Indie Passageway of the Ancients - Baldur's Gate-Like RPG with Dual-Persona Character Development

[Lonely Vazdru]

We chose to base our graphics on those games produced in the 80's, 90's and 2000's because of their charm and unique visual signature.

WTF ? That's three decades. And in the computer graphics department that's more like three eras. How, in the name of fuck, is your game gonna end-up looking like based on such a wide spectrum ?

Also :

we had the story line vector aced with an unpublished novel of mine that never made it to publication due to my enrolling in graduate school at the time and lacking the personal resources to go through the lengthy process of editorial revisions.

Suuuuure.

So, teenage fanfic then ?

Ok, I'm done being a contrarian asshole, it's not my favourite part to play. Plus I know better than to mess with Texas. And despite my critics I still find the game to look promising enough, so Godspeed !

 

[JonG]

Lonely Vazdru said: WTF ? That's three decades. And in the computer graphics department that's more like three eras. How, in the name of fuck, is your game gonna end-up looking like based on such a wide spectrum ?
I sympathize with your confusion. Looking back on my word choice it wasn't my finest hour. We wanted to capture the look and feel of games from the time span when story was still king. So we picked a few appealing elements from the 80's and 90's but mostly from the 2000's. We then composited a style fom these elements that we believe is both coherent and appealing. You can judge this for yourself just go to Passageway games.com and have a look. We did this because we knew, being only a three man studio, we would never have the budget to compete with the 40 - 100 million dollar game studios. I personally felt that fantasy RPG's have been traveling too far down the trail of ever more spectacular graphics. This vector has admittedly been a narcotic for all of us that love fantasy RPGs, but it has side effects: game budgets soar along with the final price of the game while the lynch pins of story line, game mechanics and game play often suffer. Fantasy RPGers want to immerse themselves in an alternate reality. They want to be connected to that world emotionally. intellectually, spiritually, visually and auditorily not just visually. To become real in the mind of the player you can't overwhelm him or her on the visual channel while doing just so so in many of the other channels. Our challenge was to produce a game that was viable graphically (thus keeping the cost way down) while striving for excellence in all the other channels enumerated above.

Lonely Vazdru said: Suuuuure
I understand your mistrust. Actually I only referenced the novel as a way of reassuring everyone that we have a very detailed story in Passageway of the Ancients. I certainly was very hesitant to admit to something that was "almost" an accomplishment and therefore by some methods of interpretation a complete failure. Frankly the period in my life that contained the novel was very chaotic and painful where I had a lot of balls in the air so to speak and dropped too many. I backed out before either party signed the final contract as I was accepted into graduate school at the same time and made a career choice. The publisher was Lancer Books out of NY, NY. They were willing to take a chance on me because they were active with Michael Moorcock at that time and thought I had a similar vibe. Plus my novel was to be the first in a series and they liked that I had these ideas somewhat fleshed out. But the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. So I suggest you download the free demo when it becomes available on Steam and pay particular attention to the opening cut scenes and the quantums from the Tazvox located in the family chapel and shrine. These should assuage any lingering incredulity you might have.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Barbarians y/n?

 

[JonG]

Eryfkrad said: Barbarians y/n?
Unfortunately no

 

[vazha]

Eryfkrad said: Barbarians y/n?
Unfortunately no

Hard pass. No barbs, no buy from me.

 

[JonG]

Joseph King said: Will overusing the angelic reptile form result in varying story effects?
Wow your attention to detail and making the correct inferences about game mechanics from such a paucity of actual information is impressive. Very early on, we gave the transformation too much power and we created a god like character that resulted in negative consequences from the standpoint of battle mechanics. Therefore we had to back off from these enhancements quite a bit. According to the story-line the Dragonkindt have supposedly been eradicated from planet Arieyon thus necessitating that those Dragonkindt, who actually did survive the culling, remain hidden. They accomplished this by remaining in shapeshifted form most of the time. Needless to say to keep all the other humanoid species on Arieyon believing in the myth of the Dragonkindt's complete disappearance only other Dragonkindt should ever witness a transformation. That is a long winded way of saying that, in this game, using the transformation capability unfortunately does not affect the story line. We wanted to but we just didn't have the bandwidth to tackle such a formidable feature. Having said that the story=line in game two will be a different matter altogether. Overuse in it will have story effects. You're just a little early with your insightful conjecture.

 

[Abu Antar]

JonG Please, use the quote button.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Bester]

How many years was this game in production? What were the 3 people's roles? What's the average playthrough length?

Just trying to understand the scope of what you did and what this game represents in terms of labor. The screenshots didn't initially get me interested, but your well spoken posts did. They give me hope for the game's writing.

 

[Joseph King]

We wanted to but we just didn't have the bandwidth to tackle such a formidable feature. Having said that the story=line in game two will be a different matter altogether. Overuse in it will have story effects. You're just a little early with your insightful conjecture.

Thanks for the answer, sounds like you've got some interesting things planned out.
Good luck with everything.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Eryfkrad said: Barbarians y/n?
Unfortunately no

 

[JonG]

How many years was this game in production? What were the 3 people's roles? What's the average playthrough length?

Finally someone who cares about the writing and story-line. We have spent 7 years on this game. One half timer dedicated to programing, one half timer and one full timer dedicated to art and one to writing and game design. The game takes roughly 40 hours to complete

 

[JonG]

I am truly sorry. I had no clue there was such an active group of Barbarian fantasy gamers. We will remedy this in game two promise.

 

[JonG]

They give me hope for the game's writing.

It takes the soul of a poet to write this! Too many fantasy gamers today have little to no tolerance for intricate well formed prose in written form. To compensate for this in game two we are going to do a massive amount of cut scenes thereby putting the prose in a more palatable form.

 

[Cohesion]

They give me hope for the game's writing.

It takes the soul of a poet to write this! Too many fantasy gamers today have little to no tolerance for intricate well formed prose in written form. To compensate for this in gane two we are going to do a massive amount of cut scenes thereby putting the prose in a more palatable form.

Please don't do it. Cutscenes suck, we already have BG3/Dragon age.

Edit: pinging ItsChon, Zed Duke of Banville, LarryTyphoid, Taka-Haradin puolipeikko, JarlFrank, Jasede, luj1

 

[Sunri]

Wish listed add some romance, and it's day 1 purchase

 

[JonG]

They give me hope for the game's writing.

It takes the soul of a poet to write this! Too many fantasy gamers today have little to no tolerance for intricate well formed prose in written form. To compensate for this in game two we are going to do a massive amount of cut scenes thereby putting the prose in a more palatable form.

Please don't do it. Cutscenes suck, we already have BG3/Dragon age.

Please don't do it. Cutscenes suck, we already have BG3/Dragon age.

Personally I agree with you, I would prefer to keep it mostly in written format but how do I reach all those younger gamers that hate reading anything? You know it gives me hope to hear from people like you and Bester! Maybe we should just wait and see how people respond to this game entry. If you have any other thoughts about this issue please share

 

[JonG]

Wish listed add some romance, and it's day 1 purchase

Thanks. Unfortunately in this game you will only see the very early buds of romance late in the game. This game is focused on a mystery which is a genre not particularly well suited to serious romance. However romance will kick into high gear in game two.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'll keep my eye on it. I enjoy trying these B list RPG's, even if some of them don't work out as well as hoped.

I love B-tier games for the same reason I love B movies - unlike the big budget shit, they have soul.

 

[JarlFrank]

Personally I agree with you, I would prefer to keep it mostly in written format but how do I reach all those younger gamers that hate reading anything?

You might be surprised, a lot of younger people do enjoy games like Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Fallout etc. This genre has always been a niche, and there's enough people from the younger generation willing to take a look at this niche (and fall in love with it).

I'm in my 30s and have been positively surprised by several young people who like the great RPGs of my childhood. As long as the game is good it will find an audience!

 

[TheCumGuzzler]

Personally I agree with you, I would prefer to keep it mostly in written format but how do I reach all those younger gamers that hate reading anything? You know it gives me hope to hear from people like you and Bester! Maybe we should just wait and see how people respond to this game entry. If you have any other thoughts about this issue please share

I am a "younger gamer" and I don't mind reading one bit, in fact one of my favorite games is PS:T, just add what you think is good for the game and don't force anything into it because "it's popular", that mentality brought a lot of games down.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Personally I agree with you, I would prefer to keep it mostly in written format but how do I reach all those younger gamers that hate reading anything? You know it gives me hope to hear from people like you and Bester! Maybe we should just wait and see how people respond to this game entry. If you have any other thoughts about this issue please share

The younger kids who wouldn't be into your game from the get-go won't have their minds changed by some added cinematic cutscenes because of the other mechanics you have. They're either interested or not. Changing it based on what's "popular" will just bring down the quality of the game that you so clearly had a vision for.

Also, I'm just speculating here, but the cinematic, movie-like RPGs I've found are wayyyy more popular with millenials than zoomers and are the biggest audience for that. The millennials on reddit who love the AAA ARPGs with half the game being cutscenes are the people I've had the most arguments with about this topic. Zoomers are still largely treating gaming as another form of social media and making friend groups to play the hot new thing (FOMO) because PC gaming only recently exploded with this demographic. If they're getting into RPGs, they'll have to wade through all the AAA hits before even getting close to discovering your game and have a chance at liking it. Maybe late 20s/early 30s is who you were referring to when it comes to the "younger audience" from your perspective and I said a whole load of nothing, not sure.

Either way, the vast majority of those you think you'd reach by making it "palatable" to their senses will just reject the game outright based on screens because it's not "immersive graphics" and the isometric view. They won't even buy the game, let alone get to a point to see any cutscenes. The zoomers who are interested in this niche of a niche (Indie RPG from unknown dev) won't be more enticed because of cutscenes either. I don't see any benefits of changing your vision for the 5 people who might be swayed by a more cinematic experience.

I'm Gen Z and I'll add my vote to "no need for more cutscenes". I've lost count of sequels that destroy a series for me because of streamlining in general.

 

[Cryomancer]

Looking the videos, the animations looks janky but the game mechanics good. Will this game be good? Who knows. But thsi game is in my wishlist.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

However romance will kick into high gear in game two.

I hope this won't take precious time away from other elements of the game. If it's weaved naturally into the narrative with relative ease, sure, but your comments about cutscenes in the second game to appeal to mainstream senses makes me wary the romance thing is another example of that.

 

[Tweed]

The therians and otherkin are gonna love the shit out of this.