Kickstarter

Hello kickstarter, Jordan here.
Its been a little longer since the last update and I know most of you are wondering "Wheres the gameplay you said we would have". Long story short, I dont have it today. Our server crashed (and not in a software way) and we cant do anything beta wise until we get the parts from newegg. I am sorry for the wait.

I, However, do not want to leave you all hanging waiting on faulty parts, So we are going to explain how combat works in our game and a small bio of the revealed character as well as release another song.

The song you hear below is actually the FPS guy's levels main boss. The song isnt his battle song, but his main theme. The boss's name Is "Professor TIddly-winks" and hes the clown-scientist Hired to create the zombie outbreak. Why clowns, you ask? Cause I cant think of anyone more evil.

How most attacks work in brawlers is the characters have 2 attacks; Strong and weak. Most of the time, its set punch (strong attack) and kick (weak attack). We took this idea further and gave each character 4 attacks; 3 normal attacks (A,B and C) and an ultimate (D). When we designed the attacks for the character, we placed the characters in one of 3 categories.

• Range (Strong range attacks / weak melee attacks)
• Mid (Middle ground. Not as strong as the other 2, but not as weak either)
• Melee (Strong melee attacks / weak ranged attacks)

Every character has both ranged and melee, but how strong those attacks are depend on the category they are in. The attacks they have are ALWAYS in order of power. A ranged character's (A) attack is his strongest and his (C) attack, which is his melee, is his weakest. The (D) attack is the ultimate attack and will always be more powerful than the rest, but they have to fill up the ult bar before they can use it.

Hello all!
Im sorry it took a while to get the update out... We have been hard at work on the game. A lot has happened in the last week or so, But more on that at a later date.

Today I am very happy to bring you 2 new pieces from out game. The first is a song from the game (which will also be on the soundtrack!) called The Castle of Lies. The song itself is from the D&D nerd's level which is actually a campaign being run for them. The song plays in the 4th stage of his level when they walk into the ancient cathedral where they must fight its guardian before being allowed access to the final stages.

The second piece we have today is more concept art. Below this paragraph is the D&D nerd. He can always be found carrying bag of dice and his rulebooks, ready at a moments notice to run a campaign.

We thank all of you who have pledged from the bottom of our heart and we once again apologize for the delay between updates. We are planning on more updates as the kickstarter goes on. Some time this week, we will be releasing an update with alpha gameplay and the bios/ attacks of the characters.

The concept for The Nerds Among Us is a simple one. Lets take the stereotypes that people associate with nerds, like All FPS players are foaming at the mouth, engrish spewing twitchy guys who can only think about guns, Or that All Japanese otaku own a Japanese sword and stand in front of the mirror and scream to 'raise their power level', and make a game that throws these exaggerated persona's into iconic situations. With this idea in mind, we started looking at what game type would this fit into. The gameplay had to be fun, but it also had to be able to express the level of humor that would fit with the theme.

A couple of game concepts came to mind, but the one that stuck in most our minds was a 4 player co-op beat em up brawler, Like the ones you use to go to arcades to play. Upon doing some research on the genre, we came to a sad realization. Beat em up brawlers don't exist on the PC outside of emulation. This was shocking to me seeing how big co-op type games have become common place in gaming. Games like Terraria©, Magicka© and Borderlands© proved that people are enjoying playing with others more than ever, and not just in a competitive way.

With these things in mind, We at Bone Daddy set out to change that. We started building the game immediately with 5 core concepts.

• Make the game from the ground up as a PC game and keep what that means true. Wide range of resolutions, customizable keys, controller support (if you want it) at launch, a server list, ect.
• Make the game fun. Keep it modern, but do not forget what made brawlers fun. Brawlers once ruled arcade next to fighters and there was a reason for that.
• Make sure its online/lan was implemented right. No one likes a laggy game and there's no reason a co-op game should lag.
• Make the story funny and keep it that way. This is a game that's meant to make people laugh. Its not there to talk about how nerds are oppressed or being super deep.
• And finally, release a full game that runs well. No one likes buggy games and no one likes day 1 patches that are sometimes bigger than the game itself. A game should play right out of the gate and not have content cut to then be sold back to you at a fee.

After we had these core concepts down, we went to work on the game. We traveled to as many arcades as we could and played untold hours of all the beat em up games we could. We played everything from Battletoads© and Simpsons© to even the lesser known (and loved) Power rangers©.

All of the games we played had 3 things in common: The controls where tight and responsive, the co-op felt like a real co-op and not something that was decided at the last minute (as a lot of games have been doing lately), and good story and better characters. Each one of the characters in the game where memorable. Either from the design of the character (the things they said, the art style, how their attacks where animated) or they where faithfully recreations from an already existing IP, they stood out.  The stories of these games,by today's standards, wouldn't be considered 'good', But they did what they where suppose to and they did it well. They made the world of these characters believable without much really needing to be explained.

We knew that this kind of game would be a hard sell to publishers. Some of us have been working on games for years and years so we already knew the reaction we would get if we went to a publisher and said "We want to make a PC only Game (at least at first). The genre of the game itself is all but dead unless you find an arcade and we don't want to hold back on the jokes. We're pretty sure its going to get an M rating". So, wasting no time on this, we decided to do it without any publisher money. That was the easy part.

The next part in the process was harder... We had to pick an engine. We knew we wanted it to be a 2.5 like the old days and most engines of today can handle that without a problem, so that wasn't really an issue. The big issue came when we started discussing requirements. We all want this game to run on PC's from years back. Optimization can only go so far and we needed an engine that, if coded right, could work on single core machines without a problem. The one thing we all agreed with outright was we would NOT release a for sale flash game.

This was also at the time we where experimenting with graphics, both in flat cel shading and full 3d in a 2.5 3d environment. The gameplay didn't really change when the graphics went from a full 3d model down to a flat cel shade, so as soon as we got the gameplay down, we started alpha testing it with a few number of people. All the alpha testers pretty much said the same thing. Gameplay is fine, the humor is there, but the graphics just dont fit the brawler style we where going for. That's when we decided to sit down and look at our options.

Our biggest issue was pixel art. While we all agreed that it would fit the game perfectly, we where also hesitant for a few reasons. This game is, without a doubt, an indie game. Almost 8 out of 10 of them that are released are pixel based and I know that might be growing thin on some people. That's when we all decided to let the fans decide.

Over the next week, as we continued on with the games development, we searched for an artist. There is a lot more to doing game art than we first anticipated and it goes much deeper than simply "Draw us these characters", which we found out. After about a week and a half of searching, we found our artist. And her first order of business? lets get the characters in the style that matches the humor of the game.

When we started on the games initial planning, we made 6 characters with wildly different personalities and nerd hobbies. We then wrote down some of the more extreme things that we had heard/imagined that they would do. We took them and based our characters around these things. Their personalities, attacks, everything. Here's some examples.

• FPS Guy: Is a slightly heavyweight male who cant go 2 sentences without saying something offensive. he speaks in engrish, Loves nothing more than to snipe people (but hates campers) and doesn't find teabagging to be unsportsmanlike, but rather an encouragement to come get him. His attacks involve him shooting guns, guns and even more guns. When he stops shooting, he starts to twitch and if he goes on too long, starts to foam a little at the mouth and starts getting angry.

• Dungeon Master: is a tall, thin male who always has his DM book and a bag of dice ready. While most people around him would rather read the latest vampire love book or tales of a young wizard, he is too busy getting ready for his next adventures with real wizards and vampires. His attacks involve him casting spells out of his old leather spell book and deciding the fates of everyone by rolling D20's.
• Comic Book Chick: is a medium height female who, for the longest time, did what her parents didn't want her to but never really made an effort to stop: Read comics. Her love of comics lead her to many things like comic conventions, book signings and cosplays. Finally, she had enough... She whipped together a costume just for her and became a super hero, prowling the streets and rooftops at night. Her attacks involve her pulling all sorts of objects out of her endless utility belt (like bear mace!) and self learned karate moves.

We've been working tirelessly on the game to make every bit of it look good, from each attack's animation to simple things like movement. As much that has gone into the characters themes and their attacks, an equal amount has been put into the characters levels.

Each one of the levels launching with the game is based around one of the characters hobby and is iconic to it. The FPS guy has to travel through a zombie ravaged city to find out who made them. The comic book chick's world is always changing styles as the level goes on, each one drasticly different than the last. The Dungeon masters is one of his campaigns he wrote being run by his nemesis, but come to life.

The game is already well into alpha and is planned to release in late October, early November. The reason the game is so far long is because The Nerds Among Us was 100% funded by its team. However, That's the reason we've come here to kickstarter; We're running dry. We wont have the funds to finish the development of the game without the support of you, the backers of kickstarter. 

We are already in talks to get the game on digital distribution services such as Steam and GoG. As stated in the rewards, The game you will be receiving will be DRM free and to do with as you wish. However, we also know that a lot of people like putting their games on their steam account / GoG account. That's why we are going to send everyone who receives the game from kickstarter CD keys to use on those services when they become available.

We plan on releasing the game with 6 characters at launch with 4 levels. Each level will consist of 4-7 zones. Each zone is roughly a 10-15 minute stage with each level being a stand alone story. The game will be both a single player game and will will have internet/lan co-op play day 1.

We are also planning extensive post launch DLC in the form of more playable characters, more levels and other random things. We plan on releasing holiday themed costumes and levels as well when the events roll around. As long time PC gamers, we know first hand how much paid DLC angers gamers. That's why we are going to release as much DLC as we can for free. I would love to say all, but we are an indie team and sales determine how much we can afford to release free. Any content, however, that is paid content will be cheap and if you don't have the level DLC but someone else does and they host the game, You can play with them. We will never split the community. You should not be punished if you don't buy DLC. 

We are also hard at work on a level builder to be released after launch and will be free to all owners of the game. The level builder will be a fully working modding tool, enabling those who want to make their own levels, complete with events, music, ect. Don't like the levels we made or bored after you played them and we havn't released the new content yet? You can make your own or look at other levels made by other users.

What happens if you raise more than the asked amount?
If we raise more than the requested amount, there's a lot we would like to do. all of the things listed are plans we have, but we would need to raise more than the requested $6000 to make it happen. The $6000 we've asked for is just enough to finish the game.

• More content. The more money we raise, the more people we can hire. While the core team is working basically for free until this launches, We cant and wouldn't ask anyone else to work for free. With more funding than our initial request, we could bring on more artists and programmers to have more characters, levels, and other in game content ready (and free) at launch
• Faster devolpment. More people working on the game means we can get the game out faster. The game is already set to release sometime in October-November, But if we had more people working on the game, we could get it out faster.
• Port to other platforms. The game is currently being developed for the PC and Mac but we would love to port the game to linux and the consoles. If we reach atleast 25k, We can start the development for these platforms. If this happens, We will send an extra copy out to everyone who pledged 10$ or more on the platform of choice. If you pledged enough to receive more than 1 copy ($25) we will send you the extra 3 copies to do with as you please (on the consoles of your chosing)
• More swag. Everyone at Bone Daddy Studio's has been going to cons and trade shows for years and we know how much everyone loves swag. If we reach atleast 30k, we will be sending everyone who pledges atleast $10 something special. We will reveal what it is if we reach that milestone.

If you have a question, ask it in the comment section. Members from Bone Daddy Studio will be answering as many questions as we can daily.

Bone Daddy Studio's was formed by Jordan Icenhower who, while not doing anything noteworthy in the industry himself, filled his studio with long time contacts, friends and old co-workers. Some of the noteworthy games members of the team have worked on are WoW and Ultima Online.

The Studio itself is based out of Euless, Texas, only 30 minutes away from DFW.