In a mysterious world reborn from disaster, your choices are all that matter. Master magic and tech. Fight. Sneak. Persuade. Survive.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Backer Quests & Rewards
over 8 years ago
– Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 01:00:35 PM
Hey there Nectarines!
It’s that time again. As always, I’m your host Rob, and as of now we’re one week down, four more to go. We’ll be heading into the part of crowdfunding campaigns that’s only spoken of in hushed whispers, the dreaded middle slump. It’s that part of the campaign where the initial flurry of excitement is transitioning into calm optimism, and creator panic can easily set in. We’re not worried though, and you shouldn’t be either.
If that name isn’t immediately recognizable to you, he’s been making excellent RPGs since the Black Isle days, and founded both Interplay and inXile. He’s known for creating Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, and Fallout, as well as publishing Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. You know, most of the games that are the biggest inspirations to the project. So yeah, we’re pretty excited about getting the nod from one of our game dev heroes. :D
Obsidian created Star Wars: KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Pillars of Eternity. Two of our favorite developers in one day? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
Backer Quests - 4XP
So for the meat of today’s update, I’m going to be talking about Backer Quests in more detail. Just like in a RPG, where an NPC sends you off to collect whatever mcguffin, the same principle applies here. You may have noticed the graphic below on the campaign page, and that’s where we’ll be keeping track of all backers collective progress.
To start off, here’s a few general things I want to point out:
All the milestone numbers are cumulative. So 10 followed by 30 means the first milestone is 10 total and the second is 30 total (not 30 more). We are generally just looking at a counter, and seeing if that number is high enough.
Some of the milestones may seem high, but we think those are achievable. Remember we have about a month left to hit these goals.
There are a total of 60 milestones available (including weekly bonus quests), but you only need 50 to unlock the final reward. So that’s 10 milestones you can skip, but still unlock ALL the rewards.
On the Backer Quest graphic itself, here’s how it works:
Each of those circles represents a new milestone for that particular quest.
Each of those milestones is worth 1XP when completed.
Every time you all reach a new milestone, we’ll “light up” that milestone (purple circle instead of blue) and add 1XP to the total.
At every 10XP, you level up and unlock a new quest reward for ALL backers.
So Nectarines, go ahead and think of yourselves as the NGS Guild. You’re all in this together, working as a team, and we’ve got seven specific quests that need quested. They are as follows:
Campaign Backers represents the total number of backers (at all reward tiers), as shown on the campaign page.
Community Vote Participants represents the total of people who have voted on community design submissions. I touched on this a bit in Update 2, but as you keep accumulating XP we will start unlocking voting for the various design submissions later in the campaign.
Facebook Post Shares represents the total number of times our Kickstarter Launch Facebook post has been shared. Only that one particular post counts.
Retweets represents the total number of times our Kickstarter Launch tweet has been retweeted. Only that one particular tweet counts.
Community Design Submissions represents the total number of submissions we’ve received for community designed content on our forums. This includes all submissions for Quirks/Perks, Headgear, Buff/Combat Items, Talents, and Companions combined.
Week 1 Bonus Quest
Along with the quests outlined above, we’re also planning for four additional Weekly Bonus Quests (6XP each). Each of these will be a very specific task, with a one week deadline to complete. Here’s your first one!
The deadline for this Bonus Quest is Midnight EST on Wednesday 1/20. We’re only going to count one memory per person, but we suggest numbering your tweets if you need more than one. And don’t forget to use the hashtag #ProjectResurgence or we won’t see it!
Quest Rewards
And that brings us to the goodies you can earn from all this questing. Like I said earlier, once all you fine backers collectively reach a multiple of 10XP, you earn some sweet new rewards. They come in the four following varieties:
Community Voting - Each of these rewards corresponds to one of the types of community design submissions. When unlocked, we’ll announce a deadline for submissions, so everyone has a chance to get their ideas in. Then from those submissions, the team will choose our favorites (that fit the lore and have interesting gameplay hooks). We’ll then post our list of favorites, and let you vote on the ones you most want to see in the game. The ideas with the most votes will be put into the game!
Bonus Wallpapers - We’ll add 18 more desktop/mobile wallpapers for you to download and enjoy!
New Add-On - Each of these rewards corresponds to one of the locked items on our add-ons graphic. When unlocked, we’ll reveal their prices and they can be added to any pledge.
Submit AMA Questions - Cohh and I are planning to do a live Ask Me Anything (AMA) session later in the campaign, and this reward will allow backers to submit questions in advance so we definitely address them.
Update (1): Thanks, Clarifications, and 1 Week Goal
over 8 years ago
– Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 07:23:35 PM
Hello Backers!
Rob here, greetings and salutations friends. Welcome to our very first backer update! First off, we want to take a moment to thank you guys for that craziness yesterday. We raised $4k in the first hour, and hit $32k (20%) by the end of the day! The response from you guys has complete blown me away, and I really don’t know how to process this information. I actually got a little choked up yesterday when I realized that after so much time, yes, my dream (the one we all share at NGS) might actually be coming true. So I want to say from the bottom of my heart, truly, thank you all so much for believing in us and helping make Project Resurgence a reality. You guys are awesome. :D
New FAQs
Alright, now down to business. We spent most of yesterday getting the word out and trying to answer all your burning questions. Here’s the three biggest ones that kept coming up, so we wanted to provide a quick answer here and also a more in depth response in the FAQs at the bottom of the campaign page.
Do you really think you can produce Episode 1 on this budget? Some things have to be missing… Yes. With this budget we will be able to produce a fun, polished, and complete experience as described on this campaign. We did account for a safety net, marketing, and reward fulfillment. We’ll get even more specific in another update.
How is the episodic structure going to work?
Similar to a book or movie series. Each episode is a self contained story arc in a new area of the world with a satisfying conclusion. Your character and choices persist across all episodes. We will complete all five episodes any way we can.
Two combat modes? Isn’t that risky? Nope. Both systems run on the same underlying mechanics. Turn-based has initiative and AP, and real-time (with pause) scales animations based on AP. You can play entirely with either mode, or switch at any time, even in combat.
Communication Schedule
For these updates, we know that frequency requires a delicate balance. We really don’t want to overwhelm you guys, in terms of length or frequency, so we’re planning on putting out a “meaty” update every two to three days. Often enough to ensure everybody stays in the loop, and not so often that your inbox keeps blowing up and you want to unsubscribe. We’re planning to stick to a strict Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, and we want to make sure we have a new and interesting topic to introduce or expand on every time.
Day 1 Avatar
And since you guys we’re kind of enough to put your faith in us on day one, here’s a swanky avatar for you to use here on Kickstarter (or anywhere). To make this your Kickstarter profile picture, save this image to your computer, then click on the button in the upper right of the Kickstarter website, click "Edit Profile," and upload the avatar. Easy peasy, mac and cheesy.
First Stretch Goal
In case you missed it, we already announced our first stretch goal! That’s right, if we can reach our goal in one week (ending Midnight EST on Tuesday 1/12) we will unlock the following rewards for ALL backers. We can hit this goal, but need your help to keep spreading the word!
Blooper Reel - A fun video compilation of all the times Ben and I messed up our lines when recording the pitch video. With GOOD SHOW lightning round! :D
More Quirks - Character quirks are one of the features we’re most excited about. They’re a fairly easy thing for us to implement, but it makes a big impact on the roleplaying of your character. Perhaps you want to play someone who excels with small weapons but hates large ones, or feels compelled to steal worthless items, or is a compulsive liar? These are just possible examples, but they are meant to represent interesting choices for a character that provide a benefit and a drawback. If we hit this stretch goal, we’ll double the number we were planning on for episode one.
Cheaper Alpha Testing - We’ve been a bit surprised by the demand for alpha testing for a story-driven game like ours, but we do aim to please. We also know that plenty of you wish the add-on was a bit cheaper, so if we hit this goal we’ll reduce it by $25 (to $60).
We Want Your Feedback
That’s about it guys, but before I wrap this up I want to stress that we want you all to be as involved in this campaign as possible. So please, talk to us! Ask questions on the NGS subreddit or campaign comments, and join the community on our forum, Facebook, and Twitter!
To start things off, what’s the biggest thing you’d love for us to dig into in our next update?
Shout Out - Torment: Tides of Numenera
If you haven’t heard about the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment (one of the highest rated PC games of all time) you should really fix that. Planned for release later this year, they are still accepting pledges through their website. It’s being developed by the awesome guys at inXile, and the original project lead of PS:T (Chris Avellone) is on the team. We are super excited to see another Torment game, and get lost in a strange beautiful world once more. Check it out!
Add-Ons & 2 Week Stretch Goal
over 8 years ago
– Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 07:45:51 AM
Hey there Nectarines!
It’s update time, with Rob! Tomorrow marks our first full week of funding, and we are in pretty great shape. For those of you not as familiar with crowdfunding, the funding of a project typically follows a reverse bell curve, with really high numbers at the beginning and end and not very much in the middle. Following that pattern, any project that raises 10% in its first day will likely be funded.
That should make you guys as excited as it makes me, since we blew past that on day one! The numbers have been climbing steadily, and after a very generous $10k contribution yesterday, we’re now at $63k (39%) with 30 more days to go! From all the research I’ve done, I can tell you we are in a great position to finish out our first week.
If you’ve got questions or comments, we’d still love to hear them! Between myself, the NGS team, and our Ambassadors, we’ve been spending most of our time communicating with you guys. We really want to make a personal connection with you all, get your input, and make a game we know you’re going to love. Let us know what else you’d like to see in these updates, and what parts of the game and our development you’d like to go over in more detail.
The best ways to reach us are through the campaign comments, Reddit, Twitter, and our forums. I’ve been handling all the Twitter direct messages personally too. :)
Add-On Rewards
One thing we’ve gotten a lot of questions about (or some backers just didn’t notice) is how our add-on rewards work, so I figured I’d take some time to elaborate on exactly how this works today. So a few main points:
Add-ons can be added onto any Reward Tier, just like an a la carte menu.
Their value should always be added in addition to the chosen tier value.
Kickstarter doesn’t have a built in system for add-ons. You can’t just click a button for them. You need to manually adjust your pledge amount to include any desired add-ons.
Shipping cost is not included for physical add-ons (this will be calculated with BackerKit surveys).
Ok, let’s do an example then. So say all you care about is getting all five episodes as cheaply as possible (a popular choice). The best thing to do here is to choose the $15 tier (Episode 1) and then add an extra $35 for the Season Pass add-on (Episodes 2-5). This means you will be choosing $15 as your reward tier, but pledging a total of $50. And don’t worry, you can adjust your pledge amount at any time until the end of the campaign.
In order to adjust your pledge amount, follow these steps:
Since you all are already backers, first go to the campaign page. Click the blue “Manage” button that appears next to your pledge amount.
Choose “Update your pledge”, then choose the reward tier you’d like ($15 - Dawn Seeker).
Your pledge amount will update automatically for the new tier. Now add the value of your desired add-on to the total ($50 pledge amount).
Now you’re done, until the campaign ends. Soon after the campaign (assuming we reach our goal) we’ll send out surveys through our pledge manager BackerKit. BackerKit will already have the data on your chosen reward tier, and total amount pledged. You will now be able to use any of that extra credit to select your desired add-ons ($35 - Season Pass).
BackerKit will then calculate shipping for all of your rewards as one package, but more on that later.
We apologize for any confusion or complexity with this add-on system. It’s the best we could do to let you get exactly what you want, while working within Kickstarter’s native reward system. If you have any additional trouble, don’t hesitate to let us know!
Also, as you can see in the graphic below, some of the add-ons are currently locked. Those last three will be unlocked from hitting Backer Quests milestones. So if you want a t-shirt, extra Episode One keys, or the physical disc soundtrack, get busy with those quests! :)
Backer Quests - 4XP
You guys have been doing a great job sharing the official launch announcement on Facebook and Twitter. Keep it up! We’re really close to the first milestone for campaign backers, Youtube subscribers, and Community Design submissions too. Just about halfway to the first Backer Quest reward!
New FAQs
Here’s the latest batch of frequent questions. I’ll put a quick answer here and also a more in depth response in the FAQs at the bottom of the campaign page.
I don’t have a credit/debit card. Will Paypal be an option to pledge? We’re working on a Paypal option now. It unfortunately won’t count towards meeting the $160k goal though, being a payment outside of Kickstarter. Another option is to use a prepaid debit card.
In what ways, and how often, will you be updating backers on the progress of the project? These updates, social media, and Twitch. Every couple days during the campaign, at least once a month after the campaign.
If you miss a progress milestone how will you alert backers and keep the project going steady?
We’ll alert backers right away in a project update. Then we will decide to delay delivery or cut features, based on your input.
2 Week Stretch Goal
If you recall, back in our first update we announced a stretch goal of fully funding the project in the first week and unlocking some extra benefits for ALL backers. We knew hitting that goal in one week might be a long shot, but we decided that from all the support and passion you guys have shown us you deserved more time. You’ve all been doing a fantastic job helping us get the word out, and we can’t thank you enough for that. So we’re extending the deadline to giving you awesome people one more week to earn those extra goodies (ending Midnight EST on Tuesday 1/19). We can do this!
Shout Out - Psychonauts 2
If you’re like us, then you’re big fans of Double Fine and totally fell in love with their first game, Psychonauts. It’s been said that, “Anyone who doesn’t fall for the unique characters, hilarious dialogue and brilliantly conceived environments of Psychonauts has no soul,” and I have to agree. The crowdfunding campaign for the sequel has been a nail biter, but they did finally reach their $3.3 million goal just recently. The campaign ends in just 18 hours, so back it now on Fig if you’d still like to get in on the discount pricing and sweet rewards.
Staff Pick, NGS Ambassadors, Free Stuff, & Community Voting
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 06:13:35 AM
Welcome back, Nectarines!
Rob here, once again. That’s right everybody, you all earned a clever nickname. Achievement unlocked! We had a Twitter poll, and this was the clear winner with 42% of the vote. And who doesn’t like wordplay right?
It’s been a great week so far, and the pledges are still rolling in. We’re 28% of the way there and we also got some other great news today: we were selected as one of the elite Staff Picks! This not only gives us bragging rights, but also provides a big boost in how many people just stumble across the project through Kickstarter’s magic discover projects system. Neat!
“The point that really sold me on actually backing for the first episode was that in Project Resurgence you can pretty much play whatever you want. You not only choose your sex, tribe affiliation, and look but you also get to choose your gender identity.”
And in case you missed it, here’s a heartfelt message from our own Ben (Cohh) when he announced the Kickstarter launch Tuesday morning:
New FAQs
You guys have been asking some great questions, keep ‘em coming! Here’s a few more that kept coming up, so again I’ll put a quick answer here and also a more in depth response in the FAQs at the bottom of the campaign page.
How important is my contribution? Are you just going to get a publisher later?Every pledge means the world to us! We are open to publisher deals, but we don’t have any yet.
Why did you decide to change engines? It was a tough call, but we ultimately decided moving to Unreal 4 would be more cost effective and allow the team to work together more effectively in the long term.
How long will the development be after a successful kickstarter? About a year for episode 1, a bit faster for the later episodes (hopefully). Refer to the timeline graphic on the campaign page for more details.
NGS Ambassadors
For those of you hanging around our Comments and Forums, you will likely see a lot of the avatar below. This very special avatar is reserved for our hand-picked ambassador team. These guys are our longest and most passionate fans, and they’ve graciously volunteered to help us handle the mountain of communication we expect during this whole campaign. Our Ambassadors will essentially act like moderators: helping to answer questions, give information, and make sure the team doesn’t don’t miss anything important. Please consider them honorary members of the NGS team, give them respect, and absolutely DO NOT IMPERSONATE AN AMBASSADOR!
Wallpapers & Social Avatars
Since we think you guys are just awesome, and we know you want to show your support for the project, we’ve created some pretty cool graphics for you to show the world! We’ll be unlocking more wallpapers later too, as the first Backer Quest reward (10XP).
We haven’t seen too many projects integrate lots of community voting into their campaigns, but we think we’ve devised a pretty clever way to do it that we’re really excited about. You may have noticed a section called Backer Quests on the campaign page, and this is the best way we could think of to gamify our word-of-mouth exposure. Basically, whenever you help us spread the word on Project Resurgence (which we know you awesome people want to do anyway), the entire backer community earns XP, which in turn unlocks new rewards and goodies. Quite possibly the coolest of those rewards is the community voting, which represents a totally free and totally easy way for any backer to submit their ideas and potentially get them in the final game!
Here’s how it’s going to work. Starting right now, you can submit your ideas to us for the following five categories. Just click the link below and it will take you directly to that specific thread on our forum with directions on how to submit your ideas.
For every new Backer Quest milestone the community hits, we’ll add 1XP to the total. At every multiple of 10XP, we’ll unlock a new category for ALL backers to vote on. We’ll announce a deadline, choose our favorite submissions, and let ALL backers make the final picks. You heard right! If your idea is cool enough and enough people like it, we’ll add it to episode one (no strings attached)! Remember, we want you to be a part of our process, and hopefully have some fun doing so! So get cracking, and check out these forum posts on how to submit your awesome ideas!
Shout Out - Crowfall
Today’s shout out goes to possibly the most anticipated MMO of 2016. It’s not a single-player game like ours, but we figure most of you are big MMO fans anyway. It’s described as, “The unholy lovechild of Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, and EVE Online,” and they are still accepting pledges through their website for a variety of rewards (including early access). It’s being developed by the independent studio ArtCraft in Austin, Texas. Many of us backed this game, and we’re really excited to try out this intriguing blend of political alliances, feudal conquest, and dying worlds.
