Corven - New Kickstarter

A new kickstarter for the spiritual Ultima successor, Corven has started today, after the previous one was canceled. They are now asking for 25,000 dollar less, which results in a goal of $20,000 and they are already halfway there.

Corven is a story-driven, open world, single player RPG inspired by our favorite old-school RPGs, especially Richard Garriott's Ultima series.

We miss Ultima and its design philosophy and so we set out to create something very similar.

Corven will let you explore an interactive open world full of secrets and surprises. Maybe even more important than that, Corven will deliver an engaging story with many interesting NPCs.

Our goal is to make you want to know "what happens next?" in the main quest. Or in side quests for example"why is the, married, mayor of this town sneaking over to this other woman's house almost every night?"

This is a shift from many modern RPG's in which character progression and combat are very clearly the main focus. Don't get us wrong, we love those games too, but we want to focus on what made games like Ultima V, VI and VII so great.

We are also very proud to announce that none other than Richard "Lord British" Garriott, creator of the Ultima series, likes Corven and even helped with parts of the storyline. His alter ego, Lord British, will appear in the game and make Corven feel even more like its great inspiration, Ultima.

Don't worry, Corven will also feature a fun real-time combat system which is entertaining, but won't take up most of your play time. You will learn many exciting spells and some of them will even interact. Like a fireball which does 100% critical damage on targets afflicted by your freeze spell. You get the idea.

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More information.

oh, i do like what i see, nice atmosphere !

$30 is the lowest tier to get the game? Seems fairly high for what they've shown so far. I won't back at these levels but may buy the game some day if it ever sees the light of day.

Hopefully they get funded but it's a shame they had to lower the bar.

Couchpotato said:

Hopefully they get funded but it's a shame they had to lower the bar.

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Well, if every living Ultima Dragon backs, they'll end up with some serious cash. I prefered IV, V, VI vastly over Ultima VII, so I'll wait til release to see how it's received.

crpgnut said:

Well, if every living Ultima Dragon backs, they'll end up with some serious cash. I prefered IV, V, VI vastly over Ultima VII, so I'll wait til release to see how it's received.

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Problem is they didn't. It was canceled and relaunched as funding was slow. It's shame that crowd-funding has all but fizzled out for PC games. Not an opinion but a fact.

Most new games go Early Access now.

I HATE EA in all its forms including a certain company!!

Corwin said:

I HATE EA in all its forms including a certain company!!

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You don't have to like it but devolpers do.

It allows devolpers to raise funds for devoplment, and it works.

Personally I don't like it either. As I hate playing EA games.

I love early access and don’t see the downside. Just buy it at release if you don’t want to support early access.

As for this game I’m sorry what’s shown here looks pretty boring. The combat looks bad and their synergies don’t make much sense. 100% critical damage if you fireball someone you’ve frozen? If anything you should take less damage as being frozen should offer some protection against fire.

However, even though i don’t like what’s shown here I hope they get funded as I never want to see small developers fail. They’re still people trying to live their dreams.

Corwin said:

I HATE EA in all its forms including a certain company!!

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Corwin: Priest of Redemption!!!

They appear to have lowered the bar by scaling down the content, seeing as "Bigger main land with more quests" has popped up as a new stretch goal at a level within the previous funding target. Even so, I doubt that they will be able to deliver even a fraction of their vision, given that they have taken years to produce content for a starter island, and even that isn't fully implemented yet.

There appears to be a fallacy that, once you have an engine up and running, you are halfway towards a game, whereas for an RPG, you have more likely only just gathered your equipment for the journey at that point.

And that saddens me immensely, because they do appear to have grasped quite a bit of what made the world building of Ultima special - the fact that all the places and NPCs had characters of their own. I would love for my bleak expectation to be wrong and for them to produce something decent, with or without Lord British inside. In the Gartner Magic Quadrant, this team would certainly be placed firmly among the visionaries.

Also, given that they emphasize player skill in the interview, attribute and skill checks don't really seem to be a major mechanic. I wonder (and wish the interview had addressed that a little more) what stats and skills will be used for, just combat (which they say will play a minor role)? But then again, they didn't factor that prominently into the original Ultimas either.

Atrachasis said:

They appear to have lowered the bar by scaling down the content, seeing as "Bigger main land with more quests" has popped up as a new stretch goal at a level within the previous funding target. Even so, I doubt that they will be able to deliver even a fraction of their vision, given that they have taken years to produce content for a starter island, and even that isn't fully implemented yet.

There appears to be a fallacy that, once you have an engine up and running, you are halfway towards a game, whereas for an RPG, you have more likely only just gathered your equipment for the journey at that point.

And that saddens me immensely, because they do appear to have grasped quite a bit of what made the world building of Ultima special - the fact that all the places and NPCs had characters of their own. I would love for my bleak expectation to be wrong and for them to produce something decent, with or without Lord British inside. In the Gartner Magic Quadrant, this team would certainly be placed firmly among the visionaries.

Also, given that they emphasize player skill in the interview, attribute and skill checks don't really seem to be a major mechanic. I wonder (and wish the interview had addressed that a little more) what stats and skills will be used for, just combat (which they say will play a minor role)? But then again, they didn't factor that prominently into the original Ultimas either.

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I have supported a number of kickstarters or early access games where this is true. That is to say, developers have big dreams and probably don't understand the scope of what they want to do. A few gave up, and a few actually managed to develop their games more or less in the time they alotted (maybe a half-year to a year late) others have worked 4, 5, 6 or more years than they initially scoped out on their games. In these latter cases the results vary quite a bit. But some gems have come out of this. Kenshi comes to mind. So does Legends of Eisenwald and Grim Dawn.

Atrachasis said:

Even so, I doubt that they will be able to deliver even a fraction of their vision, given that they have taken years to produce content for a starter island, and even that isn't fully implemented yet.

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Not to mention that the developer spent over 10 years leading various Ultima remake projects, none of which ever saw fruition. They kept switching engines and even storylines, and in the end, produced not much of anything (at least not anything substantial that anyone outside the various development team members ever saw).

I love Ultima, and I wish them the very best with CORVEN, but this track record just doesn't inspire enough confidence for me to back this. I've seen too many failed projects from developers who have lots of big, grand ideas, and lots of focus on story/plot, but are unable to produce an actual playable game. They also seem to be relying heavily on Richard Garriott's name value. I won't mind being proved wrong - if it actually gets released and reviews are positive, I'll definitely buy it and check it out. But I won't hold my breath.

UNKNOWN REALM, another "spiritual successor" of Ultima, is another example of "big ideas, but can they actually produce a game?" Those guys took $126,343 from backers back in 2017 to create an 8-bit game that was supposedly already in "pre-alpha with most of the major technology hurdles already cleared', with a planned release in December 2017. and they still haven't produced so much as a screenshot for their backers.

From the Ultima Codex, info on the CORVEN developer's previous Ultima remake project ULTIMA IX: REDEMPTION:

Ultima IX: Redemption is a defunct project first initiated by a group of volunteer Ultima fans in 2001, then inherited in 2004 by a new team collectively known as the Titans of Ether. Conceived in response to players disappointed with Ultima IX, it aimed to provide an alternate climax to the Age of Armageddon saga within a customized version of Bethesda Softworks' Morrowind engine. As such, the game was to feature a largely original plot set immediately after the events of Ultima VIII and intended to continue in a future sequel, Ultima X: The New King. After fifteen years of troubled development, however, Redemption was cancelled in December 2016.

Skipped boring video until lava environment where somebody got flattened by a fire attack. Urgh.. this is lame!

They just hit 100% funded goal.
Fingers crossed they follow through.