer periods of profitability after launch. But they’ve also got a staggering amount of people to pay, and making a few million dollars doesn’t seem so impressive when you’ve got all those award-winning game designer salaries on your books. I’d hazard this is why you see a lot of layoffs after a big release, even a successful one–it makes it easier to stretch your profits over the next development cycle.

For indie studios, the tradeoff is a much smaller team to pay for, but significantly more modest releases and (barring a fluke cult success or meme-worthy premise) a vanishingly small window of initial sales. You get a few weeks where everyone’s buying and playing it, then a steep dropoff until the next wholly unpredictable digital sale brings in another unguessable spike of profit. Which are nice, but they’re nice in a “redeem this stick for a free corn dog” sort of way. A windfall, maybe even a significant one, but not the sort of thing you get to plan your corn dog lifestyle around.

So this is where the fate of Kickstarter games gets interesting.

With Unrest, the question was always, “What happens after release?”

As a rule of thumb, I’d say a modestly successful Kickstarter-backed release can expect to make (after publisher, Steam, and miscellaneous subtractions) about or a little less than they made off their initial campaign in the first few months. We knew it would take a miraculous, one-out-of-every-ten-thousand-indie-releases kind of commercial splash to get enough funding to keep developing autonomously, and that’s not the sort of thing a wise person plans for. It was particularly a problem because we couldn’t do it like this again. We would need more resources for some team members to put forward a stirring effort–a lot more.

So we knew there was a great chance we’d come back to Kickstarter. And that’s just what we’re doing with our next title, a cold war espionage RPG called Late to the Party.



That being said–we’ve changed up our strategy a little. Some of this is a consequence of our greater exposure and modest profits allowing us to front a larger investment. Some of this is a consequence of nothing but hard-earned experience, and the knowledge that if we’re doing this, we’ve got to do this decisively. Our biggest new moves were:

We invested in better art and music from the beginning. How your presentation looks and sounds is the biggest factor to convincing stop-ins to put in an investment. Ask any snark YouTuber—the most common litmus test for determining if a game is worth trying or not is how polished the presentation looks.

We had a list of connections to reach out to for getting the word out. “Connections” are what indie developers have instead of PR budgets. Now, by this, I don’t mean “leading industry figures whose lives we have saved in combat who will do anything for us, anything at all, and have in fact already put us in their will.” I mean “people who know we exist, and trust us a little, and maybe played our last game and know we’re not screwing around.” It’s a subtle advantage, but a significant one.

We asked for full-time pay. This is the big move and by far the most dangerous one. Earlier I said any team can make a better game if key team members don’t have to work retail, and I meant it. If we want to break out of a cycle of obligate crowdfunding, this is the step we need to take. But Kickstarter is all-or-nothing, and “whoops we aimed too high let’s set our sights lower” retakes have a decidedly low successrate. Time will tell if this was a good idea or not, but it guarantees one thing: there’s no possibility of us making a game that isn’t all it can be. There’s just a possibility of us not making (this) game at all.

It’s scary, and it’s stressful. But it’s a good, useful kind of scary and stressful. Without publishers cracking the whip, this is the part that keeps indie devs honest: the knowledge that anything short of total faith in the project could end the enterprise before it begin, and the understanding that all your success, present and future, depends on the work at hand.

So maybe it’s not all the good kind of scary and stressful. But it beats river rocks.

 

[Lhynn]

Looks good. I wasnt really interested in their last game, but only because it had a setting i didnt find very appealing, going to follow this one.

 

[joelofdeath]

These guys are bros. Hope they make it.

 

[stony3k]

Backed!

 

[ghostdog]

The music is too fast/happy and I don't like the white strokes around the characters. Other than that this looks and sounds great.


I'm surprised there has been no mention of KGB, a flawed and very hard, yet unique and well written adventure game.

 

[pyroary]

Let me guess - the guy behind the conspiracy is... Vladimir Putin?

I want to live a long and happy life! (No, the characters are all fictional)

 

[taxalot]

So it's Pladimir Vutin ?

 

[pyroary]

So it's Pladimir Vutin ?

Spoiler alert! (But yeah, not really)

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=272

Late To The Party Interview
by Kevin Loveless (Couchpotato), 2014-11-10
Hello everyone, and welcome to my latest interview. This time I had the chance to ask Pyrodactyl Games a few questions about their new game Late To The Party.

You may remember Pyrodactyl Games from their last successful kickstarter game, Unrest,where they managed to earn $36,251 of the campaign's $3,000 goal.

Now they're back with a new game asking for $50,000. Here is the new kickstarter video and a short game description get us started.



Late to the Party is an espionage RPG about the struggles, fears, and turmoil of the oppressed during the dying days of the Soviet Union. Use your contacts, tools, and wits to stay alive in the midst of a dangerous historically-inspired conspiracy.

Now that we have that out the way, let's get started with the interview.

Couchpotato: Before we start with the questions about Late To The Party, can you share a few details about yourself, and your studio Pyrodactyl Games?

Pyrodactyl: Pyrodactyl is an indie game studio that crafts offbeat role playing games. We are an international team with members from India, USA, Estonia, UK and Canada. We have been making games for more than 7 years now.

As for me, I started my career making Half Life 2 mods (Dystopia being the most famous one). I started making indie games in 2007, and since then I've released three of them! If you're interested in seeing how I really started, I wrote a Gamasutra article about it.



Couchpotato: What are your favorite RPG games you played over the years?

Pyrodactyl: Planescape Torment, Deus Ex and Fallout: New Vegas are without a doubt three of my most favorite games. More recently I've been enjoying playing through Wasteland 2.



Couchpotato: Can you share a few details about Late To The Party for new readers, and what makes the game stand out from other RPG games?

Pyrodactyl: Late to the Party is a cold war espionage RPG about a local who is drafted as a KGB agent during the imminent fall of the Soviet Union. The gameplay will start with you investigating strange cases and using your contacts, spy gadgets and wits to solve them. Your allegiance to your homeland and your superiors will create conflicting situations, and you'll be forced to keep your head down if you decide to help the revolution.



Couchpotato: LTTP reminds me of Clandestine and Invisible, Inc., two other espionage-themed games in development. What was the inspiration for the game?


Pyrodactyl: We were inspired primarily by a lot of documentaries and books that Mikk (our artist) shared with the team. In terms of other games, Alpha Protocol was a huge inspiration, and we wanted to continue in the vein of our previous game, Unrest, which was inspired by Planescape: Torment.



Couchpotato: This isn't your first time on Kickstarter, so I was curious if you learned anything from the last time that you would change with the development of Late To The Party?

Pyrodactyl: We learned a lot of small things about game development, and we have incorporated a lot of the feedback from Unrest in LttP already. We are always learning with each game.



Couchpotato: I see you're asking asking for $50,000 CAD. Will it be enough to fund the game, and do you you have any stretch goals in mind yet?

Pyrodactyl: It will be enough to fund the game, along with sales from Unrest, to enable us to work full time.



Couchpotato: Will the game allow you to customize your npc and party members, or will they all be pre-set options?

Pyrodactyl: In terms of visual design of your character, you won't have much customization - but you will be able to shape your character's personality and past life based on actions in the game. There won't be party members, since the game is about you being a lone KGB agent.



Couchpotato: You mention you will solve the game with character traits, KGB spy tools, and improvised equipment. Can you give an an example of how this will work?

Pyrodactyl: For example, you can try to pickpocket a suspect if you have the right traits to see if they have something incriminating on them. You can place a bug on a plant near the table two suspicious characters are talking to, in order to hear what they're saying. Certain traits like "Con Artist" means your character can lie convincingly about their background in order to gain the trust of someone. Then there is poison which can be used to kill someone - but you will need to cover your tracks well enough.



Couchpotato: I see the game will also have some major plot choices that will alter the game, so I take it you can replay the game for different endings?

Pyrodactyl: Indeed. We plan to have 3-4 major endings, and a lot of minor things can change based on what you did in the game.



Couchpotato: To go along with the previous question, just how long will the game take to complete?

Pyrodactyl: Based on our estimates, one playthrough will take 4-5 hours to complete. There are many wholly unique endings, but if you really optimize your choices you should be able to see most of the game’s content in 3-4 playthroughs.



Couchpotato: You mention the game's feel will based on locally inspired art and music. Do you have anyone in mind to compose the game music, and do you think music plays a huge part in setting the game's mood?


Pyrodactyl: I think music is very important. We do have a musician, Meurig, who is composing the music for our game. He did the song in the trailer too!


Couchpotato: I also see the game will have mod support. Can you go into detail about how this work?

Pyrodactyl: We have had mod support in our previous games too, and how it will work is that players can customize any and all aspects of the game and create campaigns for them to play and share with other players. It will be similar to how modding worked in Unrest.



Couchpotato: On the kickstarter page you mention that combat will be secondary, and is not the main focus of the game. Since this is a spy game, I assume you will only have to fight someone if you mess up. Can you share some details on why you decided not to focus on combat?

Pyrodactyl: It didn't seem thematically appropriate. In general, our games don't emphasize combat in order to make the life of the player feel more valuable - because then the rare times that combat does happen, you will be unprepared and your life will be in danger.



Couchpotato: Now comes the part where I have to ask if you can share any of your experience with crowd-funding for our readers. Cans you give us an inside look at how kickstarter works, and how to be successful?

Pyrodactyl: I can't say I'm a Kickstarter expert yet, but I think having a polished pitch and getting press attention are the two biggest things. You need to be regular with updates and respond to questions as they come up.



Couchpotato: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, and I apologize about not taking the time to interview you about your last game, Unrest. Is there anything you'd like to say before we finish?

Pyrodactyl: That's okay, no harm done. I didn't think of anything particular to say, so I'll just ask our readers to back my game on Kickstarter!



Thanks so much for talking to us, and we're looking forward to the next great spy thriller!

 

[victim]

Some of themes in Unrest make more sense to me now after seeing this. I have mixed feelings because I know this history very well and I doubt my perspective is the same as that of the designers. It is not something I would tread on lightly (unless it involves Superman marrying Lois Lysenko)

 

[Zombra]

Would have jumped in for $10, instead I'll wish you guys luck and hope it gets made.

 

[Renegen]

Did you ever play the adventure game KGB? I love the idea of a soviet era game, great setting for a cool story.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Kek, as a russian, I probably pass on it. Never before I seen something from either western or eastern devs that didn't made me want to either laugh hysterically or throw something at monitor.
Also, obligatory

 

[Bester]

So the kickstarted failed huh. Maybe you should've added more gulags and russophobia (and say that it's a debatable subject, but that you also have an asstonian working on your team so your depiction is 100% historically correct because all his family and friends were totally repressed and gulag'ed personally by Stalin). There's a market for these things, but you should've played your cards better. Instead you chose to be neither here nor there, that never works out. Next time go full russophobic, solzhenytsin style, may freedom and democracy be with you.

 

[pyroary]

Thanks for the feedback - there might be some merit to what you're saying. We'll evaluate everything we've heard and perhaps we'll come back with a stronger pitch.

 

[agris]

pyroary this is also the worst time of year in the west for kickstarter campaigns- the xmas / holiday / black-friday season.

do some more research on successful KS campaigns and come back kicking ass. a playable demo goes a long way. also, 20 cad buy-in is kinda high for a project like this. better to entice with an early-bird limited ~$12 USD with standard buy-in at $15 USD.

 

[almondblight]

Barkley 2 was from the end of November to the end of December and did pretty well. Maybe people don't find the Eastern Block around '91 as interesting a setting as ancient India. But, eh, who knows; everyone's gonna have a theory about how you can do better, and most of them are gonna be wrong. And sometimes things are just strange - Telepath Tactics asked for $25k, only got $18k and failed, came back asking for $15k, then get $41k.

 

[agris]

It isn't anecdotal, that's the trend. People donate less to KS during this period of time.

 

[victim]

Thanks for the feedback - there might be some merit to what you're saying. We'll evaluate everything we've heard and perhaps we'll come back with a stronger pitch.

I hope you don't listen to his advice. You don't need to be that cyncial or manipulative.

 

[pyroary]

Thanks for the feedback - there might be some merit to what you're saying. We'll evaluate everything we've heard and perhaps we'll come back with a stronger pitch.

I hope you don't listen to his advice. You don't need to be that cyncial or manipulative.

Hey, don't worry about it. I was just saying that I read all the posts here, and feedback is valuable. One post isn't going to make me change the game entirely

pyroary this is also the worst time of year in the west for kickstarter campaigns- the xmas / holiday / black-friday season.
do some more research on successful KS campaigns and come back kicking ass. a playable demo goes a long way. also, 20 cad buy-in is kinda high for a project like this. better to entice with an early-bird limited ~$12 USD with standard buy-in at $15 USD.

Indeed, I will - thanks for the feedback!