Kickstarter update #5: Rebecca Heinemann helps Brian Fargo!

The Original Trilogy Coming FREE

Exciting news today: every backer of The Bard’s Tale IV ($20 or more) will get free digital copies of the original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate!

Even before we launched the Kickstarter, we were constantly asked "can you do a re-release of the original The Bard’s Tale trilogy" and we heard you. We have been hard at work behind the scenes looking at ways to make it happen! The first step was getting Electronic Arts to sign on as they own the publishing rights to the old games, having originally brought them to the market in the mid-80s. EA very graciously had no objections at all, a big thanks to them for their help in making this giveaway happen.

The emulated versions of the classic games will be released for free at the end of the campaign for every backer at $20 or higher, and distributed through our backer web site. This is our way of giving our thanks back to you for all your support and helping us bring back The Bard's Tale.

Some of you may know that the emulated versions of these games work on most modern machines, but are a little rough around the edges. Thus, we have an agreement with the original The Bard’s Tale III programmer Rebecca "Burger" Heineman and her company Olde Sküül to update the games for modern machines! She will be working to make the games run natively, without needing emulators, on PC or Mac. This re-releases will be primarily based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games, along with updated art.

We’ll get you the emulated versions of the trilogy as soon as the Kickstarter ends and our backer site is up. Meanwhile, Rebecca will be working on the updated versions of the games and if that goes well we’ll get you those as soon as she delivers them to us, also for free! As we’re not working on these versions ourselves we cannot give an ETA or guarantee on their release, we’ll all be waiting for Rebecca to deliver us an upgraded version worthy of the name!

Of course, playing the originals will not be necessary to follow the story of The Bard’s Tale IV, but we hope you’ll jump on the opportunity to experience them as thousands of fans did back in the day!

Deluxe Double Album Soundtrack and Add-Ons!

We've been looking at our plans for the soundtrack and realized that with multiple musicians working on this (including the very talented Julie Fowlis who you heard in the in-engine video) we're simply going to have too many songs to put on one CD. So we're expanding the soundtrack to a Deluxe Double Album!

If your tier already contains the soundtrack (that is tiers $50, $70 and $95 and up), whether digital or physical, you are now upgraded to the Deluxe Double Album! Physical tiers receive two CDs and digital tiers receive both albums digitally.

New Tiers

We have rolled out new reward tiers for you guys to choose from. First up, we have the $33 Guide to Skara Brae tier that includes the Digital Guidebook and Digital Artbook, and by popular demand, we have brought back the Supreme Box Collector tier at $675 for those who want to fill out their shelves!