Paper Sorcerer - 1st person turn-based RPG on Kickstarter

Myrkrel

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I just stumbled upon this interesting project on Kickstarter - which has 5 more days to go. Wizardry-style gameplay combined with adventure game elements (the dev mentions Shadowgate as another inspiration). This is a one-man project with a very cool pen & ink hand-drawn art style. Might be of interest to some here!

Paper Sorcerer - on Kickstarter

In the developer's words:
Paper Sorcerer is a first-person turn-based RPG with adventure game elements inspired by Wizardry, Dungeons and Dragons, and Shadowgate.

  • Play as a renegade sorcerer as he struggles to escape the book prison and regain his powers.
  • Escape a magical prison filled with heroes hunting you down at every turn.
  • Strategy over grinding battles, with a charge based spell system.
  • Create a party of summons to join you as allies in battle.
  • Discover open-ended puzzles and solve them with a combinations of spells, items, and your wits.
  • Hand-drawn high-resolution sprites inspired by the work of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century illustrators like Aubrey Beardsley and William Bradley.
  • DRM-free for PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and possibly Xbox Live Indie Arcade and web-browser.
  • All-inclusive game, promise to never make you pay for DLC content.

A screenshot:
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Now that is old-school.

Checked out their site and watched the gameplay video. It looks promising.
 
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Very nice! I usually don't like hand drawn art because it is too cartoony, but this has style! Also, game play sounds interesting, although level scaling is tough to do right. I do think it will be a challenge for him to support all the platforms on his budget.
 
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"The Mailer - Exclusive christmas card featuring me and my cats sent to you on Christmas. Includes all previous rewards."

That is just freaking awesome.
 
Oh, I'm the guy developing that game! Really glad you guys like it, makes the year of working on it worthwhile.

If you guys have any questions you'd like to ask, feel free to ask, here or on kickstarter.
 
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Nice to welcome another Indie developer to our forums. We here at the Watch strive to do all we can to assist Indie developers get the word out about their games, so please keep in touch with us here.
 
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666 backers on KickStarter at the moment of this posting!

Good start or bad for a fantasy game? hehehehe

Make sure you do a good job on the Android version, thats the one I'm interested in. :p Optimized for a 7" tablet please.
 

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Will wait for this on my Android touchpad and PC version. Looks promising.
 
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$6000? That's hardly a drop in the bucket for what I can imagine will be many man hours. I don't get the kickstarter concept, obviously. ;)
 
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Kind of goes hand in hand doesn't it? The success of any given kickstarter is going to hinge on how many people know about it.
 
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The devs pretty much give their time for free; the KickStarter donation amount is a barometer of customer interest more than anything else. Maybe it gets picked up by someone with deep pockets if the interest level is high?
 
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He did mention in his post that he's already put in a year of work on the project - so the Kickstarter is probably meant to cover other costs as mentioned on the Kickstarter page (test devices for mobile platforms, Unity licenses, art supplies, business fees, more content, more polish / refinements, etc.)

Sorry for the OT, but should we view KickStarters more as promotion vehicles rather than real calls for funding?
I think it really varies from project to project. Some are already far along in development but still need funding for a final level of polish, while others haven't even started. Some are more like a pre-order arrangement, for example to pay for print-run costs (in the case of book projects). Of course all projects benefit from exposure on the site too, and also it helps gauge interest. So projects use Kickstarter in a variety of ways, depending on what they need the money for.
 
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$6K won't come close to covering the costs for

(test devices for mobile platforms, Unity licenses, art supplies, business fees, more content, more polish / refinements, etc.)

Plus the test time and porting costs to all the other platforms.
 
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$6K won't come close to covering the costs for



Plus the test time and porting costs to all the other platforms.

I agree RunawayDev you are asking for too little. Let's hope you get it and then some.

I would also argue that RD has spent more than a year on this as it seems its the culmination of a decades long obsession with Wizardry 4.

It also seems you have your first critic on these boards with Peanut who doesn't like the "Might and Magic I" look of the game. I wouldn't worry tho' there's nothing he won't criticize.

How is interest on those other, less polite, RPG forums?
 
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Graphics looks very nice.Gameplay looks like jRPG and those game tend to get grindy.If it's too grindy it's potential deal breaker for me.Anyway interesting looking project but I think I will wait for full release and opinion of watch upon release.
 
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Glad this broke $8k and the Unity Pro license is a go. It looks unique, at the very least. =D
 
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We broke $11,000 already and it looks like it might hit the 12K stretch goal before it's done.

As far as the goal, 5K was the bare minimum for what I budgeted it would need to make it. As a first time developer, I preferred a little funding to no funding, which is what I would get if I set a high goal and then failed to hit it.
Luckily everything went smashingly. :)

Graphics looks very nice.Gameplay looks like jRPG and those game tend to get grindy.If it's too grindy it's potential deal breaker for me.
I'm focusing a lot on making it as grindless and strategic as possible, the focus is on less frequent but more difficult battles so that you're not just fighting the same guys repeatedly.

Also, I wanted to thank you guys here at RPGWatch for your support!
 
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