From now until MAY 25, you will be able to sign up and get all the same goodies we’re offering here. After May 25, you can still join the CSG, but the choices will be limited and just offer the games (and the CSG T-shirt).
The Moebius t-shirts are here! The Moebius logo and shirt design is by Eriq Chang of Fable Foundry. The Moebius puzzle block is by artist Anders Eriksen of Doghead Studios.
A funny thing happened on the way to this t-shirt… Eriq did an initial design using a square-shaped black and white graphic that I had given as a style reference. The final design was great but, unfortunately, I didn’t own the rights to that square image. But something about that image stuck with me… it felt like a puzzle. So I sat down and wrote out what became the Moebius puzzle block.
The Moebius puzzle block will be a puzzle in the game. This is something that the ego will find, perhaps in a manuscript or file (and yes, the style of it is different than the style of the main game, which will be like Andy’s image). Anyway, I’m excited about how it turned out and, damn, it does look good on that t-shirt! And it’ll be handy if you like people to stare at your chest for long periods of time.
T-shirt and Moebius puzzle block below along with the original Farm CSG shirt. At the $100 and up levels you will get your CHOICE of t-shirt.
POLL
If you are pledging at the $100 and up levels and will receive one of these shirts, please take this Poll about your preferences:
Speaking of the Pinkerton Road Kickstarter, Jane added:
Now that we’ve hit our $300K goal (and thank you all for that!), people have been asking what we’d do if we get extra funding. Of course, as a designer, I want to make Moebius as big and awesome as it could possibly be! After all, that’s my job.
But, as always, there will be concessions to budget and time that we’ll have to make, even though we have creative control over the project.
So my own goal: it would be fantastic to see this kickstarter reach $400K by closing to be able to make the dream as big as it can get. To inspire you, here are some things we can afford with additional funding:
If we get to $350K: We’ll add an additional area (3 screens) and puzzle set I have in mind for Venice that would look awesome and extend gameplay.
If we get to $400K: We’ll add a longer, fully cinematic opening sequence / trailer that will blow you away and help us get people lining up to buy the game, setting the tone for this new Pinkerton Road series.
If we get to $450K: All the above, plus an extra 1000 lines of dialogue to flush out the game and we’ll record the main theme with a live orchestra (Bob is drooling over that one).
I hope you were as inspired by the new art we put up yesterday as I am. Go Team Moebius!
And what’s all this without some crazy GABRIEL KNIGHT marathon, right?
Check this out:
I hope you all have a boring and uneventful weekend planned, because there’s some serious gaming going on.
One of our CSG members, Laura, is hosting a 24-hour GK play marathon. She’ll be playing GK1, GK2 and GK3, live, starting FRIDAY MAY 11 at 2pm EST. Here’s the link:
You’ll be able to watch the playthrough and join chat. The playthrough will be raising money that will be split between this kickstarter project and the charity of our choice, ASPCA.
Robert and I will be joining in for the first hour or so and checking in periodically throughout. I hope you’ll tune in to cheer on this monumental display of will power and sheer physical strength as Laura submerges herself non-stop in GK land for 24 hours, and all without food, sleep or potty breaks. OK, she will have food and potty breaks, but it’s still impressive!
And lastly, Jane shared:
We’re getting close to the ‘end times’ my friends, the last days of our kickstarter campaign! I will keep this Update #22 current with the latest info. Here’s the schedule of events:
THURS, May 10
— Moebius T-shirt, Moebius block, T-shirt poll
FRI, May 11
— Laura’s 24-hour GK marathon starts at noon PST, 3pm EST
— 3pm EST – Bob and I do a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” live chat. Please come by and ask us something! I’ll post the link in comments when we’re live.
THURS, May 17 (?? date to be confirmed)
— An extra special treat! Will Binder (director), Dean Erickson (Gabriel), Peter Lucas (Von Glower) and I will be having a chat session to shoot the shit about the GK2 production. How cool is that? We’re going to be recording it earlier in the week and it may be podcast on the 17th. Still waiting for final confirmation on the podcast, but we WILL be doing this chat session and you WILL get to hear it this week!
SAT, May 19
— Countdown to close of campaign — stay tuned for details
With Leisure Suit Larry getting an update (the KickStarter campaign topped out a week early!) I dragged out my old commemorative plaque from when I beta-tested the original. Signed by Al Lowe, Mark Crow, and Ken Williams. How many companies these days would give their testers a plaque??
So I stopped him and asked him to share a few thoughts… like how did he gets into the LSL1 Beta (since there really wasn’t the “Internet” as we know it now, like signing up on a website), what was it like, how hard was the game, etc etc. Here’s what Neil shared:
You mention there was no Internet back then… but there was CompuServe, and the GAMERS forum on CompuServe. There were also BBSs aplenty, plus the proto-Internet RBBSnet, which updated BBSs around the world with each other’s content nightly. Like the Internet, but with 24-hour latency. The fellow who ran the San Francisco RBBSnet hub (responsible for the entire West Coast) was a friend of Janet’s and mine. In fact, when he went on vacation he’d give her a key to go in each day and make sure the update had happened overnight.
Before that, even, we were both already connected with Sierra. For a while Janet was the (remote) BBS Sysop for Sierra’s help BBS. People could dial in from wherever and ask for help, tech support, hints, and such. The BBS itself was an IBM PC running a product called “The Major BBS” – with eight eight-modem cards in an expansion chassis, no cover, and a big fan blowing constantly to make sure it didn’t melt down.
Amusing – the BBS software would auto-ban users who posted “bad language”, but it was badly written so it would find “bad” words embedded in good words. Janet had to be careful, because it would even auto-ban the sysop, requiring someone at Sierra HQ to go in and fix it. Tough to answer a question using the word “chardonnay” and get banned for “hardon”. Tough for users from Sweetwater TX.
Interesting. Janet also had an offer to work for Lucasfilm Games, which at the time was located at Skywalker Ranch. We went out one time and Brian Moriarty showed us around. I remember being impressed that every room had not just electric outlets but plugs for phone and Ethernet – elegant brass ones. She took the Sierra job instead because it didn’t require a commute.
Yes, we played all the other quests. King’s Quest, Space Quest, Hero’s Quest, even Police Quest.
Janet and I would go up to Coarsegold fairly often and hang out / meet with Ken, Roberta, Al, and the gang. At one point we invented the Internet. No, really! We had this idea of a game called LarryLand that people could connect to from all over the country and play multi-player in real time. Ken also liked the idea of a way for oldsters to connect and play card games and such with each other; called it “Constant Companion”. SOMEONE started referring to it as “Constant Constipation”…
When we’d go up there we’d stay at the Shiloh Inn. Little Katherine (now 28) was especially amused if we’d go in winter, as we could play in the outdoor heated pool while snow fell on and around us.
Visiting at the Williamses house on Bass Lake one time, somehow Katherine got scared of their dog (rhodesian ridgeback, I think?) and ran from it, prompting the dog to run after her – bit of a mess. Another time Ken took me and some others out on the lake in his spiffy boat, forcing Janet to sit and have kamikazes with Roberta; tough life!
I’ve been writing for PC Magazine since 1986, and I used to do game reviews back then. That’s partly how I got into the beta testing. Handy to already know the game inside and out by the time it’s ready for review. Alas, I can’t really tell you anything about the process or what I thought of it at the time. Too long ago! But I’m 99% sure we did NOT get any answers or ways to pass the puzzles.
In LSL2 there’s a dating game with Larry and two other guys. One is Ragooka Singh Song (play on Sierra guy Guruka Singh Khalsa). The other was GOING to be Neil Rubberking. But I told Al, if you do that I won’t be able to review it. So he stayed a writer but got the name A. P. Wire.
Al would now and then run things by me, puzzles and such. I remember one time he came down to S.F. to talk about Torin’s Passage (great game, VERY too-bad he didn’t get to make the two planned sequels). He showed me prototypes of a couple puzzles over lunch at Zuni Cafe (great place, STILL great). I worked one out fairly quickly, which pleased Al immensely as some at Sierra had said it was too hard, NOBODY will get it. Something about a line of little men and women facing each other, and you had to reverse their positions by jumping over?
Brain dump ends herewith! Hope you’ll find some useful information.
-njr
I just want to thank Neil for taking the time to share this. Thought it was an interesting look at Sierra back then!
This morning I awoke and sat down at my computer with coffee. On my screen were two skype messages from people saying “Congratulations!”. It took a moment to register, then I opened up kickstarter. YES! We had just passed $300K, thanks to many increased pledges and new donors over the past few days and one $10K backer with impeccable timing.
I feel relief, a bit of shock and disbelief, gladness — but mostly gratitude and humility. It’s amazing that we can say, “Hey, guys, how about investing in a wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if?” and people are willing to play along. THANK YOU.
Bob is flying back from a Scarlet Furies gig in CA this weekend, and I want to wait til he’s here to do a video update. But I did dig out some old treasures recently, and this seems a good time to share them with you. HAPPY SUNDAY!
Well, I took all of your advice and I got some good rest Wednesday and Thursday. So now that I’m well rested, what do I do? I’m back at the office at 1:25am catching up on the 302 unread emails from the past 2 days. Ugh. LOL
Anyway, I promised you guys I’d keep posting here so I’m doing my best. I’m literally having to pry my eyes open while I write this since I’m pretty exhausted but I told you I’d do it, so I’m doing it, gang!!
Now, let’s get down to business! Since all 14,000+ backers made it past the $650k mark you guys get more rooms, another girl, and all new dialogue in the game (from hitting the $550k tier too!). The bad news is, this has serious ramifications on our ship date. We were originally planning on shipping in October but since we have to pretty much design a TON of new stuff (which I think is extremely positive), there is no way in hell we’re going to make October 2012. We MAY be able to make December but honestly, I’d rather launch the game after the holiday season and put a lot of polish (no, not Pole-ish…I said polish!) on the game and make sure we have beta tested it enough to release. There is nothing I can’t stand more than a game that was released “to make Christmas” that is just riddled with bugs (anybody remember some unnamed PC games that would ship super buggy in hopes the patch would come out before the game hit the shelves?). So anyway, that’s the bad news.
The good news is that I’ve created a blog!! I have never blogged in my entire life but I feel that now is a damn good time to start. You guys motivated me by asking for constant updates so the way we’re going to deliver them to you is via the Replay Games forum. So far we have 2 sections: “Announcements/News” and “Paul’s development blog”. Here’s the link to the READ ONLY section of the forums: Replay read only forums. I suggest you bookmark it since I plan on blogging pretty much every day on what’s going on. I’m not saying I won’t post here (like a lot of you guys want), but it just makes sense to keep things in one place. If you don’t feel like going through the multiple forums to find what you’re looking for (and reading reply after reply after reply) then you’re going to love those 2 sections.
Ok, it’s 2am and I seriously need to get to bed. I haven’t been skydiving since before the Kickstarter campaign and I really need to relieve some stress so I’m taking the weekend off (please don’t hate me) and am going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane as many times as I can between tomorrow and Sunday.
