Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’m not pledging a dime after reading: “an imaginative reinvention of the point&click; adventure genre”, but there’s some stunning artwork here, and the music is nice.

It’s interesting the game is set in future but the setting resembles fantasy, but the animation sucks though.

The Realm - Kickstarter
Preview

Oh, I’ll almost definitely try the game once it’s released because the artwork is my cup of tea (the “casual” animation style - not so much). It’s not really that I’m defensive against “innovations” - it’s just that “reinventing the genre” is something press and players should judge and say, and not the authors as it sounds weird to me. (I might be totally wrong of course, and the game really manages to keep the promises )

Thanx for the preview, just seen it.

They also do write:

The Realm is a good old fashioned adventure game

Now that can of course mean many things, and there is still some things about the game i’m not quite sure about.

Anyway i think it looks intriguing, and i have decided to back it.

Ehhhhhhhh… looks good but no physical copy on offer? I will wait.

In your campaign you are saying that you are going to reinvent the Adventure genre. Why is that? What are you planning to do?

“Well it’s more like an evolution. Some of the things we found a bit frustrating in some adventure games was having to hunt around and trying to find items you need to interact with. Or if you end up with a big inventory and you’re just trying each item with the object you’re supposed to be interacting with and just hope that one of it works. So this is the kind of stuff we’re trying to remove. What we have is a contextual menu system and that means that when your character approaches an object it highlights and then a set of contextual menus appears nearby the object. And depending on the context and the character there will be different sets of actions. And also we have this thing were Sarina can teach Toru things, so there’s a learning mechanism there. So in that sense it’s quite different from a very traditional point and click adventure where you find an object, pick it up and try to apply it to another object to solve a puzzle. We are trying to do something a little bit different here.”

Full interview

Learning mechanism sounds interesting, it seems like they’ll try to adopt some RPG elements. However, I don’t quite agree that “big inventory” is necessarily a bad thing which will always lead to trial&error;. Many inventory items can stand for rich and imaginative puzzles and gameplay, and trial&error; would be the last option to player in an immersing and good puzzle design.

I think it looks very interesting, not to mention beautiful. I will certainly back this.

thejobloshow - 22 April 2013 10:09 PM

Ehhhhhhhh… looks good but no physical copy on offer? I will wait.

From the faq:

Will there be a physical release?

Yes we’ve just introduced a new PHYSICAL DELUXE ELDER tier that includes a Boxed Copy with booklet and printed art cards. Check it out in the rewards

Last updated: Thursday Apr 25, 4:40am ED

Oscar - 26 April 2013 04:12 AM

When text parsers disappeared you couldn’t get as much information about an inventory item.

That’s true, but going by that logic - text parser is more “open” than the verb interface, the verb interface is more “open” than the verb coin interface, and the verb coin interface is more open than the smart cursor interface. But it’s okay to have some “casualties” if you’re going to bring some creative and important new things as well. Roberta Williams said something similar here, meaning - in a text parser for example, you couldn’t SEE the inventory item, rotate it…

But you need to be pretty creative to both “simplify” things and bring some more creative side to it - and I’m not speaking of inventory system only, but the whole interface. For example, Ceville and Chains of Satinav tried some interesting things with items combination signal/graying out used and unnecessary hotspots - I’m not saying it’s a perfect and a way to go, because it also makes game easier, but at least you can turn it off and on once you need a nudge in the right direction when you’re stuck.

Some games, like Machinarium managed to work with a minimalistic approach, but that should be the exception, not the rule. And looking at the latest gameplay video for The Realm, I’m not sure if I really want objects on screen to automatically glow once I get close to them. (I think Broken Sword Remastered did something similar)

Terabin - 26 April 2013 02:30 AM

From the looks of their start on Kickstarter, they’re not going to make it. Sad.

I like the atmosphere of it, but as I said - I’ve voiced my concern because this is the team that haven’t produced adventure game in past but they’re still going for the “reinvention”. I’m not saying they’re not capable of it, but looking at that gameplay video, and even though I’m REALLY stunned at how those 2D backgrounds manage to work in some pseudo 3D space - as I said, I’m not happy with the interface at all.

It is also true the game seems like a mishmash of some other works with the generic title, but I don’t think that’s big of a problem and shouldn’t be the reason why the campaign isn’t more successful - perhaps more coherent gameplay videos were needed, because we’re still talking about the niche genre AND an unknown team in adventure waters.

diego - 27 April 2013 05:53 PM

... perhaps more coherent gameplay videos were needed, because we’re still talking about the niche genre AND an unknown team in adventure waters.

Or perhaps it is a combination of bad timing and a nice genre. We have just had a big Kickstarter for Dreamfall Chapters with possible fatigue following, there are currently also many other small/unknown AG in Kickstarter or Indigogo, most also struggling to get even more modest goals.

Objectively i can’t really see any reason why The Realm shouldn’t reach its goal. Even if they don’t have any experience in AG then they have a lot of experience in making games in general, they have a clear vision of the kind of game they want to make, they seems to have prepared the campaign well, with both artwork and demo gameplay before the kickstarter, they have a somewhat modest goal and have also put their own money into this project.

Right now it seems like it is only the big names and/or sequels to well know IP’s that are able to make successful Kickstarters, that there simply isn’t enough fans of AG that are willing to take a chance on someone/something more unknown which i think is a pity.