Octopus Overlords

Very interesting and ambitious TBS kickstarter. Reminded me of a cross between Dominions, Solium Infernum?, Birthright, and Warlords.

Combines a lot of sweet ideas like hero development, questing, resource management.

I watched one of 4 of the development youtube logs, and it seems VERY ambitious.



Its already 400% funded with over a week left

here's a link for those that are interested

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ki ... ich-sleeps

This has the potential to be awesome if done right.

See you in a couple of years, That Which Sleeps!

ETA: perhaps sooner. I guess I should read the article next time.

ETA2: I was right the first time.

The best thing about it is that it's already pretty much developed. The Kickstarter was to raise funds to redo the art and map assets. It was also Greenlit on Steam yesterday and should be EA in there sometime in early 2015. I hope it plays half as good as it sounds.

I thought I remembered voting to Greenlight it, but when I went back today and couldn't find it I thought it was another one of my more and more frequent senior moments.

It appears the developer is going the Wasteland II route. Since $50 was the Kickstarter tier for Beta access, that will be the price for EA on Steam, even though it will sell for $25 at release. I can understand why they are doing it this way, and I have too many EA games already, but it's still disappointing.

A new kickstarter update is up on the Procedural Generation stretch goal. Looks great, especially adding new art assets with a darker feel (needed) and tiling the map to allow for randomization.

tgb wrote:It appears the developer is going the Wasteland II route. Since $50 was the Kickstarter tier for Beta access, that will be the price for EA on Steam, even though it will sell for $25 at release.

Yeah, that will keep me on the sidelines until release. It means they'll sell far fewer copies in EA and therefore get less feedback but I suppose the feedback they do get may be more focused.

Hey guys.

One of the devs here - thanks to extreme OCD I managed to find this thread and wanted to clarify a couple things.

We decided to offer a higher-price Beta tier for a couple of reasons - we know that we have isn't the prettiest visually and will go through several iterations, not only graphically but gameplay too, before we get something that is 'ready' for mass release.

You really only get one chance for 'release' - be it early access or not, so it has to be polished. We want a group of folks that are willing to work through the kinks and changes with us, and just basically give us multiple viewpoints for feedback and just generally collaborate with people who are invested in the project, and hopefully together we'll watch it evolve into something that is super polished and ready for release. So what we call Beta is what Steam generally calls 'early access' - we expect it to be a collaborative process.

So that's the -why- you are free to agree or disagree with our process but I just wanted to clarify our reasoning for making that Beta tier a little more price exclusive.

As far as actual pricing goes - we are offering preorder tier - this is the same as Steam EA - for $10 on KS.

Actual EA price is still up in the air but probably closer to $20 - $25 (don't quote me on this just yet).

Our preorder tier on KS is at a really deep discount well because, KS backers in general accept a lot of risk, and though personally I think we did a lot to mitigate that, they still deserve a large discount for preordering a game sight unseen from (mostly) unknown developers.

I'll try to pop in from time to time if you have any questions, but we're really active on some other boards as well as our KS and subreddit, so you can understand how swamped we are right now.

Hey, thanks for dropping by to answer questions, Dyslexia96.

Dyslexia96 wrote:As far as actual pricing goes - we are offering preorder tier - this is the same as Steam EA - for $10 on KS.

So, it sounds like you're saying that the $10 KS tier allows Steam EA access? Is that correct?

Dyslexia96 wrote:we're really active on some other boards as well as our KS and subreddit, so you can understand how swamped we are right now.

That's for sure. I've read your posts on RPG Codex and that 52 page thread on the Bay 12 forums, which is a treasure trove of information about the game. I love how willing you guys are to answer questions and interact with gamers.

I did have one comment about Points of Interest. It's not ideal to have an acronym like "POIS" on your main menu as it leads to confusion (what the heck is a POIS? and also the "S" at the end shouldn't be capitalized if you do use it there, it should be "POIs"). But, in any case, have you given any though to using an alternative term that means the same thing and you wouldn't need to abbreviate? Why not use "Sites of Interest" instead and then on your main menu you can just abbreviate it as "Sites" which is not nearly as confusing. "5 Sites" means a lot more to me than "5 POIS" when I see it the first time. When I first saw it I was thinking what is that? Does it stand for "5 POISON"? Just a thought.

ColdSteel wrote:Hey, thanks for dropping by to answer questions, Dyslexia96.

So, it sounds like you're saying that the $10 KS tier allows Steam EA access? Is that correct?

Hey! Talking to people excited about the game has literally been the most fun part of this whole thing, so we love that. And to clarify for everyone, 10 bucks on Kickstarter will get you Steam Early Access.

ColdSteel wrote: Lots of insight about how confusing POIS(s) are.

YUP! I agree. We talked about this internally and we've gotten feedback about it from other folks as well - it's stuck being "points of interest" for the time being though because we don't have the time to go in and fix it before the end of crowd-funding. Basically we have until next Wednesday to be mini marketing machines, probably take a day or two off after that to you know, actually see my family, then back to work so we can get something out for Beta ASAP.

Welcome, Dyslexia. It's always nice to have a developer on board, particularly one trying something original. I'm still confused about the pricing. My information came from your own website, which lists a pre-order price of $25 and pre-order with Beta access for $50.

Hey TBG - fair enough and I can see how you might be confused.

We are only offering the equivalent of the digital rewards tier on our site (as well as Beta) The pre-order only tier is for KS only. We probably need to clean up the site and make everything a little more clear there, but honestly we haven't gotten much traction or sales from our site so it hasn't been a priority. One of the things we wanted to do BEFORE we even launched our KS was to redo the website and make it a little bit more professional but once we launched it has been non stop for us. We will revisit at some point and try to clean up the info there.

So I guess the takeaways are -

10 bucks on Kickstarter is your best bet if you're price shopping.

If for some reason you can't or don't want to use KS you are potentially better served by waiting til the game is released on Steam, you'll probably have a lot more reviews and feedback to read through to make sure its your type of game. (Though if your on a forum named Octopus Overlords there's a pretty decent chance its for you). Our target release price is closer to the price we have on our site.

Dyslexia96 wrote: (Though if your on a forum named Octopus Overlords there's a pretty decent chance its for you).

It really is hard to argue with that logic. Thanks for stopping by and thanks to Malacheye for posting. I'm in.

Dyslexia96 wrote:(Though if your on a forum named Octopus Overlords there's a pretty decent chance its for you).

I don't know about anyone else but one of the first things I'm going to try to do with the modding tools/editor is create an Octopus Overlord Old One. Heck, the cover art already even looks like him.

I have a question about combat I was hoping you could address here. I haven't seen a lot of information about how combat will work and, from what I could see in the trailer, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of interesting combat decisions to be made. Now I see you're in the middle of revising combat to provide for larger battles with more participants. How exactly does this work? Are there any tactical decisions to be made or is it mostly a high level and automated affair?

Sounds good. Are you looking for outside beta testers by any chance? Other than that, when do you expect to have it up on Steam.

Backed! This seems like a very low risk kickstarter since so much of the game is already completed and I like the devs backgrounds and the way they are managing this project.

Coldsteel,

The third dev log on youtube gives four different combat situations. Pretty detailed, should give you what you need.

I watched most of the 4 dev logs yesterday. I'll probably do the $10 backing later in the week.

Thanks to this thread, I backed at the $10 level as well.

In as well. What the heck.

I'll be getting in for the $10 level after I get paid this week.

Backed, good catch.

Why do you wait until you get paid? It takes me to amazon and tells me it won't charge me anything unless the project succeeds.

Angnomander wrote:Why do you wait until you get paid? It takes me to amazon and tells me it won't charge me anything unless the project succeeds.

Such is the nature of the Kickstarter. They don't get their money unless they reach their stated goal for the project as proposed ($12,000). At $48K+, the "project" will succeed 8 days from now, with a scheduled delivery of March of 2015.

If they cancel the project in the next week or are swallowed up by Elder Gods, the project won't succeed and you won't be charged $10. Seems fair, right?

Malacheye wrote:Coldsteel, The third dev log on youtube gives four different combat situations. Pretty detailed, should give you what you need. I watched most of the 4 dev logs yesterday. I'll probably do the $10 backing later in the week.

Oh, okay thanks. I watched the first two but the music on the second one was so loud it was driving me nuts trying to hear the dev over it so I didn't watch any more. I'll go back to get the combat info on the third.

EDIT: I just watched the 3rd dev log on combat and it was VERY interesting (despite not being able to hear some of it over the music). It's not at all like combat in most such 4x games and I was happy so see that not only is combat quite different, there are some very interesting decisions and sneaky strategies involved. That last battle in particular was an eye opener. I really like what I'm seeing.

My understanding of KS is that you're taking a chance on the product not coming out because there are no refunds. I guess that's just if it gets funded, which makes sense.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Backed.

Thanks for all the support guys. We are planning a March release so keep fingers crossed. Beta folks will get something much sooner.

I was waiting for next weekend to decide, but you've pulled me in. I've been tempted to try looking for my Birthright CD, and it's so much more fun to play Evil.

New stretch goals announced

As we reach each new funding tier two things will be introduced into That Which Sleeps.
•An array of Aesthetic Effects will bring the map further to life.
•A new complex component (Agent, Old One, or Race) will be added to the game. We will present several options to the community and you'll vote on which you want to include.

I, for one, welcome our new Octopus Overlord!

Bought in today. Excited about this game!

And it looks like we just hit the first extended stretch goal. There's actually a good chance to fund all of them. Still almost 6 days to go.

Also, I saw where the dev said they finally heard back from GOG and it will be distributed there in addition to the other places.

I'm in. Looks really interesting.

Mind-flayers. YES!!

Looks neat. Count me in!

3 days still to go and they'll probably hit the final stretch goal tomorrow. I hope they add something extra.

Reddit 'ask me anything' going on this afternoon with the devs and those for a few more game (including the Battle Brothers devs).

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ ... _brothers/

I'm in! It looks awesome and different, and I definitely appreciate anytime a dev comes by to fill us in.

The Kickstarter is down to the last 48 hours and is about $4K short of the $75K extended stretch goal.

The Terror at Seas
Our first group of aesthetic improvements were focused on bringing the land to life, so it is time we give the brave men of the ocean a more respectable appearance. We will overhaul the sailing crafts of the world to create distinct appearances for vessels of separate classes, depict Hero and Agent travel over ocean, and show the dangers of the sea in much more vivid detail.

Did I say danger? We will also increase the amount of horrors that can emerge from the deep blue sea, with a particular high level Ritual added to really spice things up. We will also add more quests to sea travel to ensure Heroes spend more time exploring the watery depths. Pirates, raiders, explorers, and more will become a larger part of the world, and it will all be done in beautiful detail.

New Old One or Race
More, more, more! People said they wanted more content, so we decided to answer that call. We will have allow another option from the list of Old Ones and Races to be voted in after the Kickstarter closes.

KingDinosaurGames wrote: I am more interested in being able to expand the events and quests that occur on the ocean - to make it more of a play area rather than a transit zone. We do have some now, but they are in the vast minority and have no continuity - with only one campaign that takes place solely under the ocean.

I really hope this goal is reached. My Octopus Overlord Old One will have a watery resting place and I'd like an undersea campaign/scenario to be really fun and well fleshed out.

So, the Kickstarter is over and it hit every stretch goal, every extended stretch goal, and every extended, extended, stretch goal. Not sure I've ever seen that before.

Congratulations, Dyslexia (if you ever visit here again). Can't wait to vote on which new art/map assets will go into the game.

What a great campaign--lots of information, lots of perfectly reasonable but still exciting stretch goals. I'm glad I'm a backer.

Now for the waiting. Is it out yet???

My offer to be a beta tester still stands.