Grimoire - A Demo is Coming?
 

Cleve shares some more info on the Grimoire beta, stating that it will be coming soon.
More information.

Sounds promising. I reckon a good demo would give the Indiegogo campaign a pretty good kick, but the timing is getting a bit tight now with only 4 days left to run.

"Very soon" TM

Now now. None of that. What reason would he possibly have to deceive us again.

I think this may well happen, but I'm a little concerned that the small amount raised by the current Indiegogo campaign will hardly cover the cost of physical deliverables and postage charges. Would be nice to see the devs get at least something for polishing the game for release, although $250k was wildly optimistic, particularly considering that a lot of negative publicity has been generated around this project.

He's doing it. You Will Believe A Mediocre Game Can Take 20 Years To Make 8)

I bet a part of the sum he's asking for will go into some PR agency to deal with that issue.

Some things however can't be fixed.

fixed

I think we should have a betting pool on this.

• nothing released
• released
• only demo released
• previous beta gets leaked
• source code gets leaked
• previous beta gets released, fans patches fix problems
• unfinished game with new broken GUI gets released
• finds a publisher
• finds a publisher and delays release in order to finish it up
• finds publisher, publisher goes out of business
• finds publisher, gets fired from publisher after lengthy delays
• apologizes to former Sirtech/Wizardry employees for all the disparagement
• above but only after former Sirtech employees apologize to Woodhead and Greenberg for stealing Wizardry

As to "the devs", I believe someone called Michael Shamgar is also involved with Grimoire and is reputedly responsible for finding a bug that was holding up development on Win 64. Viz:

"Shams has been indispensable with his work on the Kingstep engine and assisting with many of the finer technical details of the game."

As to what happens next. I think a demo will probably appear soon (fingers firmly crossed though). How it will turn out is hard to know, but I'm cautiously optimistic given the videos that have been released that show interesting mechanics and what look like some good UI innovations. Of course there's a lot more to a Wiz game than just getting some mechanics right - getting the pace and balance right too is essential and the sometimes whimsical but subtle humour in David Bradley's games was also important, I think.

What happens next is harder to say. None of my Kickstarter projects are on time and I don't imagine Grimoire is likely to be different, but it's hard to know. As a developer myself (in a totally different field) I haven't always been able to estimate completion dates either :).

Really? A Grimoire demo is coming soon??
Hell hasn't frozen over yet, but it's getting mighty cold.

We have forum members that are younger than Grimoire :D Cleve should take his time and get it right. Another 3-5 years for the demo.

Rules for running a shitty crowdfunding campaign:

(1) Spend years behaving like such an ass on the internet, so that the only forum which will tolerate you is the Codex
(2) Indicate that the only reason you are crowdfunding is because you lack the motivation to finish the game on your own
(3) Set a goal that is ridiculously unachievable, BUT you get the money, regardless
(4) Set an insanely/suspiciously long funding period without any justifiable explanation
(5) Maliciously attack another developer during their own crowdfunding campaign
(6) Have some large gaps of one month between updates
(7) From the beginning, indicate that a demo will be available in late November/early December, but don't deliver that for 2 months (and counting)
(8) Blame the delay on a bug with 64 bit machines that you knew about at least 6 months prior to the start of your crowdfunding campaign:

http://grimdarkly.wordpress.com/2012/04/
(Refer to the April 14 entry)

(9) Instead of apologizing for the delay, lash out at the people on the only internet forum which will tolerate your presence
(10) Start a new campaign as a "do-over" because 120 days surely isn't enough time to market your product

Bottom line:

Uber jackass tries crowdfunding but fails miserably…
Then tries crowdfunding again and WILL fail miserably…

lol. Nice tips :-)

But if i remember right, some (six?) years ago the situation was quite the opposite. Cleve swore that he will NEVER post anything at the Codex, cause they repeatedly refused to recognize his brilliancy. And he was more than tolerated by Corwin at RPGdot.

Tempora mutantur…

Well you're right Gozioso, as far as that goes, but keeping all the skeletons in the cupboard doesn't guarantee a great result either. If Grimoire really does turn out to be a worthy successor to Wiz 6/7 then that will more than wipe the slate clean and will be a pretty major achievement. You don't have to be adept at the finer points of human interaction to be a great developer, in fact…

Bottom line from someone who is most unhappy with Cleve: it is an excellent and fun game which I've completed twice and enjoyed both times. That was the beta of several years ago and this should be better. Difficult as it may be, try to separate the game from the developer as much as possible!! :)

You bet wrong.

I'd gladly throw some money at this if I ever thought it might exist at some point. As of now, I do not.



-Carn

Just do it, release the beast