A couple of old-school RPG developers are looking for help via Kickstarter to bring a little bit of classic sense back to the genre in a game unabashedly named Old School Role-Playing Game. OK, that's just a tentative title obviously, but they are not quite sure on how many games they will be making. Loot Drop, comprised of Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall, is asking for $1 million to find their project, and should their stretch reach $1.9 million dollars, the two will split their funds and create not one but two Old School RPGs.
Brenda Brathwaite is an experienced RPG developer from being involved in every Wizardry games, a series known for its brutal difficulty and open-ended choices and character creation. Tom Hall is one of the co-founders of id Software and has a long list of games under his belt, including the Commander Keen games, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3D. In terms of RPG experience, he developed Anachronox, a Final Fantasy inspired western PC RPG powered by the Quake II engine.
Loot Drop's promises include a laundry list of everything fans of 1980s RPGs look for in a game; creating characters, gaining experience, character alignment, open world exploration, quests, multiple races, and obvious inspiration from staples like Ultima, Wizardry, and Might and Magic. Once the team has raised the requested $1 million, they will begin to expand on races, story, areas, characters, and a hardcore difficulty mode.
Most impressive though is the packaging. Brathwaite gives a look through one of the old Ultima boxes in the Kickstarter's video and promises to deliver everything Ultima once did, claiming that "with old-school RPGs, the adventure began with the box."
If you have a hankering for the old fashioned RPGs predating Final Fantasy , Fallout, and Baldur's Gate, this sounds like a legitimate deal to reignite that old creative flame. Dozens of celebrity game developers have already endorsed the project, so you can rest assured that if you know what you are getting into, it will be money worth spent. Between this and Obsidian's Project Eternity, its an exciting time to see what kind of RPGs we can get out of Kickstarter.
I dabbled a bit in Anachronox back in the day, but the only Wizardry game I remember playing as a kid was Wizardy VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, and it was way over my seven-year-old head. Maybe I should give it a try again.
After one day, the campaign already has over 1,100 backers and has raised roughly $43,000. 32 days remain for the campaign.
[via Kickstarter]
