Unsung Story - Kickstarter Updates 1&2

Playdek has posted two new Kickstarter updates for Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians. The game is on track to get funded as it has already earned $275,534 of $600,000 in just two days.

Update #1 - Off to a great start!

Thank you everyone for backing this project and supporting us with this exciting new adventure!

We have been monitoring your comments and questions and will do our best to address everything we are seeing come in. We are developing more and more FAQs from the questions we are seeing and will be adding them to the page so thank you everyone for posting them up!

We will update again soon with more details about characters, classes, game mechanics, and the story flow over the next few days so keep your questions coming! We are very excited that you can all share in our excitement for this project and hope that this game is everything that you want it to be and more!

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Update #2 - Addressing Your Concerns and Party Creation Information

Hello everyone! We wanted to take this time to clear up two common concerns we are seeing about this game to help clear up the air.

The first is in regards to which game this Kickstarter is actually for. While we will have multiple games coming out set in the world of Rasfalia that Yasumi Matsuno is creating for us, this Kickstarter campaign is solely for the Tactical RPG game. The card game we are creating will serve as a prequel to the tactics game and is already being developed with a separate budget and this development will not hinder the development of the tactical RPG. We decided to offer this card game in specific reward tiers as an additional thank you for backing, however it will also be made available for purchase at a later time for those who wish to own it.

Secondly we have seen a lot of concern that we are trying to take a mobile game and port it to PC if we are successful. This assumption is incorrect.

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More information.

Well Update #2 is good because it sounds like there will be some form of character development. But presumably that's only within the context of an episode?

I'm waiting for some more detailed gameplay information before I pledge.

I really don't understand why there are so many mistakes done in KS campaigns. With Unsung Story it's the confusion about platforms.

Upon achieving our initial funding goal, in addition to iOS and Android, Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians will come to the PC and Mac platforms as well as Windows Tablets.

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How can they put a sentence like this in the initial project description, when their primary platform will be PC (upon reaching the funding goal)?

Btw there's update #3 already.

I think someone should open a service, and charge the developers to look over their Kickstarter page. I see one to many new projects make the same mistake.

Anyway enough with my rambling I'll post the third update later today.

I'll wait until they release some kind of character graphics.

I have the feeling in this game we are going to fight with little anime girls which wield a teddy bear in the one and a two meters long, half a meter wide sword in the other...

The concept art only shows scenery yet, wouldn't surprise me if the characters are totally off, having these japanese developers on board.

Kordanor said:

I have the feeling in this game we are going to fight with little anime girls which wield a teddy bear in the one and a two meters long, half a meter wide sword in the other…

The concept art only shows scenery yet, wouldn't surprise me if the characters are totally off, having these japanese developers on board.

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You just don't like JRPGs so your biased.

I am to because I grew up playing consoles as my family could never afford a PC in the 80's and early 90's. JRPGs were a staple of my youth.

When I read who was developing the game and it was coming to the PC I pledged $20 instantly. Yasumi Matsuno made some of the best JRPGs in the past.

And that's fine. But they should show what style they are going for.
Remember Thorvalla? Caused huge discussions just because they had one concept art which looked anime-like.

Couchpotato said:

I think someone should open a service, and charge the developers to look over their Kickstarter page. I see one to many new projects make the same mistake.

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Powered by "RPGWatch Kickstarter business consulting"

Without a doubt, a good KS consulting firm would be a very valuable tool for a lot of projects.

I got the impression from update 2 that you'll be coming back to playing characters later in the timeline. Sort of gave me the impression from moving from one party to another like Banner Saga (though I assume they'll be a bit of a gap in time between events and probably more parties). I could also just be reading what I want to see though.

http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2014/01/14/matsunos-job-on-unsung-story-isnt-gameplay/69778/

This article may be of interest… It's worth noting that while Yasumi Matsuno is indeed working on the story / setting, it seems unclear as to whether he will have signficant input in the gameplay.

Yeah, if this is anime-anything, I'm out.

ChaosTheory said:

Yeah, if this is anime-anything, I'm out.

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From their concept art and a quick perusal of the art from Playdeck's previous games, I get the strong feeling that this will have a Western / realistic art style. Definitely won't be something in the vain of Project Phoenix's cutesy anime characters.

Big Names so far. Only concrete nice stuff are the paintings. Money is getting dumped in large amounts it seems so maybe this will make 800 - 1000K?

When I checked the project this morning I just quickly "scanned" over it.
Now I watched the video and read big parts of the texts and I am wondering:
Why is this project as successful as it is?
Can anyone asnwer that? Is it the name "Yasumi Matsuno"?
Because of that I don't see anything which makes the game especially attractive.
Information wise the video is one of the most horrible I have seen.
All they are saying is, that they met Yasumi and he will somehow work on the project, but apparently their relations aren't even good enough to bring him into the video or show some decent pictures where he isn't wearing a patch on his nose (unless this is some kind of "mark" like Marilyn Mansons contact lenses)
They are also saying that they love to work on these games, loved to play these games and well...that's really it - oh, an they mention Final Fantasy Tactics!
And of course most important of all (if you consider the time mentioning it) it will be on all platforms, including mobile!

The description doesn't reveal much more. Some general game flow and classes. This time Yasumi didn't even get a decent picture.

So why is this project so successful compared to lets say Jagged Alliance Flashback, which gathered 368,614$?

To me it seems like I can get an artist who paints some pictures for me, then go have lunch with Richard Garriott, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux or some other game design "god" who then agrees to take a look at my project and then go to Kickstarter and gather hundreds of thousands of dollars by explaining that I played and loved some old games and will do one myself - multiplatform!

It's called faith and hope Kordanor. I can't explain it better than that, and I don't feel like getting into a debate. The project just isn't for you.

I agree with Kordanor. It must be the names involved, they must be big in JRPG circles, because otherwise I don't see enough there to warrant the level of success this kickstarter is having. Over $300,000 so far based on concept art and a pitch.

HellRazor said:

I agree with Kordanor. It must be the names involved, they must be big in JRPG circles, because otherwise I don't see enough there to warrant the level of success this kickstarter is having. Over $300,000 so far based on concept art and a pitch.

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This isn't the first Kickstater to do so take a look at double fine. They raised millions for two games the same way. Yet no one mentions this all that much.

Anyway it's like I said above you have to have hope and faith. Otherwise you wouldn't be using Kickstarter as nothing is guaranteed.

Would just have been great if Guido Henkel received more hope and faith

Kordanor said:

Would just have been great if Guido Henkel received more hope and faith

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It's not my fault he didn't people just don't want his type of games anymore. The Rampant Coyote had a nice post about this topic.

So please stop being so nit-picky, and realize more people are interested in this game instead. I can't make a time machine, and change the past.

Now I said all I had to say. I except you will continue to irritate me even more with the other updates in the following weeks.

Couchpotato said:

This isn't the first Kickstater to do so take a look at double fine. They raised millions for two games the same way. Yet no one mentions this all that much.

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Double Fine raised millions because they're a company with a track record (they've released at least a couple AAA games) and Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine, has been a designer on many of the biggest-name adventure games even before creating Double Fine. Double Fine wasn't relying on their pitch to raise money, they were relying on their name.

Meanwhile, the company behind this Kickstarter, "Playdek", has nothing but some iPhone App Store games to its name, and I doubt anyone's ever heard of them or anyone who works there. So yeah, they're relying on the pitch.