Apocalypse Now - Leaves Kickstarter
 

Apocalypse Now leaves Kickstarter and asks now for $5,900,000:

Thanks Farflame!

More information.

What???????? 6 million dollars ????????

The KS campaign rose 172,000 dollars when they were asking 900,000. I wish them good luck, they will need it!

Yeah, I wish them luck too… but this smells of failure already.

900000 $ on Kickstarter was a market analysis for potential investors to give more money. Obviously, it failed. 6 million now is the full amount they have to raise to make the game, with or without investors.

Well 6 million in 9 months is better than 900 000 in 30 days so maybe they make it :D
But this whole game sounds very fishy.

We've posted some of our gameplay updates here: Updates

And we've raised more money in 3 days on our own site than we raised in 3 weeks on Kickstarter


I'm happy to answer any questions at all!

Montgomery Markland
Apocalypse Now game director

Smells of FRAUD.

6 million is what it takes to develop a game without a huge advertisement budget. My guess is they will continue to work on the game for 9 months and if they can develop some sort of promising pre-alpha they will seek outside investments.

You all may be right, but this game won't see my money, not before their project sees the light of day.

The only way I'd throw money at this would be if it already existed, and was on sale.

Look who we have here:

Ahhh. That one. Now,….

pibbur who wonders who it is.

EDIT: We found out. DS

Director Montgomery Markland here, happy to answer any questions.

Videos here:
https://apocalypsenow.com/

Updates here:
https://apocalypsenow.com/updates

A moment to moment description of gameplay here:

1) The Viet Cong in the jungle will overwhelm you over time if you fully engage in direct combat with them (like a survival horror game or like the cops in GTA series)

2) Our awareness and observation system for all characters is based on sound and movement. Once characters, including AIs, lock on a target, they'll generally keeping throwing lead down range. One million rounds fired per KIA during Vietnam War. Because it's hard to see in the jungle.

3) Most game objects have physical manifestations in the world that are physics driven and generate movement and sometimes sound, for example.

4) Among your starting gear, you have a rain poncho, that you can drop or throw, a Seven Inch Recon (the first knife provided by the Counter Insurgency Support Office (CISO) early in the war to the SOG Advisers in Vietnam), an M1911A1, and a working music box that you found in an abandoned French Colonial home near the village of Tchepone.

5) You need to find gasoline for your boat, the Erebus callsign PBR Streetgang. It's out and dead in the water.

6) There's a VC fuel dump 1 klick to the east of the river bank. You know because you found a map in a tunnel earlier calling it out.

7) The 1000 meters between you and the fuel dump is both patrolled by VC and filled with booby traps like tiger traps, punji pits and two-step charlies.

8) There are an unknown amount of Viet Cong in underground tunnels beneath the fuel dump and jungle around it.

9) You've only got one seven round magazine left for your Colt M1911A1.

10) You built your character with high stealth and recon oriented skills, you can sneak around pretty effectively.

11) It's raining and windy but it's still day for another few hours.

12) Lance, Chef, Clean and Chief are getting impatient on the boat.

What do you do?

Games that have inspired our team here:

Original Deus Ex, System Shock 1/2, Fallout 1 and 2, all the Infinity Engine games, Hitman: Blood Money, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Thief, Far Cry series, Alien: Isolation, Amnesia/SOMA, Half Life series, Spec Ops: The Line, Resident Evil series (some of them), FEAR, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Black Mesa, Jagged Alliance series, some others. Those are the top ones that come to mind as major influences.

Not more? ;)
Well, if you plan on making a game inspired by all of those quite different games…your game will probably be a mess. Best of luck, but I'll only buy it if it's ever finished and then considered worth it.

Terminated Kickstarter with Extreme Prejudice
 

Some people will crowdfund, some will wait for a Steam sale. We're raising more pledges faster on our own site at https://apocalypsenow.com/ that's why we terminated Kickstarter with extreme prejudice.

As for # of influences, all game designers and directors are influenced by dozens or hundreds of games. Playing games is part of the job. And the best developers follow Pablo Picasso's advice: Good artists borrow; great artists steal.

Thanks for the interest!

One of our new prototype teases:
https://youtu.be/qryA0ZaF_Jo

Our in-engine teaser video:
https://youtu.be/qnGTWI9ebKw

I swear there was a post from MontgomeryMarkland here - and now it disappeared?

Breezed through it but didn't comment, had something to do that took me too many hours (win10 upgrade on a certain old machine that kept reverting back to win7 whatever I did). No luck with google cache.

Anyway, I remember the first point in the post where the game is supposed to be a mix of survival horror and something else, but executed in GTA cops style where you get overwhelmed by mobs. ENDLESSLY SPAWNED mobs. A certain spot or area with it, okay, some military base for example. But that mechanics being everywere? Is that supposed to be a joke?

Thanks to tomasp3n at least a part with inspiration isn't lost. From the game title we should assume the movie also inspired someone in the development team. Or not just one person. But when there is a game about something and some setting, good old developers would at least research if there is something more that can be "used" as inspiration. There is.

The Cape: 1969 by Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella and Nelson Daniel:
https://www.amazon.com/Cape-1969-Joe…dp/1613775458/
This is one of those musthaves (although I do suggest buying the integral that contains both this one and The Cape that is it's sequel):
https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Hill-Grap…/dp/1631407686

http://i.ebayimg.com/images/a/(KGrHq…!~~/s-l300.jpg

So let's make a deal. Instead of giving developers plain $, I'll send them this comic. Assuming they're here to make a quality game not to take the money and run.

For those who want to know more:

Was caught by our spam filter (posts of first time posters with links go to the moderation queue). They should be visible again.

Elaboration on mechanics
 

Thanks Arhu! I see 'em back.

The "endless spawning Viet Cong" happens when you're deep in the jungle, it's like a survival horror mechanic mostly (but the GTA cop onslaught is a similar gating mechanism).

The fundamental idea is that you are a single Army Captain in the middle of a war zone, and directly engaging even a company-sized group of VC, let alone a battalion, would be almost certain death no matter how skilled an assassin you are.

When you are on the river, especially closer to the mouth of the Nung River you are safer. When you are on the banks of the river you are less safe, but still relatively speaking safe. When you are deep in the jungle, it is a very dangerous place to be.

We'll have lots of updates here: https://apocalypsenow.com/updates

And I don't think I posted this latest prototype footage yet: M9 Flamethrower in-engine

We'll be posting a lot of additional video and near endless updates over next few months.

So, have you guys acquired a licence from Coppola or whoever to use this IP? Or has it been freed up by some unusual copyright situation?

I might buy it on release. Depends on how much early adopters like the game systems. I'm mostly fantasy rpgs so post-apoc has to be really special for me to look at it.