Deathfire - Kickstarter Now Live

Guido Henkel is a guy who has already worn all kinds of heads, from Producer to Programmer and Musician and should be able to estimate the costs of such a project very well.

But Guido does not have so much money as if he could take the Risk of spending it all on producing a game which will never get finished.

As you might remember Guido first tried his first project Thorvalla. Even with the goal of 1 million he asked for that game it’s hard to make such a game and there wasn’t a way to do it with less money.
Also because he did not take the risk all he had back there was conceptual and there wasn’t much to show.

Now with the new project Deathfire he uses the knowledge he gained from the previous project.
Instead of doing a huge project he keeps it smaller and modular. He also invested some of his own time and money to be able to present something in the kickstarter campaign.
They worked on Deathfire for 8 months now and invested own money.
So instead of working on a game with huge scope from the beginning, and then realizing it won’t get funded (like the Thorvalla Campaign) they chose a small scale, which is more likely to reach it’s goal.
Once the goal is reached it can be expanded afterwards with the help of stretch goals.

For now I’d imagine the game more like Lands of Lore 1 which is very linear, but has a deeper story then let’s say Dungeon Master or Grimrock. But if they are able to get additional money, you might probably want to compare it to the old Might and Magic games instead (as the new one is extremely small and linear itself).

So I’d say that the way he does is totally makes sense.
It’s also great to see that he listens to what people say. The tier with the new “Cheat/God” class was already removed due to the feedback they received.

wiretripped said:

I never played a JRPG before. Kinda shy away from them. Not my style.

But uhm, the pitch says:
"Another one of our planned stretch goals will add Towns to the game, complete with locations such as Healers, Armorers, Weapon Smiths, Taverns, Temples, and so on. One additional goal we have planned will add an Overhead Map to the game, complete with Overland Travel, Hunting and Gathering. At this point we will no longer have a linear game, but will also add additional main story lines to the game so that you can really go out and explore."

So… Will there be towns at all, if that stretch goal isn't reached? Or will there just be more of them? Will the initial ones not have such locations as mentioned then? And, the game will be linear if it isn't reached?

As I said, not sure what to make of that…

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I think he tries to tell that they can add more landscape to the game via stretch goals. Optional towns, optional quests more places beyond the main questline. For example if your main quests were going through 1 major city and 2 towns along underground complexes, perhaps the gameworld can be extended to 3 major cities 8 towns and 10 villages with overland map where you can get wilderness events and such.

A RPG is not a RPG without towns! And he mentions in the video about factions…so of course there will be settlements. Just the amount changes due to support.

It looks like a project worth backing definitely. At least a man who worked in Fallout 2 and Realms of Arkania, as well as produced Planescape Torment deserves the backing of RPG players.

Backed it, really hope it makes funding as it sounds like exactly my kind of game. Well worth a $30 punt anyway!

Benedict said:

Backed it, really hope it makes funding as it sounds like exactly my kind of game. Well worth a $30 punt anyway!

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it looks like it needs a miracle, or to get a lot more coverage, to make it's target over the next 10 days. Fingers crossed.

They're needing some shout-outs from bigger KSs. And I guess the Nethermancer issue in the beginning in the campaign scared lot of potential backers (many don't mark the project and return later to check if the project had a better pitch), because of this is important to check potential problems with tiers before the start of the campaign (and in Thorvalla he already was warned about exclusive in-game content being a bad idea...)