About
The Procession to Calvary
£8,338
351
Sing for sailors, conspire with cardinals and outplay the local organist on your hapless quest for absolution.
The Procession to Calvary is a sequel to the critically acclaimed 'point-and-click Renaissance masterpiece', Four Last Things. It's an adventure game made from Renaissance-era paintings and public domain recordings of classical music that strives to be intelligent and ridiculous in equal measure.
The Procession to Calvary will follow on from the events of Four Last Things, following the same protagonist as he returns from his brief sojourn in hell and continues his quest for absolution. This time the journey will take him out of the Northern Renaissance vision of Four Last Things and into the South, to a world built largely from Italian art (with some Hogarth thrown in for good measure).
It's kind of like if Monkey Island 2 had been made in 17th century Florence by a time travelling Terry Gilliam wannabe.
The Procession to Calvary will be released for PC, Mac, and Linux some time in 2019, with a mobile build likely to follow at a later date. (While Four Last Things was made using Visionaire Studio, The Procession to Calvary will be made with Unity, which means I will definitely be able to live up to the promise of Mac and Linux builds this time!)
Four Last Things was released in February 2017. It was widely praised by players and critics, nominated for a number of awards, played by Markiplier, and selected for inclusion in events all over the world, including Bit Bash in the Art Institute of Chicago and the SAAM Arcade in the Smithsonian American Art Museum... That's right, it's highbrow af m8 :p
In order to give anyone who hasn't yet played Four Last Things a chance to catch up, it will be cheap cheap cheap on Steam for the first two weeks of this campaign:
The artwork for The Procession to Calvary is made by cutting up, collaging and animating classical (mainly Italian Renaissance) paintings. Some scenes are made from just a few scantly-edited images, while others incorporate many different paintings, edited and blended to create one (almost) coherent whole.
Animating these paintings can be a bit tricky, but with carefully selected images, and some snazzy cutting and pasting, it's generally possible to get a pretty good effect. While all the animation in Four Last Things was done in Flash (yes, I still use Flash), The Procession to Calvary will also include some more complex animations built in Unity, using Anima2D.
A lot has happened since we last met our ill-fated protagonist. The Reformation has come, a holy war has been fought, and our old pal Heavenly Peter has retreated back to the relative safety of the south. In the wake of this wave of destruction a slew of prospective new religious leaders are popping up. Will you follow the teachings of Huldrych Zwingli and turn to the Bible for answers? Will you become a Mennonite, take a dunk in the lake, then hide in a bush until the whole things blows over? Or will you stick to your guns and follow your old masters South? I don't know yet, I haven't finished writing that part...
Don't panic! This is not unusual. When developing Four Last Things I created all the artwork before writing a single line of dialogue. This technique allows me to focus on making the artwork look as good as possible which, for me, is the most important part of these games. It also encourages a more surreal/silly story, which I think fits well with the style of the art.
The Procession to Calvary will feature a similar visual interface to Four Last Things, with an eye/hand/mouth verb coin and a basic slide-out inventory. It will also feature an optional hotspot indicator for all the pixel-hunt haters and an updated menu system, with a proper save/load system and an options menu.
Thanks! You get access to backer-exclusive updates.
You get a digital copy of the game for window, Mac or Linux (DRM-free + Steam key)
+ Beta access
All previous rewards
+ Digital soundtrack
+ Digital art pack
All previous rewards
+A special backers-only build, with exclusive content too obscure and/or rude for the commercial build
+ Alpha access during development
All previous rewards
+ A 'small box' physical copy of the game, in a unique hand made case
All previous rewards
+ A Renaissance style portrait of your lovely face (or your cat's if you're shy) included in the 'Patrons Gallery' in the game
+ A digital copy of your Renaissance portrait
All previous rewards
+ A 'big box' collectors edition, including a bunch of physical goodies ('Small box' game, t-shirt, poster, anything else I think of between now and then)
All previous rewards
+ A personalised build of The Procession to Calvary, just for you - Want the main character's face replaced by your portrait image so you can play as yourself? I can make that happen! Want all the music replaced by Skrillex tracks? Good choice! Want all the nouns to be replaced by the word 'stagnant'? That's a bit weird, but hey, this is your build, you can do whatever you want with it! (within reason!)
For more info about The Procession to Calvary see:
Risks and challenges
Other than the possibility of getting sued by the Museo del Prado (not a genuine concern), or haunted by the ghost of Hieronymus Bosch (genuine concern), there are very few risks involved in the making of this project. As long as I can afford to keep feeding myself, everything should be fine...
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Funding period
- (30 days)