MAC: Lots of Kickstarter success stories seem to have focused on stirring up nostalgia. Everstar looks to do more than copy games of old, so do you feel at a disadvantage being stuck between being a retro-throwback and new gen RPG?
JT: That's a good point and a smart observation. Our theory was that if we showed some exciting, working gameplay that people might be more interested than in just a nostalgic concept and some early paintings. We'll see if that's the case or not!
MAC: While I'm a fan of the art style, I've read some comments that say it looks too cartoony or generic. Why did you choose this style? Do you feel it fits the theme of game? I think it looks very impressive for a Kickstarter project, but considering many people look at graphics before diving deeper these days, do you feel like the visual style will work for you?
JT: It's funny - we settled on our character style because we didn't just want to do generic photo-real-ish fantasy, so we went for a more stylized look. I guess you can't please everyone!
What we are showing in our Kickstarter is prototype art - the final art look will be quite a bit more polished and stylized. We figured this would be another risk in showing game footage that is mostly arted, but not at all polished - that people would think this is our final look.
So given that one of the reasons we are doing the Kickstarter is to raise our visual bar, we think it looks pretty good too!
MAC: Could you talk a little about co-op? Will it be drop in, drop out at any time? Just curious what kind of hoops players will need to jump through to join another player's game mid-session.
JT: Everstar supports co-op play in the main story campaign. Co-op play has been working in Everstar since the beginning of the project. You can drop in and out whenever you want, and the only thing the host has to do is assign character(s) to each player. Each player can control as many or as few characters as the host decides.
