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Dog Mendonça and Pizzaboy: a new LucasArts-ish adventure

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/942343365/the-interactive-adventures-of-dog-mendonca-and-piz

 

A really promising Kickstarter project which seems to be inspired by the Lucas classics, as well as noir/horror movies (like American Werewolf in London) and Indiana Jones (there are references to Nazi occultism and the Vatican).

It is based on a cult Portuguese comic, and the storyline is set in Lisbon. It involves a werewolf private detective, his demon assistant (in a little girl's form), a talking gargoyle head and a young pizza boy solving all sorts of mysteries. The plot premise is this:

In ages past, Lisbon was the stage of great power struggles, a powerful capital and a strategic point that separated the Old Continent from the vast ocean that lead into the New World. Nowadays things haven't changed that much. What looks like a normal city extends its webs of mystery like an iceberg, deep beneath its surface. For the supernatural beings of this planet, Lisbon is the new Casablanca, a terrain that belongs to no one, where the hidden politics of an unseen world are at play and normal folks stress to build a life among all the forces in conflict. It is an asylum for the disenfranchised hordes of vampires, goblins and other such creatures but, like any other place like it, it's also harrased by the interest of different political agendas, secret societies and organized crime. In Lisbon, every shadow has eyes and every eye is witness to a new mystery.

They also released a playable demo, which looks very LucasArts-ish:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/942343365/the-interactive-adventures-of-dog-mendonca-and-piz/posts/1024079

 

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That looks gorgeous... wait only 3 days to go?! I guess the bottom really has fallen out of kickstarter

 

I don't think they're getting anywhere near the ipad or ps4 stretch goals of $140,000 and $200,000, otherwise i'd be all over this

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Maybe that's the problem! I look at this and think "i don't want to play that without voice acting". People see voice as a far off stretch goal which as in its current state is pretty unobtainable. I wonder if they would've been more successful if they had a higher goal with feature's like voice in as standard.

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Makes me think of:

 

fat-dog.jpg

 

Looks beautiful, but I do agree that I don't really consider voice acting optional. I doubt it's been a major factor in people backing it though, certainly not as much as the absence of iPad/Android tablet versions which are bizarrely only to be considered as a very high stretch goal. Why on Earth would they miss out those platforms considering their suitability and market exposure for adventure games?

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I hope that last push really gets them there, but yeah more and more Kickstarters are tanking it seems, from Human Resources to The Black Glove.

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God this looks amazing. Occult themes, developers from Latin America, point-and-click adventure — I'm all over this shit.

C'mon people, let's get it funded!

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Its ridiculous how this hasn't got funded. It's ridiculous actually that the first i saw of kickstarter was when it only had 3 days left to go. Poor poor marketing of their kickstarter.

  1. Make a trailer (separate from your kickstarter video) that video game news sites can pick up and use. See that piece of shit game 'Hatred'
  2. Get on all the forums!!!!! Essential! I check GAF a few time a day every day and never saw sight of sound of this game. Was there a thread on the double fine forums? Surely it could've hit $30,000 from those guys alone.
    This is somewhat dubious ground, as you can't jump on to a forum like this and start promoting your game. This would require a lot of forethought and planning, reaching out to potential fans before starting the kickstarter, giving them the demo and access to a load of promotional material (videos, screenshots) and let them do your dirt work.
  3. Get social! :) All those quoted famous game creators they have on their kickstarter page... all those quoted famous game creators with 10's of 1000's of twitter followers! Pester them for retweets god damn it. You gotta get down and dirty. Imagine what 2 or 3 tweets from Tim Schafer over the course of the 30 days could've done for this project.
    The game has absolutely beautiful art, it would be soooooooo easy to create some promotional tweets using gif.
  4. As soon as the game starts getting traction on the forums or twitter it'll get picked up by the video game news sites, see 1, you need a trailer.
  5. Ask for more money! Should have had a higher goal with voice and touch devices in as standard. How many people haven't pledge as they don't want this game to scrape through and then receive an inferior product. For example, If the goal included voice acting and either iPad or PS4 support they'd already have my money
  6. Stupid name is stupid. I don't care if its from a comic book or whatever, call it something else... ANYTHING ELSE!  Dog Mendonça and Pizzaboy can be the sub title, call it  "Ghost Dog Detective Agency" or something
  7. profit

Its such a shame as they've done 95% of the work, really well. If only they could read this forum post then go back in time

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23 hours to go, and $7K short. I backed, even though I don't think it's going to make it. Fucking shame, it's absolutely beautiful.

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It's funny how kickstarter hasn't really updated it's model for situations like this. Projects will do stretch goals about adding content if they get over funded, but what about being underfunded within a reasonable amount? Depending on the goal, anywhere from $500-$5000 isn't going to make or break a project. 

 

Let's say for 100k goal you miss the mark by 5k, why doesn't it take that into account and you clearly state what features might not be included if this happens rather than the absolute failure of the kickstarter?

 

This one is going to be so close, it will hopefully make it, but what if it's just a couple grand shy? Would seem dumb to pull the plug in that case.

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Reminds me of the art style from the 3rd Monkey Island game, which I think is underutilized.

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It's funny how kickstarter hasn't really updated it's model for situations like this. Projects will do stretch goals about adding content if they get over funded, but what about being underfunded within a reasonable amount? Depending on the goal, anywhere from $500-$5000 isn't going to make or break a project. 

 

Let's say for 100k goal you miss the mark by 5k, why doesn't it take that into account and you clearly state what features might not be included if this happens rather than the absolute failure of the kickstarter?

 

This one is going to be so close, it will hopefully make it, but what if it's just a couple grand shy? Would seem dumb to pull the plug in that case.

 

My assumption is that the Kickstarter target is meant to be the sum of money required to successfully produce the <whatever>, therefore anything less would mean that backers have put their money behind a non-viable project. Or to put it another way, this is one of few safeguards Kickstarter has to protect backers' pledges — and in a situation like this, it's better to lean towards protecting those dishing out the money.

 

If campaigns are calculating their costs correctly, missing a 100k mark by 5k would be disastrous and not just something that can be overlooked. If it was something they could have lived without it shouldn't have been part of the core funding target in the first place. That's precisely what stretch goals are for.

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Yeah I get the original idea, Thrik, but games are pretty scalable and at a certain point a few bucks isn't going to make or break it. If you were say starting a certain business or to put into production a set of physical goods, than I'd see that number as being more definite. 

 

When it comes to software production, marketing, whatever, it would be easy to say "We didn't x amount of money, therefore we cut y or z out in order to make it". The argument could be made that the "art" suffers, but I think for some, I'd rather make a scaled back dream project than never making it at all.

 

I get what you're saying about the stretch goals, but I don't agree. Under that philosophy you're saying every project cost should be calculated to it's bare bones, but this isn't how game productions work, even in AAA. It's the reason why every project scales back during production, no one sets out to create the bare bones frame work of a game and hope they get the time and money to add some extra features. And who is to define what the core features would be? Every game is different. 

 

Say for something like this, what if they decided to have less sound design that would save them 5k? It certainly wouldn't make it any less of a game if it did, it just isn't ideal, yet, they would make their kickstarter if they set out to do that.

 

Kickstarter should be to fund projects under the best case scenario, that doesn't mean you get greedy, that's what the stretch goals are for, best case scenario + your wildest dreams come true (more or less). In the real world, you may not get your best case scenario, but I don't believe that means an entire idea and plan should be thrown out, that's why I think there should be an incorporation for missing the goal by a marginal amount. 

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Nice to see this is happening! Extreme CMI vibes, from the background art especially. That's a good thing.

 

It's a bummer that there's likely no VO, but at least there's no chance of bad VO (which is worse than no VO).

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I personally don't understand why people are against a game with no-VO. I can't think of any game I've ever played that just featured text that I thought was worse off for it. Maybe I'm just old.

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I personally don't understand why people are against a game with no-VO. I can't think of any game I've ever played that just featured text that I thought was worse off for it. Maybe I'm just old.

 

Agreed, I've actually felt the mandatory shift over to voiced games has done more to limit storytelling than almost any other big change in games in the last 15 years.

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In this case. I got super nostalgic for Monkey Island 3 and a big part of that nostalgia is the voice work

Oh, cabana boy

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Yeah, MI3's voice work was very good. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some of the stuff that came after.

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Yeah a game like Plansecape Torment would be impossible. Actually I think their solution is good too, which is to have a few key lines voiced here and there. It's pretty easy to have your mind fill it in from there.

 

Edit: Also very cool that this ended up getting funded. Quite the push at the end there. Hopefully it's good :P

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