Forsaken Fortress - Released to Backers

Photon Productions has a new forum post with information Forsaken Fortress has been released for backers, and will be available later for non-backers.

NEWS ABOUT THE RELEASE !!!!!! Fresh update !!!!!!!

These words are directly quoted from the Chief Dev Haoran, (i did not include all the stuff about him almost dying because of lack of sleep and food)

"I am uploading v1.0 right now, it will take 5 hours so tomorrow morning it will be up there. This release is only for backers. And all backers will receive a link via email they registered, just like how they received their betas.

Linux and mac will come about a week after windows release. And all the rewards will be sent later, which is our next focus, digital and physical rewards.

I have already included at least half of the digital reward in this build, including most customizable backer characters....future digital rewards will be included in patches."

UPDATE!!!!!!!

Everybody will get their download-link, backers first today, then all others today or tomorrow........ You can also check out the new kickstarter-update for backers only, right here : www.kickstarter.com/projects/1317934609/forsaken-fortress/posts/817033

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More information.

From reading their forums it sounds like this could have been a scam.

The youtube videos people point to are a year and a half old and then they are saying that the beta is horribly different from what was shown.

Further, someone else posted that they have to enter a captcha (spelling?) to a paid advertised popup to get their download to work?

Things seem strange around this project and I posted simply as a bit of a "consumer alert" at this point - this might be a group looking to have made quick money and now releasing something incredibly sub-par simply so they can keep the money??

Don't think it's a scam - just suspicious that it isn't close to being finished and that like so many other projects it's going to be pushed out of the door with a lot of things missing, cos they need some income.

They are using something like rapidshare for download which is where you are seeing the advertisement so that aspect is not a scam. The quality side well....

revjwh said:

From reading their forums it sounds like this could have been a scam.

The youtube videos people point to are a year and a half old and then they are saying that the beta is horribly different from what was shown.

Further, someone else posted that they have to enter a captcha (spelling?) to a paid advertised popup to get their download to work?

Things seem strange around this project and I posted simply as a bit of a "consumer alert" at this point - this might be a group looking to have made quick money and now releasing something incredibly sub-par simply so they can keep the money??

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It's a low budget indie Kickstarter effort, so one should probably not be expecting AAA quality.

Well from the few comments I'm seeing on the actual game itself 'bad' would be too kind.

rjshae said:

It's a low budget indie Kickstarter effort, so one should probably not be expecting AAA quality.

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Yep they made a game with a very small budget. You get what you pay for people. If more people donated, or backed it could of been better.

revjwh said:

From reading their forums it sounds like this could have been a scam.

The youtube videos people point to are a year and a half old and then they are saying that the beta is horribly different from what was shown.

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You obviously haven't seen all the new videos I have posted this month then have you? I wont deny the game is different than what was promised.

Couchpotato said:

Yep they made a game with a very small budget. You get what you pay for people. If more people donated, or backed it could of been better.

You obviously haven't seen all the new videos I have posted this month then have you? I wont deny the game is different than what was promised.

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Thing is, it was such a nice concept for a game and you sort of imagine a less geeky version of Dwarf Fortress or XCOM EU with more immediacy and emphasis on the base building aspects and the people.

I didn't back this project and dunno why, really don't want to waste time on checking.
But if it turns out to be good, gimme a nudge willya?

I saw the video but apparently actually playing is another thing. I.e. there are strong reason to believe they are misleading.

Couchpotato said:

Yep they made a game with a very small budget. You get what you pay for people. If more people donated, or backed it could of been better.

You obviously haven't seen all the new videos I have posted this month then have you? I wont deny the game is different than what was promised.

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I've backed it and played it - it's not a scam. It's not a great game either.

The idea has good potential, but as it stands it's poorly executed, and I'm not convinced it will ever live up to it's potential.

Just had another update last night, where they come clean about the state of the game. In my opinion they would be much better off not releasing it now, even if that pisses off some of the physical backers (who wants a physical copy of an unfinished game?). Put it on the back burner, look for other ways of doing it such as open source, early access etc. Anything is better than shipping a pile of crap.

Anyway one lesson is $100k just isn't enough to make an open world game (or any other reasonably complex effort) from scratch; other devs need to learn that too, it seems.

Yea I saw that and it made me feel a wee bit better. One thing that still bugs me is why the videos are >> then the actual game. I'm still a little mixed about the whole thing but whatever. Now i'm trying to ask myself should I stick with serpent in the Staglands after all if we say that it is impossible to make anything playable on $120K what are these folks going to dow ith $20K ?

Roq said:

Just had another update last night, where they come clean about the state of the game. In my opinion they would be much better off not releasing it now, even if that pisses off some of the physical backers (who wants a physical copy of an unfinished game?). Put it on the back burner, look for other ways of doing it such as open source, early access etc. Anything is better than shipping a pile of crap.

Anyway one lesson is $100k just isn't enough to make an open world game (or any other reasonably complex effort) from scratch; other devs need to learn that too, it seems.

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Sadly, I'm not surprised. The betas were a far cry from what I was expecting and then I heard they outsourced a lot of work.

I don't think Serpent in the Staglands is in the same boat seeing as how the devs say it's in Alpha condition now and they're looking for money to finish and polish. Plus, it has different features (ie no base building/vehicles) and I expect much cheaper to make overall.

greywolf00 said:

Sadly, I'm not surprised. The betas were a far cry from what I was expecting and then I heard they outsourced a lot of work.

I don't think Serpent in the Staglands is in the same boat seeing as how the devs say it's in Alpha condition now and they're looking for money to finish and polish. Plus, it has different features (ie no base building/vehicles) and I expect much cheaper to make overall.

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True. Also in the case of Serpent in the Staglands it's a two person husband and wife team (three if you count their composer- but it seems he's already been paid) who still have some money from their previous mobile titles / contract work so it's not like they are planning on living off of ~$20K for the next year. I'm not worried that they will run out of funds; my only concern about Serpent in the Staglands is that their path-finding / character movement might not be so great (as has often been the case with Real Time w/ Pause RPGs).

Every developer comes to Kickstarter in a different situation.. Sometimes the core team is in place and willing to work for little or no money until the title ships, but in this case, it seems they had to hire much outside help which is expensive and where many KS projects run into problems.

Ultimately you have to trust them to know how much they realistically need to complete their game and be honest about it. It's always a gamble. This is why I typically don't contribute much more than the lowest tier to get a copy of the game (well, that and because I'm not rich

That's too bad. Another reminder that you really need to see the big picture before you back KS projects. Just because it's a neat concept for a game doesn't mean you should throw money at it...

greywolf00 said:

I don't think Serpent in the Staglands is in the same boat seeing as how the devs say it's in Alpha condition now and they're looking for money to finish and polish. Plus, it has different features (ie no base building/vehicles) and I expect much cheaper to make overall.

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I get the sense that SitS is not trying to be overly ambitious, which is why I think it may succeed. They already have a partly working 2D system in place, so the contributors know up front what its like and the type of quality they can expect. There will be fewer missed expectations.

The FF Kickstarter presentation was more about concepts and a few stills, and they needed to put together the entire 3D interface and setting. There was a lot of work required to create the models and build the setting editor. That's less time for creating and optimizing the actual game play.

greywolf00 said:

Sadly, I'm not surprised. The betas were a far cry from what I was expecting and then I heard they outsourced a lot of work.

I don't think Serpent in the Staglands is in the same boat seeing as how the devs say it's in Alpha condition now and they're looking for money to finish and polish. Plus, it has different features (ie no base building/vehicles) and I expect much cheaper to make overall.

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Yeah, I agree: Staglands isn't trying to be a full 3d open world game, and they appear to have a good idea of the scope, plus the UI already looks very competent. Could be a good game. In contrast to FF who clearly ran into some technical difficulties as well as aiming for complex 3d animation etc. and a game style that exceeds their budget. Of course there are no guarantees on Kickstarter, but Staglands looks like one of the better recent rpg KSs…

Of course hindsight is a great thing, sometimes projects that were over ambitious make it through some stroke of fortune or sheer persistence. Some of the ones I backed have exceeded their dates, run out of money etc., but found ways to continue - Xenonauts, Eisenwald…