Kickstarter: StoneHearth . Minecraft + Strategy

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Thu May 02, 2013 1:29 am

Caught my eye the other night. Looks really interesting.http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/159 ... h?ref=live

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Thu May 02, 2013 8:04 am

This looks fantastic.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu May 02, 2013 11:14 am

Hmm I'm a little mixed on this one.

Overall it looks great, I really like the idea of modules (adventures) spread around the world to make things more interesting, as well as being able to load in modules created by other players. I liked that you can eventually be more than just a little settlement.. that you can become a large civilization.

There's a few big questions in my head though:
- First, there's been a ton of Dwarf Fortress clones, and none of them have quite lived up to the original yet (and this seems to have far more in common with DF than MC IMO).
- Second, this looks to also be a large part city builder, but they didn't go into the mechanics of that at all except to mention there will apparently be minigames for things like harvesting which honestly sounds like a terrible idea.
- Lastly, I like the zoomed out view quite a bit, the building style, the little details, but I'm not a big fan of the JRPG style characters.

It does seem really promising, but I'm not sure they gave enough details of how they predict the mechanics will work to really hook me. And really, that brief shot of a possible harvesting mini game was a little horrifying, but maybe I'm just not understanding what they mean by minigame. (Ha, and if you look close there's a message on the farming minigame window that says "Don't put this in the KS video!", and for good reason).

At any rate it looks like this is already funded and likely to hit a bunch of stretch goals, so I'll probably just keep an eye on it for now and see what new details come out.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Thu May 02, 2013 2:10 pm

I posted the question asking if they have plans to develop co-op play options and they responded in just a few minutes. If you’re interested they said that they would really like to offer it but are waiting till they have the other mechanics finalized and in a stable state.

EzeKieL · Post by **EzeKieL** » Thu May 02, 2013 2:47 pm

backed it.

I'm a sucker for kickstarters

jnecros · Post by **jnecros** » Thu May 02, 2013 10:08 pm

Huge Dwarf Fortress fan, never played Minecraft, I know right. Still looks interesting, and will be watching the game. Here's hoping it will be something to write home about..

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Fri May 10, 2013 7:11 pm

New Stretch Goals for $320,000 up to $380,000. $400,000 is still Co-op Multiplayer

New Class - Geomancer: Manipulate rock and stone to bolster your city's builders, flattening or raising earth as the cause demands. Craft tireless golem workers so everyone else can take a much needed break.

She put green lights in their empty eyesockets--a fanciful touch, but she felt it gave them character. Now, she checked each rune for dust, noted every crack for the touchups she'd handle tomorrow. Powered them off, one by one. Slowly, green lights dimmed to black. "Good job, guys! Finished the whole square in just two days!" She dusted her hands, patted each fondly on the head, and shut the warehouse door.

In the dark, one pair of lights swirled back to life.

Enemy Faction - Elementals: When conditions are just right, unstoppable giants of fire, rock, ice, and air rampage across the land, destroying everything in their path. Appease them or prepare your defenses...

Verne Earthwalk fought to control his voice. "My Lords," he managed, "when I said that your incessant digging made the earth angry, I meant it. Literally."

New Class - Engineer: Fiendishly complex traps. Steam pumps. Black powder. In his moments of genius, this Master Craftsman boosts your town's productivity with miraculously advanced tools and weaponry. In his other moments....

"With steam, human ingenuity, and enough pipes, anything is possible!"[/i]

Seasons!: Horde food for the winter and farm up a storm in the summer as the four seasons cycle over your town. Building, farming and fighting all gain new depth as rising temperatures parch the land and falling snows drive your settlers indoors.

"SNOW DAY!!!!"

Then out at $500,000:

Alternate Planes: Many dimensions lurk beneath the fabric of reality. Lured by the promise of untold riches and arcane secrets, your bravest townsfolk open portals to previously unknown realms. What could possibly go wrong?

Through the door I saw... the sky. The sky at night, when the stars fill one end of the horizon to the other. Except... the stars were ordered in perfect rows, like corn in the field. And little round plates studded with rubies dashed around between them, jabbing lances of light at each other. One of the plates... flew apart as I watched. In a ball of fire!

...No more mushrooms for me.

-- From the diary of Archmage Twellot

They've got some cute pictures up for some of the goals like this one:

A few more new goal sketches out at the Kickstarter.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Fri May 10, 2013 7:59 pm

This is starting to sound interesting. I am in for 15. At the very least it seems to be creative.The release date is aimed for Sept 2014..... but anyway.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Sat May 11, 2013 12:45 am

Matrix wrote:This is starting to sound interesting. I am in for 15. At the very least it seems to be creative.The release date is aimed for Sept 2014..... but anyway.

The beta is supposed to be out at the end of this year (which admittedly is still a ways away). I suspect this is one of those games that will be sitting in beta a long time -- playable, but with more features slowly getting added in before "official" release. Isn't that what most of the Dwarf Fortress style games have been doing?

Turtle · Post by **Turtle** » Sat May 11, 2013 2:58 am

Actually, I'm not so sure this will hit 400,000 in the kickstarter. However, I do think this is a game that will be supported for a long time. So I'll be pitching in at the lowest value.

I really like the look and the DF style gameplay, even if it's smaller. If supporting this means others are emboldened to do grander scale games than this more mission based approach, but keeping the graphics style then it's money well spent.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Sat May 11, 2013 5:32 am

Turtle wrote:Actually, I'm not so sure this will hit 400,000 in the kickstarter. However, I do think this is a game that will be supported for a long time. So I'll be pitching in at the lowest value.

I really like the look and the DF style gameplay, even if it's smaller. If supporting this means others are emboldened to do grander scale games than this more mission based approach, but keeping the graphics style then it's money well spent.

I'm going to be shocked if it doesn't hit 400,000. If you look at the KickTraq chart it does have a rather unusual curve. Usually the first day is the highest and then it drops way down until the last day or two. For Stonehearth it built up for several days. There also hasn't been as dramatic of a drop-off as normal -- usually the daily amounts drop down to around 10-20% of the early high, Stonehearth is running closer to 25-30%. I'm assuming this means that no one had heard of it before the Kickstarter, so it took a few days for word of mouth to build up.

It's possible they are now saturated and the daily yield will drop way down -- the last two days may be the start of a downward trend. But they only need to earn $6000 a day to hit $400,000 which doesn't look that hard when you look at their performance over the past week. Even if it drops off below the $6000 mark, there's usually a substantial boost for several days at the end of the project, with the last day often getting near to the haul in from the highest day in the Kickstarter (which in this case is $55,000). See for example KickTraq's for Grim Dawn, Dead State, and Projec Eternity.

Personally I think they'll pull in $600,000 minimum and I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled in $800,000 or maybe even more.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Sat May 11, 2013 10:34 am

It will hit 400 almost given, it had slow first days, but its on good pace now. Due to it being hybrid (aka not as much selling power as RPG command), i will predict it will end up in 500-600 k range.

ibdoomed · Post by **ibdoomed** » Tue May 14, 2013 10:08 am

I'm very excited about coop!

noxiousdog · Post by **noxiousdog** » Tue May 14, 2013 10:30 am

In @$45. I really think my son will be into it. He loves minecraft and I think the strategy part will keep my interest.

Would be nice to have something we can both play.

EzeKieL · Post by **EzeKieL** » Mon May 20, 2013 8:34 am

370k without adding paypal and 9 days to go.

I'd say that 400k is a given.

I wonder what goals they'll reach beside that though...

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Tue May 21, 2013 4:08 am

Coop is now officially in (by including the $13,800 they've collected from Paypal). New Stretch Goals:

$450,000 Festivals: Join your townsfolk as they celebrate popular holidays like Solstice, Harvest, and The Monday of The Twelve Golden Fruit. Properly provisioned festivals produce happy, energetic workers. Forgotten events invite the wrath of greater powers...

“Though color variations make it clear at which point in its cycle the banana ought to be eaten, the proper way to hold the fruit is still debated. Though all scholars agree that the curved, nearly hexagonal shape fits the human fist, accounts vary as to whether the golden peel should be pulled back from the stem (as is traditional) or up from the black nub at the bottom. Either way, so please the gods.”

--Celebrant Jordan, Treatises on the Rituals of The Monday of the Twelve Golden Fruit

$500,000 Alternate Planes: Many dimensions lurk beneath the fabric of reality. Lured by the promise of untold riches and arcane secrets, your bravest townsfolk open portals to previously unknown realms. What could possibly go wrong?

Through the door I saw... the sky. The sky at night, when the stars fill one end of the horizon to the other. Except... the stars were ordered in perfect rows, like corn in the field. And little round plates studded with rubies dashed around between them, jabbing lances of light at each other. One of the plates... flew apart as I watched. In a ball of fire!

...No more mushrooms for me.

-- From the diary of Archmage Twellot

$550,000 Upgraded Musical Score: The Japanese RPGs from which Stonehearth draws its artistic inspiration were as much defined by their soundtrack as their visual style. Help us draw on the talent of a variety of professional musicians to create an enticing score that will stand up to a decade’s worth of play.

$600,000 Three Playable Kingdoms: Hardy explorers and canny traders join our hardworking settlers in their quest to build, farm, and fight their way across the land. At the start of each game, choose one of the three kingdoms, each with its own unique perks.

Healing Crosswinds Caravan, Transcript, Early Summer, Immediately before The Incident

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu May 23, 2013 1:12 pm

With PayPal added in festivals are official now!

I'd be completely happy with just getting to alternate planes, but having 3 distinct factions would be pretty awesome.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Thu May 23, 2013 1:29 pm

I think they will get 600k easy. And if they put good enough stretch goals, 700k would be within reach.

Even stinker like JA got cash, this guys will bank well.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Thu May 23, 2013 5:51 pm

I'm in for this one. I was wavering, but then I let my Minecraft-loving kids see the video. Their eyes lit up immediately.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri May 24, 2013 7:05 pm

Alternate planes are in!

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Mon May 27, 2013 11:07 am

For some reason, this game is deeply appealing to me. Deeply, deeply appealing.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Tue May 28, 2013 2:04 am

They've broken $600,000 with 48-hours to go. New stretch goals are on the way:

Radiant Entertainment wrote:[Stretch Goals] may end up coming tomorrow. This isn't the kind of thing we want to screw up. Options under review are: easy-to-do-yet-desireable-stretch-goal (what would that even be?), add a stretch goal but specify the timing as POST release, or no more stretch goals.

For those tuning in late, the issue is that we don't want to bite off more than we can chew, and end up skimping on the core game to reach even more goals by release. Our plate is pretty full right now!

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Tue May 28, 2013 2:21 pm

With just over 36 hours left they are now over $650,000 (including Paypal contributions). New Stretch Goals both of which are "Post-Release" due to their concern about overstretching on development "[T]he issue is that we don't want to bite off more than we can chew, and end up skimping on the core game to reach even more goals by release. Our plate is pretty full right now!"

New Playable Race: Dwarves ($750,000): While the Three Kingdoms of humans spread across the world's surface, the dwarves build their own empire deep in the mountains and bedrock below.

This dwarven race will come complete with new art, entirely new play mechanics more suited to a dwarven disposition, and new classes and crafting recipes.

Help! All driven underground by fire and trapped by rocks. The ground shakes; Dwarven drums in the deep. We cannot get out... they are coming!

--Jiruk Firestarter, Goblin Shaman

Persistent, Connected World ($1,000,000): We'll offer the option to host your game on our own servers (this may require a fee). All hosted games can choose to participate in entirely new gameplay modes with other hosted cities!

Here are some of the things we're thinking about:

Your cooperative games will be available all the time, not just when the computer serving the game is on.
Establish alliances and supply-routes between friendly, player controlled cities.
Trade in the global economy that spans all hosted games.
Band several cities together to create your own Empires

ibdoomed · Post by **ibdoomed** » Tue May 28, 2013 4:29 pm

Amazing. I tripled my donation since none of the competitors are going to work out.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Tue May 28, 2013 6:44 pm

Aieee!! Dwarfs! Why couldn't this have been their first stretch goal and not one of their last? Especially at $750K. No worries though. I listened to a long podcast interview with one of the devs yesterday and he said they plan to work on this one game for the next 10 years. Once it's done and out the door, they will not be doing some other game, he said. Instead they will just work on improving and deepening the game for years to come unless/until they go broke.

I think that pretty much guarantees the dwarves will be in at some point even if the stretch goal isn't reached. It's interesting because I'm assuming that to build their dwarf cities underground they'll have to do pretty much what Dwarf Fortress does.

I think if they can deliver on all this planned stuff in an appealing way they could have a gigantic hit on their hands.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Tue May 28, 2013 6:57 pm

The other really interesting (at least to me) thing they said in that podcast interview was that they designed the engine of this game from the ground up to be completely moddable. They said in fact that the core game is nothing more than a mod itself running on top of this engine. Anything they can do as developers, we can do as modders. Want to do a mod and turn it into a space game? You can. They said that level of effort would be extreme because you'd have to develop all the assets yourself, but it can be done. Pretty exciting stuff. Theoretically, you could pretty easily make a fantasy kingdom simulator mode that plays like Majesty. Or perhaps make your very own Dwarf Fortress mod. They said they were very, very excited about the modding potential of their game and what it would ultimately produce from the community.

Zurai · Post by **Zurai** » Tue May 28, 2013 8:06 pm

Everything I've seen these guys write or heard them say is perfect. I'm not even talking necessarily about wanting a Dwarf Fortress-alike, rather that they appear to be on exactly the same wavelength as I am with regards to design focus, game design in general, time and project management, and so on. They really at least sound like they have their act together and know exactly what they want to make, which bodes well for the project IMO.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Tue May 28, 2013 8:56 pm

Zurai wrote:Everything I've seen these guys write or heard them say is perfect. I'm not even talking necessarily about wanting a Dwarf Fortress-alike, rather that they appear to be on exactly the same wavelength as I am with regards to design focus, game design in general, time and project management, and so on. They really at least sound like they have their act together and know exactly what they want to make, which bodes well for the project IMO.

I agree. You sum it up really nicely here.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue May 28, 2013 8:58 pm

I've never actually played Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft -- the closest I've come is Terraria. But this game just looks cool.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Tue May 28, 2013 9:23 pm

ColdSteel wrote:Aieee!! Dwarfs! Why couldn't this have been their first stretch goal and not one of their last? Especially at $750K.

They were really worried about the difficulty of getting the underground part right and didn't want to spread the development team to thin and end up doing a poor job on everything. That's actually why the Alternate Plane goal came first rather than the Underground goal (which is what most of us would have preferred). They thought that building Alternate Planes would be much less work developmentally. It's also why Dwarves is listed as "Post-Release" even if they hit $750k.

While I completely sympathize with wanting Dwarves in there early, I do think their priorities make a lot of sense from a software development standpoint.

The good news is I'm almost certain they'll hit the $750k mark. One thing to keep in mind if you're nervous about them hitting the Dwarves goal is that they've got $37,000 in PayPal contributions which will count toward Stretch Goals but isn't in the official KickTracker count. In fact extrapolating from other Kickstarters Projects' end day performance it's likely they'll go a quite a ways past it. However, their KickTraq is one of the most unusual I've seen.

Fretmute · Post by **Fretmute** » Tue May 28, 2013 11:23 pm

Smoove_B wrote:I've never actually played Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft -- the closest I've come is Terraria. But this game just looks cool.

Same here. I've not backed a Kickstarter before, but these guys got my money just because I think the art direction is so damn cool.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Wed May 29, 2013 8:41 am

ydejin wrote: ColdSteel wrote:Aieee!! Dwarfs! Why couldn't this have been their first stretch goal and not one of their last? Especially at $750K.

They were really worried about the difficulty of getting the underground part right and didn't want to spread the development team to thin and end up doing a poor job on everything.

Yeah, don't worry, that was a completely rhetorical "Aieeee" and question. I was just expressing my enthusiasm for dwarves in this game.

Like I said, I think they'll go in at some point no matter what. Hitting the goal just means they go in a little sooner perhaps.

Zurai wrote:Everything I've seen these guys write or heard them say is perfect. I'm not even talking necessarily about wanting a Dwarf Fortress-alike, rather that they appear to be on exactly the same wavelength as I am with regards to design focus, game design in general, time and project management, and so on.

The thing that encourages me most about them is that they are both very experienced industry veteran software developers that have worked for some big companies. They know all about design, managing projects and the pitfalls of feature creep, etc. I think this gives them a very high likelihood of success right from the gate. I think their recent concern about adding more stretch goals and electing to push these last ones to post release, speaks to how savvy they are in that regard.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Wed May 29, 2013 4:18 pm

I wish they had a pledge tier with beta access that didn't involve getting 2 copies of the game. I have no use for 2 at all but I really want into the beta for this.

ibdoomed · Post by **ibdoomed** » Wed May 29, 2013 4:27 pm

ColdSteel wrote:I wish they had a pledge tier with beta access that didn't involve getting 2 copies of the game. I have no use for 2 at all but I really want into the beta for this.

So you want in for less than $30 is what you are saying.

Cheapskate.

silverjon · Post by **silverjon** » Wed May 29, 2013 4:30 pm

ColdSteel wrote:I wish they had a pledge tier with beta access that didn't involve getting 2 copies of the game. I have no use for 2 at all but I really want into the beta for this.

Find a buddy and split the cost. Surely somebody here is game for the game.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Wed May 29, 2013 4:50 pm

The "perk" of getting two copies of the game does make me wonder about the DRM. Will I not be able to install my copy on more than one home machine?

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Wed May 29, 2013 5:20 pm

Holman wrote:The "perk" of getting two copies of the game does make me wonder about the DRM. Will I not be able to install my copy on more than one home machine?

They said the game won't have DRM.

silverjon wrote:Find a buddy and split the cost.

That would be a total no-brainer if I had a game playing buddy. When I mention games my friends just stare at me like I've grown an extra head. And my wife hates computer games. I'm still thinking about it. Basically it's paying another $15 for beta access. Now, do I want the beta bad enough to pay another $15 for it? Quite possibly I do. They could have made it an easier decision with a one-copy $20 beta tier is all I'm saying.

silverjon · Post by **silverjon** » Wed May 29, 2013 5:46 pm

I mean see if someone here wants to go in with you. And even if nobody bit right now, you could probably trade the extra key for something later.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Wed May 29, 2013 5:51 pm

Right. When this game is out and everyone here is talking about it, there will certainly be someone to buy the extra copy from you.

xwraith · Post by **xwraith** » Wed May 29, 2013 9:29 pm

EzeKieL wrote:backed it.

I'm a sucker for kickstarters

Kickstarter + forum effect must resisssssst