I want to talk about Earthbound a little! Earthbound is an RPG from the 90s about kids who travel around the world and fight aliens with household weapons. It might sound kind of familiar, and that’s ok to me, because I love Earthbound. It’s a game that had a really profound impact on me in my formative years, and when I’m being honest I’d say that it isn’t an “influence” or “inspiration” so much as just a part of who I am now, that can’t help but materialize in my work one way or another.

And this has worked to our advantage, because a lot of people look at our game and see Earthbound in it, and they’ll take the time to look at us because of that connection. I think that’s awesome. But I also want to draw some distinction between us and Earthbound, because I think the differences are important. People see the superficial similarities between us and assume that this is the same game, but there’s actually quite a big difference. And this would be a good chance for me to talk about this game as an RPG in the context of another RPG, to try and get at what makes us fundamentally different.

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We’ve been on Greenlight for a few days now, and the results have been mostly positive. Thank you to everybody who contributed thus far! We’re far from being the most noticed game on the site, but hopefully things will build since we got in so early… especially on release!

Till then, we’ve been working to meet some of our most common criticisms, namely that the game lacks polish in areas like the menus. You can check it out in the now-updated demo and screenshots. While tweaking the menus, I found that there’s an interesting trade-off between the game’s pure functionality and its apparent prettiness. Continue reading →

STEAM GREENLIGHT

This might seem sort of absurd coming off of the heels of our Kickstarter, but we actually need your support more than ever! This doesn’t require any money or anything–but if you have a Steam account, we desperately need your upvote to help get Phantasmaburbia on the Steam platform!

Getting on Steam means exposure to a much wider audience, something we need very badly. This is something we’ve been talking about a lot on the sidelines, and finally is there an opportunity for us to get there if only we garner enough support.
I can’t really overstate how important this is to the game’s ultimate success. So, pretty, pretty please…

UPVOTE US ON STEAM GREENLIGHT!

So, the kickstarter ended successfully!

We got $2,640–264% of our original goal, which is plain awesome! The three of us have been working like crazy, especially in the aftermath of this, to get everything finished off. It shouldn’t be long now, and with the way things are moving and the obligation we have to our backers, we feel pretty ready to announce that the game’s going to come out on October 31st (2012!). That’s exactly one year after our first date! We will hopefully be done well before then, but it feels right to release on that date rather than sooner.

Meanwhile, copies of the beta have gone out to backers and we’re getting bugs fixed and all sorts of good feedback. The game’s looking to be about 8-9 hours long to beat on average, more if you spend time looking for secrets and stuff!

We’re gonna try and keep this place active up to the release, especially as we finish up cool new stuff we wanna share. A couple things you may enjoy are two songs we posted on the kickstarter by Jason. They’re really good!

This is a dungeon song!

This is a tune from the overworld at the start of the game!

Hoooooooooly COOOOOOOWWWWWW

We reached our minimum goal before 24 hours even passed–incredible! The support for us has been awesome, and I’m honored to have such support for my weird little RPG 🙂 Let’s keep the ball rolling!!

We’re running a KICKSTARTER!

Our (modest) goal is $1000, in two weeks. Don’t think this as us being in trouble–rather, we’d like to tap into our supportive audience before the game comes out to help put a little more in. I’m sorry for the lack of news, but we’re hoping this might sort of make up for it.

We’re offering copies of the full game, bonus stuff, and also access to the full beta–as soon as the kickstarter closes! We’re excited to share this game more and we felt this was a great way to do it.

Please consider kicking us a little bit. And tell your friends!

I’ve just set up a little email list using a third party service. Saunter on over here and enter your email address, and I’ll notify you on the day the game’s released. At the moment, the actual day of release seems it will be a bit unpredictable, so this will be the best, most stable way for you to know exactly when that is.

That’s all!

Hey!!

As of now, the content of the game is getting pretty much wrapped up. I’ve talked a bit before about how hard it’s been to make concrete progress on this as I reach the end; I think self doubt and other issues have been factors as well. But I’ve sort of pushed through that. Final boss and most everything is done. All that’s left is the very final scene(s) of the game, and that’s been rigorously planned for quite some time, so it’s just a matter of executing that content. I’m out of the tunnel, so to speak.

It may still be some time before the game is in your hands though.

The game’s sound effects and OST still have some distance to go, and the latter is mostly out of my control. I’ll be using that extra time to polish the game more, though, and maybe get some more beta testing done. I’ve been sort of compulsively fixing bugs and making tweaks when I should have been getting content done, but the game’s breadth is wide enough that it’s still pretty hard to survey everything and not overlook any lingering issues. I’ll post news and information about that once it’s more relevant (once this last bit of content is wrapped up, and maybe I fix up some other stuff).

I’m also interested in getting a new trailer out very soon. I’ve actually had some footage in mind ready for a special trailer for quite some time (like, 8 months) so I’m excited about getting that out!

Sorry it’s been some time since I posted–and sorry there’s not too much to report! Just thought I’d keep everyone in the know.

I’m working on it. It’s a bit ambitious and it’s going a bit slow, but it’s definitely going. That’s all I can post about right now! Have a nice week. 🙂