Amazing Beyond Shadowgate Video + Projects We Love!
about 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 06:05:20 AM

Beyond Shadowgate (Turbo Grafx!) Playthrough!

There's been some questions about if our version of Beyond Shadowgate is the same version that came out on the Turbo Grafx in 1993. The answer is obviously no as that game was a side scrolling adventure and, well, heck, why should I spoil it for you? :)

This video came out over the weekend and was created by our friends at U Can Beat Video Games. It's a complete playthrough of the Turbo version as well as some backstory on the creation (provided by yours truly)! Check it out and please subscribe to their channel!

Projects We Love! - Hibernaculum!

We wanted to make sure this campaign was on your radar! The game is a first-person, retro, sci-fi/horror role playing game being developed by a small indie studio. Watching their videos, I am instantly reminded of playing games like Dungeon Master but with a super creepy Alien vibe!

Here's what the developers say about their inspirations!

"To revisit the dungeon crawling experience of games such the Eye of the Beholder & Lands of Lore first and foremost, while secondarily blending in the gloomy shock of Horrorsoft's Elvira & Waxworks series and thereby building a game that pushes past these more elementary beginnings. Also borrowing ideas from later cRPG titles such as Baldur's Gate and Fallout for it's RPG elements, and looking to games like System Shock 2 and Resident Evil 2 for it's more survival horror-like elements we hope to essentially turbocharge the old school dungeon crawler genre into something more open, less rigid and more conducive to non-linear & emergent gameplay."

There you go! Please consider checking out and backing their campaign!

Thanks!

Dave

Stretch Goal #3 UNLOCKED and NEW Goal Added!
about 1 year ago – Sun, Mar 05, 2023 at 01:14:38 PM

The Mines of Mythrok Stretch Goal is Unlocked!

Wow! Thanks for helping us reach the 3rd Stretch Goal where you will enter the Mines of Mythrok, a side quest set in the Gatekeeper Mountains. This area is heavily featured in the Meta Quest game Shadowgate VR: The Mines of Mythrok and now you can play within its dark corridors as well!

 $85,000 Stretch goal - New Chip Tunes!

We've gotten a great response to Orie Falconer's soundtrack to Beyond Shadowgate so we asked him to EXPAND the soundtrack and add additional pieces of music to further enhance the game! Obviously, these tunes will be in BOTH the main game AND the digital soundtrack as well! Here's a piece you have yet to hear from Orie...

Super fun stuff! 

 Spread the Word!

Thanks again for pledging to our indie campaign and we hope that you continue to spread the word! Many people still don't know that they can play a demo of the game. If you are active on social media, please consider using the graphic below and adding a link to the campaign... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zojoi/beyond-shadowgate/

or this one that just tells them about the campaign...

Dave

New Add-Ons and a Sneak Peek at the Strat Guide!
about 1 year ago – Sat, Mar 04, 2023 at 09:03:44 AM

We've got some Cool New SWAG!

Hey everyone! We have had more than a few requests for t-shirts so we've created two designs! The shirts have been added to the Add-On section in check out. 

Here's a few things about the shirts and Add-Ons in general...

• Each shirt will cost $20 plus shipping.
• The shirts are black, unisex, Gildan Cotton, preshrunk, seamless collar, tapered neck and shoulders.
• After the campaign ends, you will receive a final survey that will request sizes.
• There was a mix-up on a few of the digital tiers that doesn't allow for physical add-ons. KS won't let us correct this now but when you get the final survey, you will see all the add-ons available :)
• If you are ordering multiple physical rewards, our goal is to pack everything in the best (and cheapest to you) possible way.
• So, even though each item has a shipping price associated with it, we will combine shipping to save you money if you have multiple physical items. :)

That said, on to the shirts!

 This first design was created by Jeff at GrahfMetal and is the official backer shirt of the game!

 This second design really celebrates the fact that Shadowgate has endured for 36 years!

Strategy Guide UPDATE!

We've started work on laying out the strategy guide. Here's the current draft of the front and back covers. Perhaps you will recognize our inspiration! 

 That's it for now! Please continue to tell your friends about the campaign :)

Dave

Design Documents (Part 2)!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 09:22:16 AM

Converting 32 year old docs from MacVenture to NES style: Part 2

Here's the second part of Chris' discussion on converting the docs. For fun, I added some of Jeff's (GrahfMetal) artwork to show the comparison between my old black and white images and Jeff's stunning 8-bit ones. We'll go into the art process more in a later update :)

"After indexing hundreds of pages of the original Beyond Shadowgate data, we had to translate our own design document from the template. The information couldn’t be copied and pasted as the designs were for a Macintosh computer and the game style we chose is a sequel to the beloved Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version of Shadowgate.

The differences between the two are substantial. The Macintosh system uses an image-based inventory, a large text display to show multiple paragraphs of text at once, and screen space for highly detailed artwork. The NES version used a text-based inventory, a smaller text display limited to short sentences, and simplistic yet charming art.

Despite the advances in technology in the last 30 years, we wanted to build a sequel to the NES Shadowgate and capture the charm of the original. This meant we kept the NES user interface, simple art designs, and short text descriptions. Which meant we had to edit a lot of the original design to accommodate our goals.

The Macintosh design had a whopping 450+ rooms and hundreds of pages of text. The game was built to be expansive, going far beyond the caves and castle of the original. Beyond Shadowgate locations included a forest, desert, and a city complete with several characters. While impressive, many of the rooms in these locations were not relevant to puzzles or game progression and served mainly to give a sense of scale. So we were able to trim several empty hallways, forest paths, and bleak desert dunes. 

The text presented another challenge. In the Macintosh version, a single mouse click could bring up several sentences worth of text in a second. This feature allows for longer, elegant descriptions to aid player immersion. But we chose to include the flowing script and user interface from the NES version. This interface takes longer to display text and limits us to 4 sentences of 32 characters or less per page. Even clicking rapidly, the text display is much slower, so we had to condense the writing.

Fortunately, during our research into what made the NES Shadowgate beloved amongst fans and a mainstay on top 100 NES games lists, we discovered that players adored the simplicity of the original. People raved about the clean art designs and short, sometimes humorous descriptions.

For example, an original quote for the Macintosh design reads: 'A constant breeze makes its way in through the far end of the tunnel. You are reminded of the vibrant smells of the Fens.' The NES design reads: ‘The scent of the gentle breeze through the tunnel reminds you of the Fens.’ Thus reducing the text while keeping the tone intact."

That's it for now! More info on the design and art process in future updates!

Dave

Design Documents (Part 1) and Projects We Love!
about 1 year ago – Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 08:35:21 AM

Converting 32 year old docs from MacVenture to NES style: Part 1

Let's talk design! I shared some images from the original BSG design doc in the last update. Our lead designer Chris Moseley (we love 'im) had the arduous task of taking the four binders of that very design and making them work in our new game! Let's see what has to say in part 1!

"We were lucky enough to have the original design documents from 1990 to assist us in building this version of Beyond Shadowgate. While there are advantages to having a design template to work from rather than starting from scratch, the process was not as trivial as we hoped. The first hurdle we encountered was understanding the original design documents. The template we have for Beyond Shadowgate exists as several spiral binders filled with hundreds of pages of text and artwork. The art binders are separate from text binders and lacked any index or table of contents. Before we could do anything, we had to scan each page to create digital copies, a task that Dave Marsh was kind enough to do by hand.

It took weeks to build the world map and match the artwork with the game text data. The task was difficult for several reasons. The art binders contain images that were tied to a game code system that no longer exists (the original MacVenture codebase)  so it would appear as if the reference names and relevant images were not grouped correctly. For instance, the art for a single city building is located with the art for an unrelated segment of caves. Luckily, the artistic themes helped us aggregate images for specific areas.

Finding associated text descriptions and interaction instructions for an image was even more difficult. Page 1 of art document #1 contains the following information: “R-Cell_Fenling” pertains to an individual room while “O-Brick_Manacle” refers to an interactive object within the room.

Even with digital copies of the game text data binders, text recognition software is imperfect, so searching for specific terms like “R-Cell_Fenling” often fails. To find the relevant text data for an art piece, we had to read and manually annotate the documents. The corresponding text is found on page 5 of the game text data document #1:

This process took a long time. The binders containing text were several hundred pages of single-spaced typing. Luckily, these had a general header preceding the document like “Dungeon” or “City” and unlike the art, most of the text data were grouped appropriately. But we still had 51 pages of city text to comb through to find a description of a fountain. Eventually, we developed a reference system to identify the location of key components. Fountain text: D2P27 means the fountain is located in document 2, page 27.

After sorting through the template and identifying our foundation, we had the difficult task of translating a Macintosh Computer game design to accommodate the limitations of the Nintendo Entertainment System style..."

More in the next update!...

Projects We Love

We want to give a shout out to a project we love and hope you might consider backing!

Monstrous Heroes | 5e Monster Classes

Our friend, Esper the Bard, has been running a YouTube channel forever and it's one of the most unique channels I've ever come across relating to D&D. His latest Kickstarter is a great handbook for anyone playing D&D and other fantasy roleplaying games! 

Also, he and his friends did a great playthrough of the Beyond Shadowgate demo so if you don't mind spoilers, check it out!  

I personally love this project because 1) I appreciate the unique narrative of Esper's Youtube channel and how he combines game design, narrative and illustrations into a DM setting. 2) Because of my ties to D&D (I grew up outside of Chicago and would get my mom to drive me to Lake Geneva WI in the late 70's where Gary Gygax created D&D. Actually met him a few times at the Dungeon store there!)

 Anyway... on to Esper's Kickstarter! 

Monstrous Heroes is a 5e book that gives you more than a dozen new classes inspired by monsters. It gives players tons of options to play monstrous characters, and it gives GMs resources for more in-depth monster NPCs and unique campaign settings.

Monstrous Heroes is all about playing monster classes. These serve as both your character class and your race/species. Feast your eyes upon an incredible 14 classes, complete with subclasses and new spells. Minotaurs, vampires, ogres, elementals, dragons, and more await you, so come embrace your wild side!

No more need to play a “monster-lite” kind of race that has just a tiny puff of monstrous abilities. Dive in and play characters that go beyond the typical limitations that hold you back.

Monstrous Heroes is also great for GMs who want in-depth options for advancing basic monsters into more dynamic enemies and NPCs.

If you are a role playing player or just love these kinds of books, please consider backing Esper's campaign!

Thanks!

Dave Marsh