daveyd

Final Equinox: The Arrival is a science fiction CRPG with turn-based tactical space combat. There’s a pre-alpha demo you can download. $10 gets you a digital copy. Looks pretty promising. Big emphasis on interacting with your crew / NPCs through branching dialogue. I haven't had the chance to try out the demo yet but will soon as I have off work.

Well, Sacred Fire is now funded with 3 days to go for stretch goals (More character customization and voice acting. Also Sony apparently expressed interest in having the game on PS4 so it is confirmed that the game will be ported to PS4 (only after PC version is complete) so people can choose to pledge for a digital download on PS4 if they don't mind waiting a few additional months.

Sacred Fire is 80% funded with about a week to go. They also recently announced stretch goals which include additional player character customization and limited voice acting.

Arcane "features a wide range of gameplay elements from several game genres, including RPG, Survival and Adventure. The primary focus of the game is the Adventurer's progression in the ancient arts of sorcery. Choose from a variety of magic practices, establish a base, combat monsters, craft items and survive the lands of Arcane". This game has really nice looking high res pixel art and music sounds nice as well. KS page is a bit scant on details about gameplay but there's a design doc you can look at that goes into more detail. Seems promising.

Some people like him. I generally don't really care much one way or the other about voice acting myself but kids these days might expect it in their videeya games.

And another great looking turn-based CRPG just launched on Kickstarter: Sacred Fire is a role-playing game where your success and solutions to conflicts lie in the psychology of the characters, not in weapons, attacks, and damage types. Really nice looking art and it's endorsed by Chris Avellone. Also, it will feature the voice acting talent of Doug C0ckle (Geralt of Rivia fame).

I'm currently backing Forged of Blood. Really nice looking turn-based tactical CRPG that emphasizes the importance of builds / character stats with some narrative / moral choices to make. And the spell crafting system sounds interesting.

Anyone played Legends of Eisenwald? I'm backing Eisenwald: Blood of November which is going to be made in an improved version of LoE engine. It's a sand-box style Turn-based strategy / RPG.

Currently playing Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire Pretty good turn-based tactics game.

Columnae: A Past Under Construction is a non-linear point & Click adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic, steampunk world. 8 possible endings based on choices the player makes.

This fictional RPG I just read about Arcanum 2 (or barring that any Steampunk CRPG) A turn-based D&D CRPG (especially done in the Dark Sun world, but FR would be just fine; preferably in a part of Faerun not previously explored in video games)... Or a turn-based CRPG based The Dark Eye, or any decent tabletop RPG... Seriously why the hell is this so rare? CRPG that is neither set in a medieval / fantasy world, post-apocalyptic wasteland, or cyberpunk.. (e.g., Wild West, Feudal Japan, Middle East, Ancient Egypt, Prehistoric, etc..) Really, a CRPG based on any culture / historical time period other than medieval Europe would be so refreshing, but it has rarely been done. Superhero CRPG; either based on other actual comic book characters or entirely made up ones like in Freedom Force

I don't mind it either way; if they were just paying lip service (it should now be called lib service) and the game stands on its own without pushing any agenda, that would be ideal. If I feel that they laying it on to thickly I probably will give it a pass. For what it's worth to you, in the interview on "Matt Chat", Hannah and Joe of Whalenought said they deliberately tried to steer away from making any kind of explicit political statements in Copper Dreams. Inevitably the game shows some of the negative aspects of living in a surveillance state, but beyond that they don't appear to be advancing any sort of "agenda".

I don't know why Copper Dreams isn't funded yet... Is the retro graphics turning people off? Obviously they're not getting enough media attention but they still have almost 400 fewer backers for this than Serpent in the Staglands ended up with. I hope there's lots of people set up for email reminders who will pledge in the final two days. Perhaps the upcoming appearance on Matt Chat will help, too.

Nebula: Sole Survivor is a sci-fi Action RPG currently on Kickstarter. Features a female protagonist with voice acting and very nice graphics for an indie game. There is a downloadable beta demo to try. I'm normally not a big fan of shooter / action RPGs, but this looks good. And the digital copy tier is only $12 CAD (~$9 USD).

While the game seems to have a pretty serious tone, it's great to see that the developer's have a sense of humor. Perhaps they'll find ways to incorporate some dark humor into the game. Looks like their campaign is going pretty well, despite being on Indiegogo. Whether or not you decide to back "Icy", you can also help out the developer's by voting for the game on Steam Greenlight and GOG wishlist.

There's an Indiegogo campaign that just launched for a post-apocalyptic CRPG (tentatively) called Icy. There's lots of emphasis on choice and consequence and focus on the survival aspect of the genre. There's an early bird tier for a digital copy of the game at only $5. Game is apparently almost complete and the funds will just go towards additional polishing and testing.

Well, they may just use the poll from the first Kickstarter campaign (which is how they arrived at Hong Kong). I believe the next choice was "More Seattle", followed closely by London and Chicago. Or they may just decide on their own (I know they've said in interviews they'd love to do a campaign in a more wilderness environment like Australia or perhaps Aztlan. My dream stretch goal would actually be for them to make a "Dead Man's Switch- Director's Cut" in the SR:HK editor. DMS with full fledged companions, new missions, narrative choices, and all the improvements that are in DF:DC and will be added to HK would make for an amazing game... But probably be really expensive... And with two days left, there probably isn't enough time to get enough funding for something like that... On the other hand, a new SR campaign in a different locale next year would be even better.

I wish someone could make a spiritual successor of ToEE (by which I mean a turn-based tactical D&D CRPG; I don't necessarily have any interest in the Greyhawk setting and that game was severely lacking in content). I will still happily play Real-time with pause games, but I've never seem the battle system implemented that well.. I'm always fighting with the controls / interface at some point and left thinking "Man, this game would be better if it were turn-based".

Going a bit better than I , being a pessimist, assumed. At the current rate, they'll hit 1M even without the surge of the last days. Which means there'll probably be that a one more (reachable) goal. I think they'll end up around $1.2 million.. maybe even a bit more. But I'm not sure they'll announce anymore specific stretch goals. It seems HBS is being pretty careful not to over-promise and commit to oft requested features that could be very time consuming expensive (e.g., Astral Space, Co-op, etc.) That's the smart thing to do though and I applaud them for being honest. They seem set on getting the game released by the end of the year. Therefore I'm guessing they'll use any funds above $1 million to make the "mini-campaign" bigger. Perhaps if they get $1.5 million they'll turn it into more of full fledged expansion pack. I'd be very happy with that. All the missions in Dragonfall were great fun.

Little over $130K to raise in 9 days. Things have slowed down, but there should be a pretty big boost in the last couple of days when reminder emails go out and people who are planning to upgrade their pledges do so. Also, RPGCodex has their own community fundraiser going for the Kickstarter... They've already raised over $3K and are keeping it going until the 14th. From what I understand, the admins will pledge once they have their final tally.

If they end up getting significantly more than $1million, I'm guessing they'll probably just decide to continue to add more missions and play time hours to the mini-campaign. Perhaps it will end up being more like a full fledged expansion, as it looks like they could end up with around $1.5 million (depending on the likely final day push is).

Unfortunately, you may be right. It's probably the only thing I'm really skeptical of in the stretch goals so far. I think the only reason they're doing it because a lot of players have been complaining on the Shadowrun forums that it's hard playing as a Shaman because fairly often your summoned spirits will break free of your control and become enemies (but this is intentional design, and really what you are supposed to do is use the summoned spirit only for a few rounds and then banish them).

They're supposed to be coming out with some more reward tiers soon, so more people may see something they like. I'm definitely planning to raise my pledge at least a bit.. just not sure to what yet. But for me, the main reward is the game, and making the game bigger / better with the stretch goals. Mitch has implied in an interview with RPGamer that Astral space or Stealth could make an appearance as a future stretch goal. If they could implement either of those, that would add a lot to the game IMO.

The way I interpreted it is that this will not in any way replace the abilities Shamans had in Dragonfall / SRR. SO there will still be normal summoning points in certain places and you can of course always carry some magical fetishes along during missions to summon elementals whenever you want. This is just in addition to that... ANd like Serrano said these Shrines will more than likely be located near boss battles...

because physical goods can take quite an amount of money when you need to produce them, and then deliver on their own cost. Not to mention all the other logistic hurdles. Right, but if they do it correctly it will result in a net positive income. But I suppose developers aren't good at that sort of thing; it should really be outsourced. Part of the problem is it's especially difficult to estimate production costs when you don't know what the final print run will be... Generally the cost per unit will go down the larger the print run, but if HBS opens up a T shirt tier for example, they have no way of knowing how many backers will end up picking it. So let's say they have to assume worst case scenario. i.e., that only a very small number of backers will pick the tshirt. Then they have to charge a lot for it to make sure they are still going to end up getting a net positive that they can actually apply towards the game's development... So let's say they have to set the tshirt tier at $50 to be on the safe side... Well, how many people are going to pledge $50 for a t shirt? Probably not a lot, so they likely won't get many pledges for it... So what's the point? Making a handful of people "happy" that they can get an overpriced T-shirt, and not really bringing in a significant amount of money to put into the game's development. Physical rewards are just a huge headache. Sure, they can hire an outside company to produce and ship each reward, but that also costs money... And then what happens when one of the outside companies screws up? HBS has to handle it or have a bunch of angry backers... In the first campaign, the company that produced the USB dog tags screwed up and shipped defective USBs. HBS had to ship out replacement USBs to anyone that reported that they got a defective one. Then there's the fact that some dishonest people will take advantage of the situation.. Claim they got the wrong size t-shirt or that it was damaged in shipment, etc... But HBS had to appease them by spending more money sending a replacement to avoid looking like greedy jerks who don't care about their customers / supporters. Not to mention, physical rewards mess up the perception people have of the campaign. For instance, I've heard that roughly 1/3 of the funds raised in the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter ended up going towards fulfillment of the physical rewards... Which means after KS fees, taxes, and KS rewards, HBS probably had to develop SRR on less than a $1 million budget. Yet a lot of people look at the Kickstarter and say "Oh they had almost $2 million to develop the game..." Sure these people are idiots but they influence others so you end up with a distorted expectations of what the game should be like... I saw so many people saying the game was too short "for a $2 million game" or why couldn't feature X have been within their "$2 million budget"., etc. In a nutshell, I fully understand and support HBS decision to keep physical rewards to a minimum.