Unknown Realm + This Legend = 8-bit Dreams Come True!
We have been saving a few surprises for you during this campaign and this is a big one regarding the soundtrack for Unknown Realm.
Today we're thrilled to reveal that legendary C64 music composer, Chris Huelsbeck, is part of the Unknown Realm team! Yes, you heard that right: for the first time in over 25 years, Chris will be dusting off his Commodore 64 and returning to his roots to compose original music for Unknown Realm!
In case you don't know who Chris Huelsbeck is, he is an award winning composer and sound designer best known for his work in the video games industry for over 30 years. At age 14 he acquired his first computer, and started programming and composing music on the beloved Commodore 64. He creates memorable music ranging from elaborate electronic compositions to full orchestral scores as well as many other music styles. Some of his credits include projects like the Star Wars Rogue Squadron Series, Turrican, and Giana Sisters. His achievements also include 3 of the highest funded music Kickstarter campaigns in recent history.
As you already know, the PC version of Unknown Realm has the world’s first in-game “Hybrid Soundtrack” system, which will allow players to switch back and forth in real time between SID and modern music. Chris’s background makes him a perfect fit for a soundtrack like this and he will be creating both SID and modern versions of songs for Unknown Realm.
The amount of music Chris can create for Unknown Realm is dependent on our music budget, which at the moment doesn’t support what we really want to accomplish with our soundtrack. As many of you know, music is an integral part of the classic 80's RPG and our wish is to create a truly special and memorable soundtrack that you can enjoy and listen to for years to come. Here is just a taste of some of Chris’s SID music.
With this in mind, today we will be revealing a series of stretch goals that will hopefully get us to the point where we can bring this vision to life. If we reach the “Epic Soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck” stretch goal, Chris will be composing a complete soundtrack for Unknown Realm with both SID and modern versions of all original songs.
All backers Digital Knight ($34) and above will get a digital copy of this soundtrack, and all Collector's Edition backers will receive a physical soundtrack CD included with their game box.
Chris will be announcing this on his Twitch channel today, while he takes a look at some of the early Ultimas. If you can, go tune-in to his channel today starting around 12:30pm PST. RIGHT NOW!
You can also find out more about Chris on his website and his Patreon page, and hear more of his music here.
We are so excited to share this news with you! There will be more details to come.
-Bruce & Laura
Unknown Realm is live on Steam Greenlight!
Yes, you heard that right. Unknown Realm is LIVE on Steam Greenlight! Vote. Comment. Share. Pump it up!You guys are awesome, work your magic!! Let's make Unknown Realm the first 8-bit RPG ever on Steam!
Much more to come this week. We're planning on unveiling a few new surprise reward tiers that we saved for the last week of the campaign, we'll have game design updates, and hopefully get closer to that full soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck!
Thank you all, none of this would be possible without you!
-Bruce & Laura
I have not had time to respond to other posts here but had to chime in quickly on re: steam delivery date:
Nostalgia is the root of incline. Without nostalgia, we wouldn't have Legend of Grimrock, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, Might & Magic X: Legacy, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Serpent in the Staglands, Underrail, Age of Decadence, and all the other retro-games that have been released or that we're still awaiting (kickstarted or otherwise).
Bounty Hunter Details + New Reward Tiers Unlocked!
Hey everyone! 800 backers and counting! Let's make it 1000+!
The storm knocked out our power yesterday and it took the power company over 8 hours to get it back on! That set us back a bit with things, but we're going to try to get back on track today. Of course the one time the weather guys are right in predicting the “storm of the decade” it's right in the middle of our last week on Kickstarter. It would be funny if it weren't so stressful...Oh well. Just one more “I can't believe that happened” story for the tell-all book. ;-)
OK, lets get back to what this projects all about, bringing back the classic 8-bit RPG (with all the feelies!) and making it better than ever!
Bounty Hunter Quests!
Considering how fast you blew through this stretch goal, it's high time we tell you more about Bounty Hunter mode...
This is a features that we wanted to include originally, but it requires additional quests, artwork, and writing so it makes sense as a stretch goal. The term “mode” may be a little misleading...this is merely a way of describing a different feature of gameplay that incorporates subquests in the game.
Not everyone in the world of Unknown Realm is of upstanding moral character. Along your journey you may run into various miscreants, petty criminals and dangerous outlaws. You'll come across wanted signs in different locations reporting the crimes of these nefarious fugitives and providing clues to their habits and last known whereabouts. If you are in need of gold and feeling up to the task, you can embark on quests to track down and apprehend these characters. Some might be easy to find, others may take you on journeys to distant lands. Because these characters may go by different aliases, you will have to use your memory to remember what they look like from their wanted poster and take note of any distinguishing characteristics about their appearance. Your stealth skill will come in handy in your quest to capture some of these ruffians.
Be warned, some of these outlaws may try to recruit you for their own ends and there is a chance some might be falsely accused. You'll have to keep your wits about you to avoid falling in with the wrong crowd, otherwise you might find yourself on a wanted poster!
Next Stretch Goal!
Regarding the next stretch goal (Additional wallpaper + sticker pack + additional feelie): For the additional wallpaper, we are still talking to a few artists to make sure this wallpaper is truly memorable and captures the essence of the golden age that we all know and love. The additional wallpaper will be for all backers $19 and above, the sticker pack will be for all physical backers (Ziplock bag and above) and the additional feelies will be in all Collector's Edition and above.
The first additional feelie comes to you by way of a colorful character in the Realm who has written some useful how-to guides for navigating the various challenges you will encounter on your journey. The second feelie will be a surprise for you to discover when you open the box.
New Rewards Unlocked!
Finally, it's time to reveal a few fun, new reward tiers. These are reward tiers that we planned before the campaign launched to roll out with the last week of the campaign.
You can read more details about these in the reward section and pledge or upgrade if you feel so inclined. Please note, these tiers will NOT be added to the reward matrix and are only available in very limited numbers.
New Reward #1: Collector's Edition + NPC Portrait - Exactly as it sounds, you can get a Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus your likeness in the game as an NPC portrait.
New Reward #2: Collector's Edition + Jester - Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus NPC jester portrait, plus you can write some witty jokes for your jester!
New Reward #3: Collector's Edition + Bard - Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus NPC tavern bard portrait and write a song for the game that will be played by your bard NPC in the tavern.
New Reward #4: Collector's Edition + OUTLAW - Collector's Edition box (PC or C64) plus you as an outlaw in the game. You'll have your portrait on a wanted poster, plus choose your type of outlaw from a list of options.
Thank you everyone! It's hard to believe we are down to the last week of this campaign. A big part of our motivation to make this game in the first place was to create something for what we believe is an overlooked and underrepresented group of RPG fans. The single player old school RPG lover who still wants to use their imagination when they play a computer role-playing game.
It's really cool to see this game is reaching the right audience, however, we know there are a lot more of us out there who still don't know about this game. Think of the people you played these games with during the golden age and consider reaching out to them to let them know those days are back! This game is just the beginning.
- Bruce & Laura
Some Exciting Developments!
Hey all!
We have a few pieces of exciting news we just had to share with you.
We've been notified that we have been selected for “Projects We Love” on Kickstarter! This is more symbolic than anything else, but it should give us a modest boost in visibility going in to these final days of the campaign. It's also a nice bit of recognition at the end of a long grassroots campaign.
More exciting was an email we received from GOG (yes! GOG.com!) asking us if we'd be interested in discussing releasing Unknown Realm on GOG.com when it is finished. Yes! Yes we would! As we've mentioned in the comments, we have always believed this game would be a great fit for GOG and it's so cool to hear they've heard about it and think so too! Obviously nothing is final yet, but we're so excited about this possibility! This would also mean that we will have an easy DRM-free distribution method for digital backers who prefer a DRM-free download option.
Our Steam Greenlight campaign is still on-going and doing well as far as we can tell. We need Steam users to go and vote for Unknown Realm! After about 3-5 days on Greenlight, projects drop off the main page and visibility goes way down, so we need help driving traffic directly to our Greenlight page. If you'd like to help, please share the link to our Greenlight campaign ( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838572011 ) on Facebook, Twitter or your favorite gaming forums.
You've also unlocked another stretch goal! Once we unlock the next stretch goal (mouse support), we will reveal the fun mystery bonus game that every backer will get when we reach that 100k goal.
One final note, once this campaign ends (it's hard to believe we're almost there), we will continue to post private backer-only game development updates here, but we would also like to stay in touch with backers and run a few fun giveaway contests via our email list, so please subscribe to our mailing list at the bottom of our website if you haven't done so already.
As always, thank you all for helping us make this dream a reality!
- Bruce & Laura
Tavern Sign Preview and a bit of Game Design talk...
Only 4 days left and the final push has begun!
Yesterday we were excited to see that Shroud of the Avatar featured Unknown Realm in the “Recommended Projects to Back” section of their weekly Update of the Avatar newsletter. If you aren’t familiar with Shroud of the Avatar, it is Richard Garriott’s (aka Lord British) spiritual successor to the Ultima / Ultima Online series. We're looking forward to playing SotA's single player mode when it's ready.
And speaking of Ultima and the Shroud community, some of you may find a familiar establishment in the world of Unknown Realm. One of our Tavern Owner backers is none other than Rustic Dragon, the proprietor of the Hearth of Britannia. We created a sign for his Tavern, and he was kind enough to let us give you a preview. This is an example of the type of sign our Tavern Owner backers will get to help design.
Now Let’s Talk About Gold
As briefly mentioned before, I've taken different approach to currency (or “gold”) that I haven't really seen used before in an RPG by incorporating a “max gold carry” and I wanted to talk about it a bit more.
When designing the currency system for Unknown Realm I thought long and hard about RPGs and the way they handle the issue of money. What I saw was a problem. In fact, the entire genre itself seemed to consist of nothing more than a quest for gold. I felt players are so conditioned by that principle these days that some might actually believe the whole goal of an RPG is to basically hoard the most gold you can. I didn’t want to design an RPG where players automatically went into this hoarding mentality. I wanted players to experience an RPG that wasn’t focused on grinding and gold hoarding.
I decided to implement a system that doesn't encourage the gold hoarding mentality and get people thinking differently. The gold max carry is a simplified encumbrance system that is designed to hopefully steer players away from the quest for gold and into more imaginative paths.
For example, let's say when you start playing the game your gold max carry is 1000. That means you can only carry up to 1000 gold at a time. For those that try to grind away for gold, they will soon find themselves maxed out and not able to carry any more gold! Now what? After a few moments of probably cursing this system up and down, they will most likely stop and think “well what am I supposed to do now?” That is exactly where I want players.
There are ways to store up more gold for a rainy day, such as store it in a bank, or on your ship, etc. Different companions will raise your max carry, which can help you make it out of a dungeon with more gold than normal.
My goal was to eliminate the typical focus on level grinding and gold hoarding by having those things increase more naturally along with your time and progress in the game. The point is to break the player out of the gold hoarding mentality and into other paths of adventure and exploration.
Till next update...
You can find out more about Rustic and the projects he's working on, including a Hearth of Britannia cookbook, over at his Patreon.
Don't forget we still have an active Steam Greenlight campaign going on! If you haven't already, we would be very grateful if you would head over there and vote for Unknown Realm. If you have voted already, do us a favor and send our Greenlight link to all your Steam-using friends!
It's truly amazing how far this campaign has come in the last 30 days and we are so thankful to all of you for the outpouring of support and for sharing all your retro computer memories with us. Your stories really make our day! We are hopeful that one day this game will become a part of those memories and stories as well.
- Bruce & Laura
Collector's Box Details + Mystery Game Revealed!
Hi everyone,
Awesome, we crossed over the $100k mark! This isn't the end of the campaign, but it is certainly a symbolic milestone. Crossing that $100k line puts this little 8-bit RPG into a different class of crowdfunded games. This wouldn't be possible without all of you putting your faith in us to bring back the beloved 80's RPG experience. Thank you!
Collector's Edition Details
A Collector's Edition game box just wouldn't be the same without physical media. We've been getting this question a lot lately and we wanted to answer it definitively, once and for all:
All Collector's Edition backers will get a DRM-free game disc in addition to digital keys. And the DRM-free game disc (and soundtrack disc) will come in a super cool retro disc sleeve that looks like a 5.25" floppy disk!
Spread the word – a Big Box Collector's Edition game box WITH DRM-FREE physical copy of the game!
$100k Stretch Goal Bonus Game REVEALED
In honor of reaching the $100k mark for Unknown Realm, we are giving each one of our backers ($19 and above) two games for the price of one! This mystery bonus game is a never-before-released gag/parody game that Bruce made for friend and game industry hero, RJ Mical (of Amiga fame) for his birthday early last year. Currently there is only one person in the world who has a copy of this game besides us and that is RJ. We are releasing this game to you as a gift with his blessing.
Over the years, Bruce has had several opportunities to hang out with RJ. To Amiga fans, he needs no introduction. Others may know him as the co-inventor of the Atari Lynx and 3DO. He is a kind, gracious and hospitable guy who seems to be universally adored by all those who meet him.
RJ and Bruce at a post-GDC party in 2012
In March 2016, Bruce was invited to a birthday party for RJ. Naturally this led to a discussion of what sort of gift to give to a man who has traveled the world, seen and done incredible things and easily counts as “a guy who has everything.” A bottle of wine seemed like a feeble gesture in the face of such an occasion.
Being well-acquainted with Bruce and his sometimes crazy ideas, I wasn't terribly surprised when he told me (three days before RJ's party) “I've got it! I should totally make RJ a game!”
This gag-gift shoot 'em up materialized rapidly with awesomely bad, 80's style art based off of what Bruce knew about RJ – his love of paragliding, his treks to Burning Man, his history at Amiga, plus some other random 80's gaming history thrown in the mix. Time was short and the deadline was fast approaching when Bruce told me he was going to make a custom game box as well! So there is my husband, hours away from being due at an all-night party, designing box art, writing joke box copy and, I kid you not, hand making a custom game box.
The finished product was called RJ's Super Psychedelic Birthday Trip. At the party, people loved the box so much they thought the box alone was the gift! It was a big hit when people realized there was an actual custom-designed C64 game on a floppy inside! This led to someone pulling out a C64 and floppy drive for an impromptu game session with RJ's guests.
Here's a video of the game that someone took at RJ's party. (contains NSFW language).
Bruce will be adding two additional levels to this game before we send it to you – a scuba diving level and another level theme to be decided by RJ.
All of our backers $19 and above will get a digital copy of this game. We know this game is very different than an RPG, but it is a free extra game that will work on both a C64 (via .d64 file) and our PC platform, so we figured it would be a cool extra one-of-a-kind gift that all of our backers can enjoy.
Incidentally, if you would like us to design a gift like this for you or someone you love, our 8-bit Super Star tier provides just such an opportunity. ;-)
The adventure is not over yet, and we expect the next few days to be quite a rush! Lets keep pushing hard to reach that complete Chris Huelsbeck soundtrack goal!
Many of you already have, but if you were considering increasing your pledge to get additional add-ons, or upgrading to a higher tier, now is the time to do so. Keep in mind, you will not be able to upgrade your pledge after the campaign is over.
Thank you for working so hard to spread the word about Unknown Realm! Please continue to share and retweet about this project and we will see you in the next update!
-Laura (& Bruce)
I damn near jizzed when I saw that.And the DRM-free game disc (and soundtrack disc) will come in a super cool retro disc sleeve that looks like a 5.25" floppy disk!
Less than 48 hours to go!!
We are really getting down to the wire now! Less than 2 days to go and we've crossed over 1000 backers!!
Bonus Stretch Goal!
Tonight we're revealing an intermediate stretch goal that will hopefully get your imagination flowing about one of the possibilities that will await you in Unknown Realm! At $115K we'll unlock an Underwater City level – it won't be an easy feat to discover this underwater city. Only the most persistent seekers will find it - those that do will be rewarded for their troubles. Let's blast through and unlock this goal today!
Extra Bards! (+3 bard, +1 barfly)
By popular demand, we are going to open three more Bards and one extra barfly to the reward tiers. There will now be a player owned Bard and a Barfly in every backer owned tavern. If you happen to have a friend that got one of these rewards as well (Tavern owner, Bard or Barfly) feel free to let us know and we can arrange it so your NPCs can be found hanging out in the same tavern in the game.
Add-ons!
Add-ons are always a great way to up your pledge and help us reach those stretch goals! Keep in mind you can add on an additional copy of the game for a friend or for yourself...or maybe your kids? It would make a great gift for any RPG lover or store it away in its shrink wrap as a collectible! Shipping is the same for one game or two and you'll save $5 on your add-on game (for example, Collector's Edition PC is $129 by itself, $124 as an add-on!).
Lock Pick Teaser!
We did want to give you a little sneak peek at one of the fun features of RPGs like this, Lock Picking! Our lock picking is a bit different than what was usually seen in RPGs from the 80's. Lock picking in Unknown Realm incorporates a little skill-based game that will become easier or more challenging depending on the lock you are picking and your stealth skill.
When you use a lock pick in the game you must "navigate" around components inside the lock chamber to get to the final destination. If you go in the wrong direction you can damage your pick. Damage it three times and the pick will be destroyed and you'll have to try again with a new one. If you are successful, you won't lose the lock pick from your inventory. Lock picks can be used on doors and certain chests.
Action Items!
Spread the word! A couple of high profile game Kickstarters (with lots of backing from the press) have launched this week so it's hard to maintain visibility on Twitter. If you are on twitter, you can help by simply retweeting tweets from @stirringdragon. We know there is a correlation between people seeing tweets about Unknown Realm and new backers, so by simply retweeting our tweets, that will help a lot!
Just in case you missed it, here is the link to our Steam Greenlight one more time, this link will open up in your web browser, http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838572011 and this one www.stirringdragon.games/greenlight.php will automatically open the Steam client if you have it, which bypasses the two-step log-in process.
Thank you for being with us on this incredible journey! Only two more days to go! We can do this! Amazing things have happened in the last two days of many Kickstarter campaigns before us and with your help we've already defied the expectations of so many at every step of this journey so far – anything can happen at this point! Let's make these last two days of our campaign together count and hopefully have a little fun in the process!
-Bruce & Laura
24 Hours to go!! + German Version News!
It all comes down to this! Only 24 hours left in this campaign!
Paypal and Late Backer Options
We've updated our stretch goals with the next phase in mind. After doing our research and talking to other Kickstarter creators (especially Chris H.), we've decided to use Megafounder for late backers and PayPal pledges after the campaign is over. This will provide a platform for us to carry over some of our rewards and give backers who couldn't pledge via Kickstarter a second chance.
We will not be carrying all the reward tiers over to Megafounder. At this point, our plan is to only keep the $34 Digital Knight tier, the $49 PC Ziplock Bag Edition and the $129 Collector's Edition PC (until they sell out – once those are gone, that's it!). There are currently only 34 C64 Collector's Editions left. If these do not sell out tomorrow, we will put whatever is left up on Megafounder as well. Depending on what happens tomorrow, we may also have a few in-game reward tiers available (while supplies last), but only with the PC Collector's Edition option. If you want to make sure to get a C64 cart, now is your best chance!
Megafounder will also allow us to keep working towards our higher level stretch goals after this campaign is over, especially that Chris Huelsbeck Complete soundtrack!
On that note, some of you should be excited to see a major addition to our stretch goal scroll...
The big news is that we've decided to go all-in on a German version of Unknown Realm! We've had countless requests for this and despite the technical challenges, it is really something we've always wanted to do from the beginning. We've been working out the logistics for this behind the scenes over the last few weeks and have a plan to make this happen.
If we reach the German version stretch goal, all backers Digital Knight ($34) and above, will have the option to also get a digital copy of the PC German version (available approximately 6 months after the release of the English version). This version will also include digital copies of the manuals translated into German. Once the English version is shipped, we will open up pre-orders for a limited run of a German version C64 cartridge + physical manual "bonus pack" that you can add to your English version Ziplock bag or Collector's Edition box. We will release more details on this once we unlock that stretch goal.
More Music Unlocked!
We've also updated the stretch goals to show that since we've reached the $110K mark we can now have Chris Huelsbeck create not only the theme song for Unknown Realm, but also 4 additional songs for the game! This is not the complete soundtrack, so lets keep aiming for that full soundtrack goal!
Character Creation Preview
Finally we wanted to share one more in-game sneak preview, this time it's the character creation screen. You may notice that in addition to points that can be distributed among various skills, you will also be able to choose one unique "special ability" that can be used at various times in the game. This feature lends itself to a variety of role-playing styles that can effect how you solve quests in the game and adds extra replay value as you experiment with different characters and abilities. Your special ability is mapped to its own hot key.
(Character creation screen, artwork not final)
The Final Push!
For a while we thought this day would never come, but here we are! It's all hands on deck now! Continue to tweet and retweet about Unknown Realm and share this on Facebook. And particularly if you speak German, please spread the word to your German RPG-loving friends everywhere!!
We cannot thank you enough for giving us the opportunity to bring this vision to life. We feel like we have found a whole new, retro RPG-loving, crazy 8-bit family in all of our incredibly awesome backers. We can't wait to continue this journey with you!
- Bruce & Laura
