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Vapourware Unknown Realm: The Siege Perilous - an 8-bit RPG for PC and Commodore 64

Bumvelcrow

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The FAQ on the main campaign page has this to say on that:
Will the C64 version be available as a download?
The C64 version of Unknown Realm is only available on cartridge. All C64 backers will also get the PC version so they can play on their modern system through our platform, Anvil, as well. This game will not work on the the EasyFlash (not enough memory) and the engine was created along with the cartridge so it isn't compatible with standard .d64s or floppy images.

That sounds like a no. It might be something worth quizzing the developer on when she turns up again. The assets are surely common between the C64 and PC versions but that actual game code must be completely different unless the PC version is already running under a 6502 emulator. That's a lot of assembly language coding for such limited use. hemispheres ?
 

oldmanpaco

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Still waiting to see how NPC/Animal companions work. The UI looks to only have a spot for the main PC so others seem like they will be faceless henchmen that you have little control over. But they haven't said anything so maybe the UI changes when you have more than one person in the party. Anyway maybe they will talk about it in an update.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
7491809c6b73a175171361cc0575a253_original.png
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Cooool: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1778894

Unknown Realm + This Legend = 8-bit Dreams Come True!

We have been saving a few surprises for you during this campaign and this is a big one regarding the soundtrack for Unknown Realm.

Today we're thrilled to reveal that legendary C64 music composer, Chris Huelsbeck, is part of the Unknown Realm team! Yes, you heard that right: for the first time in over 25 years, Chris will be dusting off his Commodore 64 and returning to his roots to compose original music for Unknown Realm!

227654902177e9b5b634f4e7495b4c55_original.png



In case you don't know who Chris Huelsbeck is, he is an award winning composer and sound designer best known for his work in the video games industry for over 30 years. At age 14 he acquired his first computer, and started programming and composing music on the beloved Commodore 64. He creates memorable music ranging from elaborate electronic compositions to full orchestral scores as well as many other music styles. Some of his credits include projects like the Star Wars Rogue Squadron Series, Turrican, and Giana Sisters. His achievements also include 3 of the highest funded music Kickstarter campaigns in recent history.

As you already know, the PC version of Unknown Realm has the world’s first in-game “Hybrid Soundtrack” system, which will allow players to switch back and forth in real time between SID and modern music. Chris’s background makes him a perfect fit for a soundtrack like this and he will be creating both SID and modern versions of songs for Unknown Realm.

The amount of music Chris can create for Unknown Realm is dependent on our music budget, which at the moment doesn’t support what we really want to accomplish with our soundtrack. As many of you know, music is an integral part of the classic 80's RPG and our wish is to create a truly special and memorable soundtrack that you can enjoy and listen to for years to come. Here is just a taste of some of Chris’s SID music.

With this in mind, today we will be revealing a series of stretch goals that will hopefully get us to the point where we can bring this vision to life. If we reach the “Epic Soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck” stretch goal, Chris will be composing a complete soundtrack for Unknown Realm with both SID and modern versions of all original songs.

All backers Digital Knight ($34) and above will get a digital copy of this soundtrack, and all Collector's Edition backers will receive a physical soundtrack CD included with their game box.

Chris will be announcing this on his Twitch channel today, while he takes a look at some of the early Ultimas. If you can, go tune-in to his channel today starting around 12:30pm PST. RIGHT NOW! :)

You can also find out more about Chris on his website and his Patreon page, and hear more of his music here.

We are so excited to share this news with you! There will be more details to come.

-Bruce & Laura
 

Bumvelcrow

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Those stretch goals concern me. There's a load of indifferent nonsense between $85k and $125k that will do nothing but distract from the development of the game, and then the two goals that will actually provide some kind of benefit are set so ridiculously high it's as though they don't actually want to do them and are just putting them up there so they can justify not doing them when they miss the targets.

The Chris Huelsbeck one is particularly bizarre given how wildly they were singing his praises in the latest update. While on the subject, Chris has not touched a SID chip for 25 years and when he did his compositions were not really the sort of thing that would fit a medieval-ish RPG. It's just retro-hype, just like everything else they've shown so far. The story, mechanics and development should have been front and centre from day one, but instead it's just one big nostalgia driven wank-fest. I don't think I've seen anything so shameless since that Brenda Romero one (although this one is far more competent and actually have a product).

I still may back it and will probably buy it, but I'd thought we'd moved on from these nostalgia-kickstarters.
 

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https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1779057

The Scroll of Stretch Goals has been unrolled!

Hi Everyone! Busy day over here at Stirring Dragon Games!

In case you missed it, here is a link to our update from this morning when we announced that legendary C64 and video game music composer, Chris Huelsbeck, is making music for Unknown Realm.

As stated in our previous update, we have fully unrolled our Stretch Goal Scroll to reveal where we want to take Unknown Realm in the remaining days of this campaign. We will post updates to provide more details on each goal as the previous one gets unlocked. So, for example, when we unlock the Quest Card stretch goal, we'll post an update about the next one, etc.

Many of these stretch goals reflect the most common (doable) requests we've had from backers including mouse support, “making of” book, Linux version and most surprising of all, a PocketC.H.I.P. version. After doing a bit of research, it turns out that the PocketC.H.I.P. has established itself as a viable portable gaming system that fits in your pocket and best of all, it has a keyboard! This makes it a perfect platform for an Unknown Realm port. We love the idea of walking around with a retro role-playing game in your pocket and we think PocketC.H.I.P. gamers will as well.

We've carefully considered each one of these goals to make sure they will not interfere with our base development timeline, so certain items such as the “making of” book, and the Linux/PocketC.H.I.P versions will have a staggered release after the game ships. Everyone that backs us at the DIGITAL KNIGHT level (or higher) will get a free copy of Unknown Realm for the PocketC.H.I.P. when it become available.

We are not saying it will be easy to reach these goals, but we know it can be done, and we definitely know it will be worth it! Thank you for believing in us!

- Bruce & Laura
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Now on Steam Greenlight: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1779086

Unknown Realm is live on Steam Greenlight!

Yes, you heard that right. Unknown Realm is LIVE on Steam Greenlight! Vote. Comment. Share. Pump it up! :) You guys are awesome, work your magic!! Let's make Unknown Realm the first 8-bit RPG ever on Steam!

Much more to come this week. We're planning on unveiling a few new surprise reward tiers that we saved for the last week of the campaign, we'll have game design updates, and hopefully get closer to that full soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck!

Thank you all, none of this would be possible without you!

-Bruce & Laura



http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838572011

Looks like they've already delayed the game to early 2018 on the Greenlight page.
 
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hemispheres

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Now on Steam Greenlight: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1779086



Looks like they've already delayed the game to early 2018 on the Greenlight page.
I have not had time to respond to other posts here but had to chime in quickly on re: steam delivery date:
We want to make sure our Kickstarter backers get the game first. The date on Steam does not reflect delivery date for KS backers. The game is not delayed. We were concerned people would assume this...we can easily change it if its confusing to too many people. The whole point of that was we want people to know that backers through KS will be the first to get the game.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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I still may back it and will probably buy it, but I'd thought we'd moved on from these nostalgia-kickstarters.
Nostalgia is the root of incline. Without nostalgia, we wouldn't have Legend of Grimrock, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, Might & Magic X: Legacy, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Serpent in the Staglands, Underrail, Age of Decadence, and all the other retro-games that have been released or that we're still awaiting (kickstarted or otherwise).
 

Bumvelcrow

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Nostalgia is the root of incline. Without nostalgia, we wouldn't have Legend of Grimrock, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, Might & Magic X: Legacy, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Serpent in the Staglands, Underrail, Age of Decadence, and all the other retro-games that have been released or that we're still awaiting (kickstarted or otherwise).

That's fair enough, but there's nostalgia for the aspects of a game that made it good (gameplay, complex mechanics, writing), and there's misty nostalgia that reminds us of when we were happy using our little 8-bit machines because we had nothing to compare them with. I'm afraid this game leans a little to far towards the latter. I'd still buy the cartridge if I had my working C128, but that just shows how persuasive it is.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1780905

Bounty Hunter Details + New Reward Tiers Unlocked!

Hey everyone! 800 backers and counting! Let's make it 1000+!

The storm knocked out our power yesterday and it took the power company over 8 hours to get it back on! That set us back a bit with things, but we're going to try to get back on track today. Of course the one time the weather guys are right in predicting the “storm of the decade” it's right in the middle of our last week on Kickstarter. It would be funny if it weren't so stressful...Oh well. Just one more “I can't believe that happened” story for the tell-all book. ;-)

OK, lets get back to what this projects all about, bringing back the classic 8-bit RPG (with all the feelies!) and making it better than ever!

Bounty Hunter Quests!
Considering how fast you blew through this stretch goal, it's high time we tell you more about Bounty Hunter mode...

This is a features that we wanted to include originally, but it requires additional quests, artwork, and writing so it makes sense as a stretch goal. The term “mode” may be a little misleading...this is merely a way of describing a different feature of gameplay that incorporates subquests in the game.

Not everyone in the world of Unknown Realm is of upstanding moral character. Along your journey you may run into various miscreants, petty criminals and dangerous outlaws. You'll come across wanted signs in different locations reporting the crimes of these nefarious fugitives and providing clues to their habits and last known whereabouts. If you are in need of gold and feeling up to the task, you can embark on quests to track down and apprehend these characters. Some might be easy to find, others may take you on journeys to distant lands. Because these characters may go by different aliases, you will have to use your memory to remember what they look like from their wanted poster and take note of any distinguishing characteristics about their appearance. Your stealth skill will come in handy in your quest to capture some of these ruffians.

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Be warned, some of these outlaws may try to recruit you for their own ends and there is a chance some might be falsely accused. You'll have to keep your wits about you to avoid falling in with the wrong crowd, otherwise you might find yourself on a wanted poster!

Next Stretch Goal!
Regarding the next stretch goal (Additional wallpaper + sticker pack + additional feelie): For the additional wallpaper, we are still talking to a few artists to make sure this wallpaper is truly memorable and captures the essence of the golden age that we all know and love. The additional wallpaper will be for all backers $19 and above, the sticker pack will be for all physical backers (Ziplock bag and above) and the additional feelies will be in all Collector's Edition and above.

The first additional feelie comes to you by way of a colorful character in the Realm who has written some useful how-to guides for navigating the various challenges you will encounter on your journey. The second feelie will be a surprise for you to discover when you open the box.

New Rewards Unlocked!
Finally, it's time to reveal a few fun, new reward tiers. These are reward tiers that we planned before the campaign launched to roll out with the last week of the campaign.

You can read more details about these in the reward section and pledge or upgrade if you feel so inclined. Please note, these tiers will NOT be added to the reward matrix and are only available in very limited numbers.

New Reward #1: Collector's Edition + NPC Portrait - Exactly as it sounds, you can get a Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus your likeness in the game as an NPC portrait.

New Reward #2: Collector's Edition + Jester - Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus NPC jester portrait, plus you can write some witty jokes for your jester!

New Reward #3: Collector's Edition + Bard - Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus NPC tavern bard portrait and write a song for the game that will be played by your bard NPC in the tavern.

New Reward #4: Collector's Edition + OUTLAW - Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus you as an outlaw in the game. You'll have your portrait on a wanted poster, plus choose your type of outlaw from a list of options.

Thank you everyone! It's hard to believe we are down to the last week of this campaign. A big part of our motivation to make this game in the first place was to create something for what we believe is an overlooked and underrepresented group of RPG fans. The single player old school RPG lover who still wants to use their imagination when they play a computer role-playing game.

It's really cool to see this game is reaching the right audience, however, we know there are a lot more of us out there who still don't know about this game. Think of the people you played these games with during the golden age and consider reaching out to them to let them know those days are back! This game is just the beginning. :)

- Bruce & Laura

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1783035

Some Exciting Developments!

Hey all!

We have a few pieces of exciting news we just had to share with you.

We've been notified that we have been selected for “Projects We Love” on Kickstarter! This is more symbolic than anything else, but it should give us a modest boost in visibility going in to these final days of the campaign. It's also a nice bit of recognition at the end of a long grassroots campaign.

More exciting was an email we received from GOG (yes! GOG.com!) asking us if we'd be interested in discussing releasing Unknown Realm on GOG.com when it is finished. Yes! Yes we would! As we've mentioned in the comments, we have always believed this game would be a great fit for GOG and it's so cool to hear they've heard about it and think so too! Obviously nothing is final yet, but we're so excited about this possibility! This would also mean that we will have an easy DRM-free distribution method for digital backers who prefer a DRM-free download option.

Our Steam Greenlight campaign is still on-going and doing well as far as we can tell. We need Steam users to go and vote for Unknown Realm! After about 3-5 days on Greenlight, projects drop off the main page and visibility goes way down, so we need help driving traffic directly to our Greenlight page. If you'd like to help, please share the link to our Greenlight campaign ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838572011 ) on Facebook, Twitter or your favorite gaming forums.

You've also unlocked another stretch goal! Once we unlock the next stretch goal (mouse support), we will reveal the fun mystery bonus game that every backer will get when we reach that 100k goal. :)

One final note, once this campaign ends (it's hard to believe we're almost there), we will continue to post private backer-only game development updates here, but we would also like to stay in touch with backers and run a few fun giveaway contests via our email list, so please subscribe to our mailing list at the bottom of our website if you haven't done so already.

As always, thank you all for helping us make this dream a reality!

- Bruce & Laura



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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Holy hell they're rolling in cash: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1783187

Tavern Sign Preview and a bit of Game Design talk...

Only 4 days left and the final push has begun!

Yesterday we were excited to see that Shroud of the Avatar featured Unknown Realm in the “Recommended Projects to Back” section of their weekly Update of the Avatar newsletter. If you aren’t familiar with Shroud of the Avatar, it is Richard Garriott’s (aka Lord British) spiritual successor to the Ultima / Ultima Online series. We're looking forward to playing SotA's single player mode when it's ready. :)

And speaking of Ultima and the Shroud community, some of you may find a familiar establishment in the world of Unknown Realm. One of our Tavern Owner backers is none other than Rustic Dragon, the proprietor of the Hearth of Britannia. We created a sign for his Tavern, and he was kind enough to let us give you a preview. This is an example of the type of sign our Tavern Owner backers will get to help design.

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Now Let’s Talk About Gold

As briefly mentioned before, I've taken different approach to currency (or “gold”) that I haven't really seen used before in an RPG by incorporating a “max gold carry” and I wanted to talk about it a bit more.

When designing the currency system for Unknown Realm I thought long and hard about RPGs and the way they handle the issue of money. What I saw was a problem. In fact, the entire genre itself seemed to consist of nothing more than a quest for gold. I felt players are so conditioned by that principle these days that some might actually believe the whole goal of an RPG is to basically hoard the most gold you can. I didn’t want to design an RPG where players automatically went into this hoarding mentality. I wanted players to experience an RPG that wasn’t focused on grinding and gold hoarding.

I decided to implement a system that doesn't encourage the gold hoarding mentality and get people thinking differently. The gold max carry is a simplified encumbrance system that is designed to hopefully steer players away from the quest for gold and into more imaginative paths.

For example, let's say when you start playing the game your gold max carry is 1000. That means you can only carry up to 1000 gold at a time. For those that try to grind away for gold, they will soon find themselves maxed out and not able to carry any more gold! Now what? After a few moments of probably cursing this system up and down, they will most likely stop and think “well what am I supposed to do now?” That is exactly where I want players. :) They just stepped outside their normal hoarding mentality and actually started to use their imagination to figure out what to do next. Sure it might be to figure out how they can get their max gold carry up to get more gold, but they are still going to need to use their imagination to do so, which is good enough for me! ;-)

There are ways to store up more gold for a rainy day, such as store it in a bank, or on your ship, etc. Different companions will raise your max carry, which can help you make it out of a dungeon with more gold than normal.

My goal was to eliminate the typical focus on level grinding and gold hoarding by having those things increase more naturally along with your time and progress in the game. The point is to break the player out of the gold hoarding mentality and into other paths of adventure and exploration.

Till next update...

You can find out more about Rustic and the projects he's working on, including a Hearth of Britannia cookbook, over at his Patreon.

Don't forget we still have an active Steam Greenlight campaign going on! If you haven't already, we would be very grateful if you would head over there and vote for Unknown Realm. If you have voted already, do us a favor and send our Greenlight link to all your Steam-using friends! :) http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838572011

It's truly amazing how far this campaign has come in the last 30 days and we are so thankful to all of you for the outpouring of support and for sharing all your retro computer memories with us. Your stories really make our day! We are hopeful that one day this game will become a part of those memories and stories as well. :)

- Bruce & Laura

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1784370

Collector's Box Details + Mystery Game Revealed!

Hi everyone,

Awesome, we crossed over the $100k mark! This isn't the end of the campaign, but it is certainly a symbolic milestone. Crossing that $100k line puts this little 8-bit RPG into a different class of crowdfunded games. This wouldn't be possible without all of you putting your faith in us to bring back the beloved 80's RPG experience. Thank you!

Collector's Edition Details
A Collector's Edition game box just wouldn't be the same without physical media. We've been getting this question a lot lately and we wanted to answer it definitively, once and for all:

All Collector's Edition backers will get a DRM-free game disc in addition to digital keys. And the DRM-free game disc (and soundtrack disc) will come in a super cool retro disc sleeve that looks like a 5.25" floppy disk! :)

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Spread the word – a Big Box Collector's Edition game box WITH DRM-FREE physical copy of the game!

$100k Stretch Goal Bonus Game REVEALED
In honor of reaching the $100k mark for Unknown Realm, we are giving each one of our backers ($19 and above) two games for the price of one! This mystery bonus game is a never-before-released gag/parody game that Bruce made for friend and game industry hero, RJ Mical (of Amiga fame) for his birthday early last year. Currently there is only one person in the world who has a copy of this game besides us and that is RJ. We are releasing this game to you as a gift with his blessing.

Over the years, Bruce has had several opportunities to hang out with RJ. To Amiga fans, he needs no introduction. Others may know him as the co-inventor of the Atari Lynx and 3DO. He is a kind, gracious and hospitable guy who seems to be universally adored by all those who meet him.

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RJ and Bruce at a post-GDC party in 2012

In March 2016, Bruce was invited to a birthday party for RJ. Naturally this led to a discussion of what sort of gift to give to a man who has traveled the world, seen and done incredible things and easily counts as “a guy who has everything.” A bottle of wine seemed like a feeble gesture in the face of such an occasion.

Being well-acquainted with Bruce and his sometimes crazy ideas, I wasn't terribly surprised when he told me (three days before RJ's party) “I've got it! I should totally make RJ a game!”

This gag-gift shoot 'em up materialized rapidly with awesomely bad, 80's style art based off of what Bruce knew about RJ – his love of paragliding, his treks to Burning Man, his history at Amiga, plus some other random 80's gaming history thrown in the mix. Time was short and the deadline was fast approaching when Bruce told me he was going to make a custom game box as well! So there is my husband, hours away from being due at an all-night party, designing box art, writing joke box copy and, I kid you not, hand making a custom game box.

The finished product was called RJ's Super Psychedelic Birthday Trip. At the party, people loved the box so much they thought the box alone was the gift! It was a big hit when people realized there was an actual custom-designed C64 game on a floppy inside! This led to someone pulling out a C64 and floppy drive for an impromptu game session with RJ's guests.

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Here's a video of the game that someone took at RJ's party. (contains NSFW language).



Bruce will be adding two additional levels to this game before we send it to you – a scuba diving level and another level theme to be decided by RJ.

All of our backers $19 and above will get a digital copy of this game. We know this game is very different than an RPG, but it is a free extra game that will work on both a C64 (via .d64 file) and our PC platform, so we figured it would be a cool extra one-of-a-kind gift that all of our backers can enjoy. :)

Incidentally, if you would like us to design a gift like this for you or someone you love, our 8-bit Super Star tier provides just such an opportunity. ;-)

The adventure is not over yet, and we expect the next few days to be quite a rush! Lets keep pushing hard to reach that complete Chris Huelsbeck soundtrack goal!

Many of you already have, but if you were considering increasing your pledge to get additional add-ons, or upgrading to a higher tier, now is the time to do so. Keep in mind, you will not be able to upgrade your pledge after the campaign is over.

Thank you for working so hard to spread the word about Unknown Realm! Please continue to share and retweet about this project and we will see you in the next update! :)

-Laura (& Bruce)


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v
 

Wayward Son

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C'mon, reach 200K. Then I can Linux this game.
And the DRM-free game disc (and soundtrack disc) will come in a super cool retro disc sleeve that looks like a 5.25" floppy disk! :)
I damn near jizzed when I saw that.

Y'know, at first I thought this was a completely asinine and insipid idea. But now, the incline just may shine through this. Possible GOTY 2017?
 

Bumvelcrow

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Y'know, at first I thought this was a completely asinine and insipid idea. But now, the incline just may shine through this. Possible GOTY 2017?

I'm still hoping that something will magically appear to convince me, but this is just another update with very little to show other than (and I have to say it again) nostalgia. Tell me about the game, damnit! Give me a good reason to back it!
 

Infinitron

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https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1785733

Less than 48 hours to go!!

We are really getting down to the wire now! Less than 2 days to go and we've crossed over 1000 backers!!

Bonus Stretch Goal!

Tonight we're revealing an intermediate stretch goal that will hopefully get your imagination flowing about one of the possibilities that will await you in Unknown Realm! At $115K we'll unlock an Underwater City level – it won't be an easy feat to discover this underwater city. Only the most persistent seekers will find it - those that do will be rewarded for their troubles. Let's blast through and unlock this goal today!

Extra Bards! (+3 bard, +1 barfly)

By popular demand, we are going to open three more Bards and one extra barfly to the reward tiers. There will now be a player owned Bard and a Barfly in every backer owned tavern. If you happen to have a friend that got one of these rewards as well (Tavern owner, Bard or Barfly) feel free to let us know and we can arrange it so your NPCs can be found hanging out in the same tavern in the game. :)

Add-ons!

Add-ons are always a great way to up your pledge and help us reach those stretch goals! Keep in mind you can add on an additional copy of the game for a friend or for yourself...or maybe your kids? It would make a great gift for any RPG lover or store it away in its shrink wrap as a collectible! Shipping is the same for one game or two and you'll save $5 on your add-on game (for example, Collector's Edition PC is $129 by itself, $124 as an add-on!).

Lock Pick Teaser!

We did want to give you a little sneak peek at one of the fun features of RPGs like this, Lock Picking! Our lock picking is a bit different than what was usually seen in RPGs from the 80's. Lock picking in Unknown Realm incorporates a little skill-based game that will become easier or more challenging depending on the lock you are picking and your stealth skill.

6cdf24111188952d3574fe1edea4abe9_original.GIF



When you use a lock pick in the game you must "navigate" around components inside the lock chamber to get to the final destination. If you go in the wrong direction you can damage your pick. Damage it three times and the pick will be destroyed and you'll have to try again with a new one. If you are successful, you won't lose the lock pick from your inventory. Lock picks can be used on doors and certain chests.

Action Items!

Spread the word! A couple of high profile game Kickstarters (with lots of backing from the press) have launched this week so it's hard to maintain visibility on Twitter. If you are on twitter, you can help by simply retweeting tweets from @stirringdragon. We know there is a correlation between people seeing tweets about Unknown Realm and new backers, so by simply retweeting our tweets, that will help a lot!

Just in case you missed it, here is the link to our Steam Greenlight one more time, this link will open up in your web browser, http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838572011 and this one www.stirringdragon.games/greenlight.php will automatically open the Steam client if you have it, which bypasses the two-step log-in process.

Thank you for being with us on this incredible journey! Only two more days to go! We can do this! Amazing things have happened in the last two days of many Kickstarter campaigns before us and with your help we've already defied the expectations of so many at every step of this journey so far – anything can happen at this point! Let's make these last two days of our campaign together count and hopefully have a little fun in the process! :)

-Bruce & Laura

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...bit-rpg-for-pc-and-commodore-64/posts/1786469

24 Hours to go!! + German Version News!

It all comes down to this! Only 24 hours left in this campaign!

Paypal and Late Backer Options

We've updated our stretch goals with the next phase in mind. After doing our research and talking to other Kickstarter creators (especially Chris H.), we've decided to use Megafounder for late backers and PayPal pledges after the campaign is over. This will provide a platform for us to carry over some of our rewards and give backers who couldn't pledge via Kickstarter a second chance.

We will not be carrying all the reward tiers over to Megafounder. At this point, our plan is to only keep the $34 Digital Knight tier, the $49 PC Ziplock Bag Edition and the $129 Collector's Edition PC (until they sell out – once those are gone, that's it!). There are currently only 34 C64 Collector's Editions left. If these do not sell out tomorrow, we will put whatever is left up on Megafounder as well. Depending on what happens tomorrow, we may also have a few in-game reward tiers available (while supplies last), but only with the PC Collector's Edition option. If you want to make sure to get a C64 cart, now is your best chance!

Megafounder will also allow us to keep working towards our higher level stretch goals after this campaign is over, especially that Chris Huelsbeck Complete soundtrack!

On that note, some of you should be excited to see a major addition to our stretch goal scroll...

bbd62938327502da01cd9677048ef8f8_original.png


The big news is that we've decided to go all-in on a German version of Unknown Realm! We've had countless requests for this and despite the technical challenges, it is really something we've always wanted to do from the beginning. We've been working out the logistics for this behind the scenes over the last few weeks and have a plan to make this happen.

If we reach the German version stretch goal, all backers Digital Knight ($34) and above, will have the option to also get a digital copy of the PC German version (available approximately 6 months after the release of the English version). This version will also include digital copies of the manuals translated into German. Once the English version is shipped, we will open up pre-orders for a limited run of a German version C64 cartridge + physical manual "bonus pack" that you can add to your English version Ziplock bag or Collector's Edition box. We will release more details on this once we unlock that stretch goal.

More Music Unlocked!

We've also updated the stretch goals to show that since we've reached the $110K mark we can now have Chris Huelsbeck create not only the theme song for Unknown Realm, but also 4 additional songs for the game! This is not the complete soundtrack, so lets keep aiming for that full soundtrack goal!

Character Creation Preview

Finally we wanted to share one more in-game sneak preview, this time it's the character creation screen. You may notice that in addition to points that can be distributed among various skills, you will also be able to choose one unique "special ability" that can be used at various times in the game. This feature lends itself to a variety of role-playing styles that can effect how you solve quests in the game and adds extra replay value as you experiment with different characters and abilities. Your special ability is mapped to its own hot key.

313f67817c812ed1b11c8a36f9470fa9_original.png

(Character creation screen, artwork not final)

The Final Push!
For a while we thought this day would never come, but here we are! It's all hands on deck now! Continue to tweet and retweet about Unknown Realm and share this on Facebook. And particularly if you speak German, please spread the word to your German RPG-loving friends everywhere!!

We cannot thank you enough for giving us the opportunity to bring this vision to life. We feel like we have found a whole new, retro RPG-loving, crazy 8-bit family in all of our incredibly awesome backers. We can't wait to continue this journey with you!

- Bruce & Laura

9914e3447fa3362c77c6180a58617b6b_original.png
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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hemispheres

i really tried reading all 3 pages and all the updates and stuff but i still didn't see anything about how combat plays out.

could you offer details? and can you control and/or equip stuff on the hired mercs?
 

Bumvelcrow

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hemispheres

i really tried reading all 3 pages and all the updates and stuff but i still didn't see anything about how combat plays out.

could you offer details? and can you control and/or equip stuff on the hired mercs?

I've asked similar questions but haven't had a reply. Judging by the initial pitch it looks like combat is very de-emphasised and is going to be something like Ultima 6 at best. Nothing tactical.
 
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aweigh

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sad. that's a deal-breaker for me. :(

i thought the entire point of going retro-graphics is to have pseudo-infinite resources, technically speaking, in order to make deep/complex gameplay mechanics (of which combat is a major part).

otherwise might as well make a mobile game since there's more money for them in that market.
 

Melan

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It seems rather well spelled out in the campaign pitch:
Fast-Paced, Fun-Focused Combat:
Instead of spending 80% of your time grinding away in combat and only 20% of your time doing what we consider the fun stuff about RPGs, we have flipped that around so there won't be any 10 minute monster battles going on here.
  • Simple Attack + direction targeting keeps you in the action instead of an interface.
  • Dedicated hot key for quick primary/secondary weapons toggle.
  • Turn-based, but feels like real-time.
  • Attack monsters in overworld view as well as zoomed in view.
That fits something like any of the older Ultimas, which all used a simplified I-hit-you-you-hit-me combat system without a deep tactical element.
 

Infinitron

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i thought the entire point of going retro-graphics is to have pseudo-infinite resources, technically speaking, in order to make deep/complex gameplay mechanics (of which combat is a major part).

That's not the only point of retro-graphics. The other advantage of retro-graphics is that they allow you to create gameplay on a more epic scale due to abstraction. Travelling the world, managing your food supply, embarking on ships, surviving poisonous swamps, they're all just 8-bit tiles. "Deep/complex gameplay mechanics" can actually distract from this experience.
 
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aweigh

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mmm. i dunno.

i get your point about abstraction and it is a deeply relevant one: RPGs, or "the RPG template", is fundamentally an exercise in abstraction as it relates, specifically, to what we consider "video game design".

however I don't think "going retro" necessarily helps or hinder the levels of abstraction. I think that comes down more to design decisions.

and yes, I agree that the less time, effort, money and creative energy that is spent in the (fruitless pursuit, imo) of "graffix" MOST DEFINITELY helps the game's designers implement a broader spectrum of the features they wish to build the game around.

even in cases where a game is extremely simple, think for example... like, an arena FPS, going with simpler graphics or with an easier toolkit to work with (i.e. the tile-based nature of this game we're talking about) allows for stuff like guaranteed high frame-rates, extremely fluid and fast movement, the freedom to implement as many weapons as they wish, the freedom to create shooting arenas as complex and as free-form as they desire, etc.

indeed the things that hold back designers from making exactly what they want is:

- voice acting (limits text / limits writers' freedom and creativity)

- graphics/animations (automatically limits ways in which the player can interact with the world since everything the player will be able to do requires exponentially more treatment the higher the production values rise)

anyhoo, i already lost track of whatever point it is i wanted to make in regards to your post. I mostly agree with it, but I still stand by my opinion that it is a true waste of an opportunity to intentionally do away with the shackles of modern graffix and still not concentrate on hard-core number-crunching shit that autists like myself, and many others, enjoy.

so far it seems like an Ultima 5/6 knock-off intentionally hamstringed by their desire to do it with C64 constraints WITHOUT any sort of benefit for it, and WITHOUT the complexity of mechanics/features (virtues, moonstones, "puzzles", and even its combat).

big ole MEH.

tl;dr: unless they talk about stuff like how combat is handled, how mercs/companions work, how the game's itemization works, whether there will be crafting/ennchanting of some sort, and how the dungeons/areas will be... for now it looks like a hard pass for me.

three freaking pages and tons of lengthy updates and they still haven't talked about how that stuff will shake out? i mean, who cares whether the thing comes out in a cartridge or whether it will have a C64-era composer: WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKING GAMEPLAY!

There's another kickstarter RPG thread over in the JRPG forums from some dudes making an Ancient Greece era turn-based Tactics Ogre clone, but WITHOUT anime graphics, that looks absolutely AMAZING.

...and guess what they did first thing when posting about it? link a great trailer showcasing how all of the combat and items will work and all of the new things they're doing with it, along with scenes of NPCs speaking, and snippets of the characters "questing".

such a huge difference in presenting their project.
 

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How they have linux as such a high stretch goal is beyond me.
For a game like this, there should be almost 0 difference between Windows and linux code.
 

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