Dreamfall Chapters: TLJ Kickstarter [$1.5 million funded]

FINAL UPDATE: And it's over! $1,538,425 funded.

UPDATE: Developer commentary and director's cut stretch goal at $1.5 million.

Currently at $1.2 million, 4 days left.

Update: FUNDED!

Original post:

Kickstarter

Goal: $850,000

Deadline: March 10, 2013

- We've brought back the core team members from Dreamfall: The Longest Journey to make Dreamfall Chapters, including award-winning writer and designer Ragnar Tørnquist, creator of The Longest Journey saga; Dag Scheve, co-writer of Dreamfall; and Christer Sveen, art director on Dreamfall.

Joining the team are lead designer Martin Bruusgaard (Age of Conan, The Secret World), technical directors Kjetil Hjeldnes (The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, The Secret World) and Eigil Jarl Halse (Dreamfall, The Secret World), artist Sigbjørn Galåen (Dreamfall, Age of Conan, The Secret World), producer Rakel Johnsen (Age of Conan, The Secret World), and programmers Quintin Pan (Age of Conan, The Secret World) and Audun Tørnquist (The Longest Journey).

Details

• Direct control and point-and-click, now that's something new!
• No combat
• Funcom only wanted to make online games
• "We have invested a lot of our own money in Red Thread Games and Dreamfall Chapters, and we have also been lucky enough to receive a $175,000 grant from NFI (the Norwegian Film Institute) to make a playable prototype. Without this money, we wouldn't be where we are today."

Characters

Plenty of familiar faces will return for Dreamfall Chapters, along with many of the original voice actors from both The Longest Journey and Dreamfall.

Players will experience the story through the eyes of three different characters as their unique paths and separate plots intersect and intertwine.

The central character of our story is Zoë Castillo, a twenty-one year old girl from Casablanca who saved the world in Dreamfall before falling into a deep coma over a year ago.

Players will once more play as Zoë as she learns to use her emerging talents, escapes the Storytime, travels to Europolis and eventually crosses the Divide into the magical world of Arcadia.

We will reveal the identity of a second playable character during our Kickstarter campaign, so stay tuned for some exciting updates!

Many fan favourite non-player characters will also return in Dreamfall Chapters, including Crow, sidekick extraordinaire; Blind Bob, the not-so-blind beggar; Benrime Salmin, innkeeper of the Journeyman Inn and supporter of the resistance; Roper Klacks, author of 'Farewell to my Wizardin' Days'; the enigmatic Vagabond; the equally enigmatic Brian Westhouse; April's old friend Emma; and Zoë's ex-boyfriend Reza Temiz, whose identity was left in doubt at the end of Dreamfall -- and many more (including some intriguing stretch goals!).

And, of course, players will learn the destiny of April Ryan, and see the continuation of her storyline.

Gameplay

Dreamfall Chapters is a 3D adventure game where the player controls a character through interactive and immersive environments, using a combination of point-and-click and direct control. The game supports both keyboard/mouse and a joypad, but it's designed primarily for the PC.

Screenshots

Zoe meets a Tree Spirit (concept art)

Autumnal Marcuria (in-game)

The Storytime

I don´t know.. if that is supposed to be Zoe from the second game she looks all sorts of weird. Like they squished her head or something.

Dreamfall was pretty cool, but it has been what, seven years since that game? It may be too late for this whole thing.

@Superfriend:

I agree that Zoe looks a bit off in the pics they released so far. Hope they tweak the model a bit to make her look closer to the promo images used in Dreamfall.

TLJ and Dreamfall have some of the most passionate fans I've ever seen, so I don't think the long wait will be much of a problem. The real question is are there enough of them to fund this? And the answer better be yes, because I'm going to be extremely disappointed if this doesn't get funded.

I happened to find this on Kickstarter myself by accident just now, but I probably would have found out about it elsewhere soon enough otherwise. I certainly hope this will be advertised enough, because this game deserves to be made.

Gameplay

Zoe :3

Oh Funcom!

That whole MMO thing didn't really pan out, huh?

@Brodehouse said:

Oh Funcom! That whole MMO thing didn't really pan out, huh?

Funcom is not behind this, these guys branched out to make a new studio because Funcom is only interested in online games and wouldn't fund this.

:(

Hmm, I didn't recognize the new Zoë at all. Think I'll end up pledging for this one seeing as how I'd buy it when it comes anyway.

The Longest Journey is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I didn't care much for Dreamfall. I'm torn on whether I should care about this.

Might be my first ever Kickstarter. Been waiting for this game a long time.

ugh... why now, why not 5 months from now.... I have to save money right now! Gah

Time to put my money where my mouth is. I do wonder though if they're able to get back the previous voice actors, it's been a while.

Should i buy the Xbox originals version this game?is it fun?

@Xymox said:

Hmm, I didn't recognize the new Zoë at all. Think I'll end up pledging for this one seeing as how I'd buy it when it comes anyway.

Wierd. I recognized her and I didn't even play Dreamfall.

I remember having a difficult relationship with The Longest Journey. I really liked it, but I remember it having a structure that I felt was distinctly like a novel. I remember thinking that was partially awesome and partially annoying. It's fine to do things like read about dream interludes and whatnot in a novel. When you play them in a game, they just turn out to be frustrating.

@Keres said:

The Longest Journey is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I didn't care much for Dreamfall. I'm torn on whether I should care about this.

I'm supporting this just because of The Longest Journey, haven't played Dreamfall yet, but always liked Zoe's look. Will get around to Dreamfall this weekend, marathon!

Just pledged $181 because that's a 1000 Norwegian Kroner and a nice round number. 
  
I have faith in these guys.

I've been waiting for this ever since the moment I finished Dreamfall over six years ago! Still gotta go back and finish the first game though! Definately backed this!

Prithee silence thy tongue and takest mine farthings, good sirrah!

For God's sake let's please make this happen.

I love the previous games! I even have the soundtracks. I have been avoiding kickstarter but this just might be an exeption.

can europeans donate?

Everybody do the Kickstarter yeah yeah yeah!

@newhaap said:

@Ryanmgraef The Longest Journey is a really really good traditional point and click adventure game. The sequel Dreamfall is similarly engaging story wise, I think its only problem is a very clunky UI, which I think is worth dealing with.

@AssInAss said:

@Keres said:

The Longest Journey is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I didn't care much for Dreamfall. I'm torn on whether I should care about this.

I'm supporting this just because of The Longest Journey, haven't played Dreamfall yet, but always liked Zoe's look. Will get around to Dreamfall this weekend, marathon!

I never played Longest Journey, but I remember Dreamfall starting out really strongly - I'd bought the game based on playing the intro at a friend's house - and then being a boring slog by the end. It might've been just because I didn't have any prior investment with what was going on, but the story just didn't hold my attention at all after a while, and the ending was a... disappointment, to say the least. I also remember the gameplay as being kind of crap, and that was like 5 years ago so I can't imagine it's aged well since then.

Oh jesus take all of my money.

I may legitimately cry for days if this fails.

I getting a little uncanny valley from the female character model. She's sort of...uncomfortable looking.

@MarkWahlberg said:

@newhaap said:

@Ryanmgraef The Longest Journey is a really really good traditional point and click adventure game. The sequel Dreamfall is similarly engaging story wise, I think its only problem is a very clunky UI, which I think is worth dealing with.

@AssInAss said:

@Keres said:

The Longest Journey is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I didn't care much for Dreamfall. I'm torn on whether I should care about this.

I'm supporting this just because of The Longest Journey, haven't played Dreamfall yet, but always liked Zoe's look. Will get around to Dreamfall this weekend, marathon!

I never played Longest Journey, but I remember Dreamfall starting out really strongly - I'd bought the game based on playing the intro at a friend's house - and then being a boring slog by the end. It might've been just because I didn't have any prior investment with what was going on, but the story just didn't hold my attention at all after a while, and the ending was a... disappointment, to say the least. I also remember the gameplay as being kind of crap, and that was like 5 years ago so I can't imagine it's aged well since then.

Played dreamfall a month ago for the first time. As a fan of the first game, it was fucking great. The puzzles were kind of dumb and easy but the story was awesome. I thought the ending was all right but very frustrating because of its extreme cliffhanger nature. If you liked the longest journey you should definitely play dreamfall. I don't know why it took me so long to do it but I wasn't disapointed.

Regarding the kickstarter: 20$ and I get the game? Not sure if a 20$ game would be enough to conclude the story but at that price you can sign me up right now.

@pyrodactyl said:

@MarkWahlberg said:

@newhaap said:

@Ryanmgraef The Longest Journey is a really really good traditional point and click adventure game. The sequel Dreamfall is similarly engaging story wise, I think its only problem is a very clunky UI, which I think is worth dealing with.

@AssInAss said:

@Keres said:

The Longest Journey is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I didn't care much for Dreamfall. I'm torn on whether I should care about this.

I'm supporting this just because of The Longest Journey, haven't played Dreamfall yet, but always liked Zoe's look. Will get around to Dreamfall this weekend, marathon!

I never played Longest Journey, but I remember Dreamfall starting out really strongly - I'd bought the game based on playing the intro at a friend's house - and then being a boring slog by the end. It might've been just because I didn't have any prior investment with what was going on, but the story just didn't hold my attention at all after a while, and the ending was a... disappointment, to say the least. I also remember the gameplay as being kind of crap, and that was like 5 years ago so I can't imagine it's aged well since then.

Played dreamfall a month ago for the first time. As a fan of the first game, it was fucking great. The puzzles were kind of dumb and easy but the story was awesome. I thought the ending was all right but very frustrating because of its extreme cliffhanger nature. If you liked the longest journey you should definitivly play dreamfall. I don't know why it took me so long to do it but I wasn't disapointed.

I'd really like to be in the same boat, cause I played it back when and that's a hell of a cliffhanger to endure when you had no idea if the series had any future.

@Efesell: for a moment there I thought there would never be a sequel since the game was 7 years old. But I dug around a bit and found that the main guy was preping for a kickstarter after leaving funcom and the MMO buisness. Now I really hope they deliver with a great game next year.

I really hope @patrickklepek or@Alex report on this, it would be incredible if they were able to get more eyes on this new kickstarter-funded update to The Longest Journey franchise that we've been wanting to see for like 7 years now and hopefully help make it happen.

@Ryanmgraef said:

Should i buy the Xbox originals version this game?is it fun?

Get it as a bundle on Steam or individually atgog.com, Higher resolution, better textures.

(Also, get The Longest Journey and play that first, then Dreamfall.)

The xbox version, near as I recall, was perfectly serviceable.

Probably way more affordable on PC though, since you can get it on GOG.

We are making this happen! No matter what

I don't like that face one bit, but I'm so on board for this !

I'm throwing cash at my screen right now.

I liked the Longest Journey, but never played Dreamfall. Guess that's on my backlog now.

I hope this comes to fruition, if only to provide closure to everyone who apparently went crazy over the ending of Dreamfall.

I will definitely be backing this next payday.

This game made me wait longer than I've waited for any George R.R. Martin novel in the series "A Song of Ice and Fire."

I'm very ready for this.

This is the second Kickstarter i've backed. The first was Double Fine Adventure.

@runcrash said:

This is the second Kickstarter i've backed. The first was Double Fine Adventure.

I'm in for $150. I'm not rich by any means, but how often is one afforded the opportunity to get their name in the credits of the sequel to one of his top ten favorite games of all time? I couldn't pass that up.

Maybe it's time to play through the old ones then. The Kickstarter is already 1/4 founded, things move fast in the land of video games!

@Alekss said:

can europeans donate?

I'm right now in Czech Republic, so you should be able to.

Sweeeeeeet

hope this gets funded!

@Keres said:

The Longest Journey is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I didn't care much for Dreamfall. I'm torn on whether I should care about this.

This is a sequel to Dreamfall, not TLJ. He said that if this goes well however, they're going to go onto do a TLJ sequel. So support it, I guess?

@project343: I didn't enjoy Dreamfall. The combat ruined a lot of it. It felt so tedious, random and unnecessary. A new TLJ, hopefully point & click, sounds way more interesting to me. I do however approve of the new Zoe, as I did not like her look in Dreamfall (the Goth approach).

EDIT: I'm sorry, I confused Zoe with April. April was the one who got the Gothic make-over in Dreamfall.

I'll back this, Dreamfall had me hooked.

Edit: I just really hate when the creators fuck up the design of already established characters. That looks nothing like Zoe.

UPDATE

Hi all!

$400,000 in just over 24 hours. Wow. Our most optimistic projections were HALF of that. We're so happy and grateful to be closing in on 50% funded on our SECOND day. We can finally breathe again. We can finally dare hope for Dreamfall Chapters to be a thing that will happen, for reals. That's amazing.

So thank you, everyone who has pledged, and everyone who's about to pledge or thinking about pledging (DO IT). Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for your support, and let's keep this going! We're almost halfway, and we'd love to start revealing our stretch goals next week because they are going to be brilliant. Tell your families, friends, colleagues. Tell the world! Help us spread the message and let's get Dreamfall Chapters funded (and then some) so that we can make this game the best game in The Longest Journey saga so far.

We've been lucky enough to receive some great coverage in the first couple of days, and there's lots of juicy sweet information in these articles and interviews worth reading. In particular:

GameSpot's extensive, front-page preview, which also contains an exclusive (and actual, real-time, in-game) screenshot of a Northlands forest location.

(You want to go to there, do you not? I know I do. And whose house is that in the distance?)

This quote is from the Gamespot interview:

Kevin VanOrd: "But what happens to Dreamfall Chapters if the Kickstarter is unsuccessful?"

Tornquist: "[…] we're putting everything we have into this Kickstarter and the project, and while it's not do-or-die for Red Thread Games, I think we're going to have a difficult time making Dreamfall Chapters happen without the Kickstarter cash. If the Kickstarter fails, we'll roll with the punches and get back on our feet, for sure. Red Thread Games will survive. We're passionate about this, and we aren't going to give up easily. We will finish the Dreamfall Chapters prototype and then jump onto other projects in order to keep our heads above water. Hopefully, we can get back to Chapters some day soon, but it will definitely take a lot longer and be a lot more uncertain without the Kickstarter funds."

Some changes to the pledges. Most pleased to hear you can get the audio CD soundtrack separately, cause I asked him on Twitter about this.

Due to both popular demand and the fact that the original text mentioned add-ons without providing any details (sorry!) we are announcing the first digital and physical add-ons today.

Pledgers have been asking us about the soundtrack CD and about adding a boxed copy of the game to an existing pledge. Starting right now, you can add the following to any physical tier ($110, and $250 and up):

• Official audio CD soundtrack +$30
• One additional boxed Collector's Edition copy +$90 (limited to ONE additional box per pledge)

Keep in mind that you must have already pledged a physical tier to be eligible for the above physical add-ons.

For the digital add-ons, we require a pledge of $20 and above. The digital add-ons include:

• Additional digital downloads of the game +$25
• Extra THREE digital downloads of the game +$65
• Digital download of the audio book version of Journeys: Birth +$30

Previous games as add-ons to pledge:

We know that some of you have been asking for digital copies of The Longest Journey and Dreamfall as part of the add-ons or a new tier. Unfortunately, we don't own the rights to those games. We will, however, speak with Funcom about possibly offering some kind of deal through Kickstarter, and we'll let you know what happens with that. Until then, both games are available quite cheaply via both Steam and GOG.

Mmmmmmmm.........

Already pledged my $50, I really hope this this project succeeds and then some.

Backed. Come on people lets do this!

@Brodehouse said:

Oh Funcom! That whole MMO thing didn't really pan out, huh?

Just imagine if they'd gone for "Midgard" or even "Anarchy Online II". Instead they put so much time and effort into The Secret World. Red Thread Games isn't Funcom though, even though Tornquist is there, so I'm going in cold about what they can do.

I want the robotic bear to come back.

Also, it really irritated me when they kept on saying it is a dream come true... yet they don't even have the money to make the game...