Mail Call: Regnum, The Missing Ink

Checking some of my many email addresses yesterday I came across a message from NDG Studios, operators of Regnum Online (aka Champions of Regnum, formerly known as Realms Online, not to be confused with The Realm Online). Despite having one of the worst identity crises in MMOdom, Regnum (let's settle for that) seems to be doing rather well for a six-year old game that gets very little publicity.

I discovered it very late and first wrote about it just under a year ago. It seemed quiet then, although certainly not moribund but things may be looking up. I'd already noticed that each infrequent time I remembered to log in there seemed to be a patch, which I always take to be a healthy sign, and both the website and the launcher got makeovers which make them look very handsome, but the capper came in the mail: Regnum is now available through Steam.

Wanna race?

Being on Steam (provided your game actually works) can't but be a good thing. I don't know an awful lot about how Steam operates or how difficult it is for a game to gain access to the platform, but NDG were stoked about getting Regnum into the line-up, as well they might be. They were so stoked they thought they'd celebrate by sending me a Hyena.

They sent me a load of other stuff too - a lockbox, some elixirs, the usual festive package, but it was the Hyena that caught my attention. It's a limited-duration mount that lasts 30 days and it looks great. I had no plans at all to play Regnum this month but I'll be darned if my little fox-lemur is going to miss the opportunity to ride around on a mean-looking Hyena.

So, congratulations Regnum and thanks for the ride.

Not looking quite so bright, at least not yet, is the Kickstarter campaign for The Missing Ink. Pete at Dragonchasers has a piece up about Kickstarter that gives chapter and verse on some of the drawbacks. So far my hand hasn't entered my pocket for a Kickstarter campaign.

I've followed several and they've broadly broken into two camps: No Hopers and Dead Certs and

Adventure ahoy!

it seems pointless for me to contribute either way. In every case all I'm interested in is playing the game when it releases. I find most of the inducements and sweeteners are largely irrelevant and I don't suffer from the inexplicable desire many seem to have to "donate" to what are, after all, commercial businesses. About the only time I can imagine getting my credit card out would be near the end of a campaign where success looks touch and go and my contribution might have material significance.

The first tranche of MMOs I took an interest in on Kickstarter all failed hard, at least as far as their campaigns went. Storybricks carries on, in some mysterious way, behind closed doors. Dark Solstice also appears to have withdrawn behind a veil, leaving only this tantalizing glimpse of what may one day emerge in its place. Panzer Pets, it appears, took the Kickstarter hint and gave up. Their website remains but nothing has been updated since the campaign crashed and burned.

Glad you clarified that.

Red Bedlam and The Missing Ink start a long way ahead of any of those. They have a fully working and eminently playable beta up and running on the PC, which they are actively and effectively developing. The game is already fun and very well worth trying. The Kickstarter campaign is for additional funds to bring it cross-platform to iOS and Android (although the Kickstarter verbiage only mentions Android in the leader and then goes on and on about iPads...).

So far they have 29 backers and have made just over 10% of their very modest target. I foresee another limp failure. I hope I'm wrong, because not only do I like The Missing Ink very much, I'm pretty sure I'd like it even more on a Tablet. I just hope that if they do fail on Kickstarter it doesn't put paid to that prospect altogether.

Meanwhile the Old Big Beasts continue to maunder out of the primordial gaming swamps, drawing lost worshipers in hordes. For now, I'm happy to sit back and watch them fight it out.

Kickstarter - Sport of the Future.

With apologies to Lloyd Dobler. Hmm, now I want to go watch the whole thing.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website, has started to draw indie developers like Woody's MMO bug zapper in reverse. These are three I'm watching:

Storybricks

You probably know about this one already. It's the 21st Century equivalent of Gilsoft's 1980s masterpiece The Quill. No? Just me then. Designed by Brian Green among others, (you may know him from Meridian 59 and Psychochild's Blog) Storybricks aims to handle all the heavy coding and design lifting in the background, leaving you free to tell your own stories in any way that fits, from single-player RPG to dynamic, persistent MMO.

There's an "open alpha demo" on their website if you want to poke around. I fired it up the other day and it runs in a browser. Takes just a few seconds and you're in. I once lost a summer to NeverWinter Nights so even thinking about what could happen with this one makes me nervous!

Panzer Pets

I read about this one on Massively and it grabbed me instantly, the way Wildstar did. Kaozz at ECTmmo likes the look of it too. The opening line of their Kickstarter pitch pretty much sums up why I feel these guys deserve to succeed: "There are three things each gamer likes, collecting stuff, customizing characters and leveling up!" That's me sold.

The design aesthetic looks exceptionally solid and counter to what you might expect from an MMO focused on collecting pet robots and making them fight each other, the whole thing oozes worldiness.

I'm really, really not sure about that name, though...

Dark Solstice 

This one may well have passed you by. I've been following Dark Solstice for what seems like forever. Years and years. I was in the closed alpha for a while, although I rarely logged in. It was one of the straws that broke my alpha-applying camel's back.

I fear the candle I once held for this game may have burned too long. I'm not sure I'll be playing even if they do make their target, but I hope they make it all the same. They've been pushing this stone up the hill for so long they deserve to see it roll down the other side.

The competition is stiff, though. At time of writing Storybricks has yet to hit 10% of its $250k target and there's only two and a half weeks left before the cut-off. Panzer Pets has about the same, with three weeks to get the rest of their $85k. Dark Solstice only just started. So far they have one backer. They want $50k and they have a month left to get it.

I wish them all the very best of luck. I'm going to pledge something to at least two out of the three but I hope they all end up getting made even if the Kickstarter thing doesn't work out. If it  does, expect to see more and more small studio MMOs going down this route. If not, well, games got made before Kickstarter...