[Kickstarter] Beautiful DESOLATION - Isometric African Post-apocalyptic Adventure Game [Funded]
Kamigoroshi
Member Posts: 5,870
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f5RFXfLSZ8From the makers of STASIS and CAYNE comes another adventure game with epic setting. Like their previous two titles, Beautiful DESOLATION is going to be an isometric post-apocalyptic point-and-click adventure game. This time however, it plays not in outer space, but on the vast continent of Africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbtN0qiJRu0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_loZo-okk
- Point-and-click adventure game
- 80s retro technology look and feel
- A story set in a post-apocalyptic future
- 2D isometric, detailed rendered environments
- African landscapes captured with photogrammetry
- Extensive use of miniatures and scale model elements
- Unique tribal punk aesthetic
- Bizarre creatures and animals, and vibrant characters
- From the creators of STASIS and CAYNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IkbdiJCrwo
- A never before seen African post-apocalyptic setting.
- A dramatic science fiction story inspired, in both look and design, by the 80s, with a futuristic twist.
- Explore a beautiful wasteland to discover villages, destroyed cities, and uncover the secrets of strange and abandoned technology.
- A synth inspired soundtrack.
- Multiple characters and companions.
- A classic adventure game whereby you solve puzzles, combine and use items, discover clues and work your way through an epic story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znybWawsJ_4&t=22sThey've finally reached their funding goal of $120,000 with three days to spare! Now I'm eagerly awaiting for them to reveal the stretch goals!
Also tagging @DragonKing because African games are so rare.
Post edited by Kamigoroshi on
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Comments
However, please excuse me for not posting the first one here. Since that update is for backers only.
What a great start!
In only A DAY we're almost 30% of the way to our goal of making BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION a reality.Make sure you don't miss out on the SUPER EARLY BIRD reward tiers with just 24 hours left!
The response has been truly humbling and this is the reason that we decided to create these awesome niche indie games.
BUT…
Our work has just started. We need YOUR help to spread the word about BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION any way you can. Share, Tweet and Facebook... even an email to your congressman - every little bit helps!
You're the reason we make these games, and you're the best marketers that a developer could hope for. We made a super nifty social page to make it easier: http://thebrotherhoodgames.com/social
If there is a place where you've posted about DESOLATION or CAYNE - please let us know so that we can stop by and say hello.
Thanks,
Team Bro
PS. Hadley’s screams have also been heard around the world as CAYNE has been downloaded over 12,000 times! (Play it for FREE here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/532840)
Don't forget to check out the backers only update.
Any questions you have about the game - dont hesitate to ask!
Personally I can't wait to see this breathtaking world of wonders in its full beauty at release, Q4 2019!
Who knows... maybe we even see more of the Bischoff brothers newest world setting in form of a parallel story at some point in the future as well. Like they did with STASIS and CAYNE.
Or more like; it's a full blown documentary!
Also a bit of backstory about CAYNE, plus an interview with SA GAMER. For those who haven't played it yet: try it and be amazed! It's completely free over at steam and will very likely come to GOG this week.
PHOTOGRAMMETRY - BUILDING BETTER WORLDS
We're fast approaching 2/3rds funding in under a week!Thank you so much, Kickstarter backers.
CAYNE has over 90,000 players, which far exceeded our expectations!
UPDATE # 2
During pre-production we decided that we wanted to create a unique look for DESOLATION. Due to the real-world appeal we wanted to achieve, we felt that the design should be grounded in reality.I've always been fascinated by the idea of film miniatures. The incredible model work on early films has always given me a sense of wonder. I'm the guy who watches the hours of features on the Bonus DVD.
THE CONCEPT
Working in a post apocalyptic world gives us SO many incredible opportunities to work with miniatures. It starts with an idea. These can be as simple as a scribble on a napkin or a more complex 3d recreations of the scene we're going to create. These concepts then allow us make educated decisions about what we need to create and the final locations we're going to put our model in. Once we have an area fleshed out it's off to the model shop!THE MODEL
Model kits are combined in unconventional ways in a ‘kit bash’ fashion. Paint is then applied with an airbrush, including additional details and weathering. We also include a destructive phase - that involves matches and a hammer (you'd want to see this!) - and then more paint.THE LOCATION
How exciting it is for us that we get to use actual locations in South Africa for our game? The locations could be as simple as an interesting construction site, or a pristine beach. The human brain has a difficult time distinguishing the scale of an object if there is nothing familiar to compare it to. Knowing this rock could become a building sized boulder, and a sand eroded cliff can become a mountain range.While BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION is only seen from an isometric angle, the model is scanned in 360 degrees giving us even further freedom when putting the scene together.
THE RESULT
All of these photos are taken into our software which then outputs a dense 3D model and texture generated from the photographs.This ship (above) and its surroundings have over 10 million polygons! To put that into perspective, a normal AAA game character will have around 40 000 polygons.
Once this has been set up, additional details to provide the needed scale are added. Grass, water, and other natural elements are placed, and any story elements are integrated into the scenes. From there it gets painted over and taken into Unity where another detail pass of 3D objects, particles, and finally lighting through the use of normal mapping ties it all together.
Every image contains a piece of Africa - a moment that we have captured forever.
- CHRIS
PS
We sat down with SA Gamer and did an interview on BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION, here is an excerpt:[SA Gamer] Thank you so much for agreeing to an interview. I know things must be pretty crazy right now, so I appreciate you making time for this! It’s only a pleasure! BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION has shots of Cape Town and a distinct African aesthetic. Many local developers aim for something more first world in their creations. What was the reasoning behind this choice?
We’re using a place we know well, and we’re twisting it into a post apocalyptic world. To many, Africa is already quite a different setting and we love the post apocalyptic genre – so it seemed like a natural step for our environment. As we started to really explore what we could do in that world everything started to fall into place. There is something romantic about walking through the ruins of a long gone society – a place that you remember, but it’s different… changed and transformed into something else.
Explain how CAYNE came about, you were prototyping the framework of BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION, correct?
During the STASIS Kickstarter campaign we added an additional game chapter as a stretch goal. It was originally going to be built in the same engine as STASIS, but after STASIS’ success we decided to push ourselves with CAYNE and do something new. The advantage was, as you mentioned, using it as a prototype of sorts for our future games. We now have all of the systems in place, and a tried and tested engine and framework to create our future games on. It’s quite a freeing experience to know that we can just dive straight into production!
Will we see more stories in the STASIS universe?
It’s an interesting place to explore, isn’t it? And yes, we do have a lot of ideas to explore in that universe.
STASIS had a lot of themes in common with Alien. What would you say your influences are in BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION?
Visually, BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION takes a lot of its cues from 1970s and 1980s science fiction. A Boy and his Dog, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, and a healthy dose of Mad Max. The 1980s design aesthetic and music is also heavily influenced by those films – even the colour grading is a great reference.
...MORE...
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE; http://sagamer.co.za/2017/01/30/an-interview-with-the-brotherhood-about-stasis-cayne-and-beautiful-desolation
______
REVIEWS OF CAYNE
http://www.criticalhit.net/review/cayne-review/8/10
“Gorgeous, horrifying game with a unique protagonist. “
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/cayne-the-free-point-click-horror-game-set-in-the-stasis-universe-is-now-out-and-its-damn-good.8997
“I can highly recommend it and it's free so you have nothing to lose. Hadley is a real bad ass of a character they made.“
“The end comes soon. We hear drums, drums in the deep..."
We learnt a lot while crafting an audio experience for STASIS and CAYNE.George Lucas famously said that "sound is 'half of the film' experience". We think that sound is even more important in interactive media and we take great care in building a detailed audio pallet for our players.
When producing the sound for STASIS, we started by watching as many 80s sci-fi and horror films as possible. What we often do is turn off the picture completely and then dissect the background audio atmosphere. Something that you will notice first is that film always has some sort of backtrack playing. Subtle ambient sounds and music is used to prompt the mood of the viewers. They use this to great advantage in horror films where silence replaces the background sound and is as powerful as an orchestral score.
Both STASIS and CAYNE play an ambient ‘back track’ for the entire duration of the game, including over menus and cut scenes. You probably haven’t noticed it, but it is there - subtly piecing everything together. We also include an infrasound layer. This low-frequency sound can apparently cause an emotive response of awe or fear.
We then have scene specific ambience. For instance, a passage in CAYNE may feature mechanical sounds in the far off distance or a garbled PA announcement.
The next layer pertains to scene specific sounds, a whirring fan or a crackling electric fuse.
We've found that creating this multi-layer soundscape further immerses and engages the player.
Often with the newer gaming engines, sounds are post processed at runtime. This means that reverb and other special effects are applied while the game is being played. Our games are 2D and we feel that it we would have more control over the sound if we applied the effects prior to adding them into the engine. This is a stylistic choice that we may revisit at a later date.
On top of the soundscape, we then add a musical score that attempts to convey the mood we're trying to create in this area. This music shouldn’t overpower the events but rather add a rich audio experience to the action unfolding. When we created STASIS we wanted an instantly recognizable melody. Mark Morgan wrote a hauntingly beautiful piece of music which we then based all of our other musical tracks on.
MUSIC OF BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
This world of DESOLATION gives us the opportunity to create a unique musical score. We plan on creating a fusion of African drum beats, Maasai choirs and the iconic synth sounds of the 80s.When the game moves into full time production and we start to work with our chosen composer, we'll bring in the strong melodies and weave them into a beautiful and unique soundtrack.
The trailer music was the first piece we created as an attempt at the rough direction we want to take the musical score. In 2 minutes we travel from the 80s through to the alien sounds of The Penrose, and then end with the wonderfully twisted sounds of a post apocalyptic Africa. While all of these scenes are vastly different in their design, the music brings it all together.
Another music track we did for the making of videos:
Currently Beautiful DESOLATION has 9 days left and $25,102 to go. So if there are still players out there who enjoy this fascinating, post-apocalyptic African setting in isometric gaming style, please consider backing this unique work of art!
We have scheduled our Kickstarter Live QA session for:
Wednesday - Feb 15
8:00 PM, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
12:00 PM, Pacific Time (PT)
3:00 PM, Eastern Time (ET)
You can see a LIVE countdown here:
https://live.kickstarter.com/broadcast/13431/overview
We won't do a backer update tomorrow, so feel free to come through on Wednesday and say HI!
You can also submit a question now at that link.
100%
WE THANK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU.
Nic and I are humbled by your faith in our vision for BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION.We're certain that you're going to love the world we're cooking up.
Nothing easy is worth doing and nothing worth doing is easy; so now the hard work begins.
We're working on a stretch goal announcement tomorrow (you know us, it has to be fancy).
Chris & Nic
Let's chat on Kickstarter Live (Wednesday - Feb 15):
8:00 PM, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) / 12:00 PM, Pacific Time (PT) / 3:00 PM, Eastern Time (ET)
P.S.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the folks at Torment: Tides of Numenera,
Wasteland 3 and Pillars of Eternity 2 : Deadfire.
PoE: Deadfire is crowd funding now (http://goo.gl/AIgXF2).
Torment is on Steam Early Access (http://store.steampowered.com/app/272270/).
Wasteland 3 (https://wasteland3.inxile-entertainment.com/) still has late backing open.
Each of these games have had a massive influence on DESOLATION - check em' out!
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
THEY . FINALLY . DID . IT ( ! )
Thanks to backer shout-outs from Wasteland 3, Torment: Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, Beautiful DESOLATION gained huge amounts of finantial boosts over the last couple of days. They've reached $120,238 just some moments ago which means this gem of a game got funded!However, there's still a bit more than 3 days to go until the campaign gets closed. Meaning it is time for stretch goals to appear real soon!
STRETCH GOAL - THE WORLD CODEX
Hey Backers,We're pleased to announce our first stretch goal:
THE WORLD CODEX
$ 135,000
Every place has a history, a story. That's a theme we want to push forward with BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION. We want players to explore the world we've created, make new discoveries and uncover the history of all the exciting places you visit.
The Codex is Dr. Mark Leslie's field notebook that will grow each time a new animal, plant (or the like) crosses his path. It will then be updated with drawings, facts and other information about the find in front of you. The Codex will include Mark's field drawings, photographs, notes - and even voiced entries.
It may also help you learn the customs of different tribes and factions: Who are friends or foes? What foods they eat? What has happened to them in the epochs since the Penrose appeared?
Sometimes these will be world building, and at other times will offer up clues to help you on your way. All while uncovering the secrets of BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION's technology, from strange constructs that pierce the sky to small alien-looking medical implants.
The lore of our world is just waiting to be unearthed!
Also, the live stream will start in just 1 hour and 10 minutes. Be sure to watch it if you're interested in Beautiful DESOLATION!
Ok, so the live stream has ended. But those of you who have missed it can still watch the replay.
Lots of interesting stuff has been talked about within that one hour.
The results: 4,472 backers contributed $138,457. Meaning that the World Codex stretch goal above was successfully reached!
The Brotherhood also did a livestream celebrating their campaign's success: Click Here if you want to watch the replay.
Now that's what I'd call a *huge improvement*. Can't wait to see this post-apocalyptic African game in ultra-high-definition!
And here's a short clip about the Bischoff Brother's never ending quest of seeking interesting local locations for putting into their game:
According to the devs the fley are highly advanced people which are infected by a parasite called brissel worm. And that those 'dreadlocks' are actually the worms breathing organs. Kind of like mecha-using goa'uld, only way cooler looking!
In other news, here are some videos from older updates, which I totally forgot to post (^_^ "):
The big news is that the public release will be pushed back to Februrary 2020. Bit of a shame that there's a five month delay. But better late and fleshed out than early and delivering a mess of a game.
Brand new trailer is up. And it's looking better than ever! ?
Devs are optimistic of launching Beautiful DESOLATION sometime within this month on both GOG and steam.
Today is the day: Beautiful DESOLATION is finally out on both GOG and Steam! It's currently -10% off on both storefronts. And even better: GOG throws in a free copy of STASIS for you as well.
All in all it's really refreshing to see a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting outside the usual suspects (USA with Fallout, Wasteland, Mad Max, and Eurasia with Chernobylite, Metro).