A Vampyre Story:Year One graphic adventure puts you in the role of lonely Mona, a reluctant vampire trapped in a castle by her master.
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A Vampyre Story:Year One graphic adventure puts you in the role of lonely Mona, a reluctant vampire trapped in a castle by her master.
About this project
UPDATES 1-6 - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/876324751/a-vampyre-story-year-one/posts
Introduction to A Vampyre Story: Year One.
In case you don’t know me I’m Bill Tiller, illustrator and game designer. And I love making classic, Lucas Arts style graphic adventures.
Back when I was in college I trained as a character animator in the classic Disney style, which turned out to be a perfect fit for developing graphic adventures, due to their story driven narrative, cartoon animation style, and vibrant art direction. They were very reminiscent of classic Disney movies I loved as a kid.
During my tenure at Lucas Arts, I worked on two adventure titles - Steven Spielberg’s The Dig and The Curse of Monkey Island and enjoyed the hell out of The Secret of Monkey Island and Full Throttle. Exposure to these great games put a dangerous thought in my head “Must smash head into wall!” When I woke up I decided to make my own graphic adventures. That is exactly what happened, no lie!
So I formed my own company, Autumn Moon Entertainment, where I made two graphic adventures: Ghost Pirates of Voojoo Island and the award-winning A Vampyre Story. I would have happily continued making more adventure games but thanks to the Great Recession, funding became tough to find - until Kickstarter ™!
Now you, the gaming patrons of the world, get to play the role of publisher and help fund A Vampyre Story: Year One, a prequel to A Vampyre Story. This project was designed to be a short, episodic length game.
A lot of people ask, “Bill? Uh,Tiller? Earth to Tiller. Hello?! Why do you look so tired all the time, and why are you making a prequel instead of a sequel?” Well I have kids is the answer to the first one, and the second answer is it’s about math. Funding smaller game projects is easier and would allow us to improve the game engine in preparation for future games. On top of that, I have always wanted to do a short prequel to A Vampyre Story so players could see what Mona’s life was like during the years before she finally escaped from her captor. The first game hinted at what happened in that time to Mona De Laffite and Froderick, and now I want the opportunity to show it.
So about the game, our story begins when Mona, a captive at Castle Warg for a few months, sees a little bat desperately trying to escape from three nasty looking bat ‘thugs’. Mona, not being a big fan of bullies nor things ‘nasty looking,’ decides to help the poor fellow out.
Froderick, the cute little bat, is trapped, surrounded by the bat thugs. And it is up to Mona and the player controlling her to save him by exploring the castle to find a way to help.
While exploring, Mona will meet several denizens of the castle including Arachnea Rose, a rather large and intimidating spider; Poe Possum, a vile and tick-ridden vermin; and the three Belfry Boyz - Slim, Brat, and Rocco, their pugnacious leader. Inky, the local lake monster, and Shrowdy Von Keifer, Mona’s vampire captor and master, both make an appearance, too. Mona also has to deal with a pair of man eating plants and makes a new female friend …or is she a friend?
A Vampyre Story: Year One we hope will appeal to fans of A Vampyre Story, fans of Disney style animation and fans of “old school” Lucas Arts graphic adventures. It will even have the same puzzle driven game play and the same Graphical User Interface (or as we say in the biz, GUI) as The Curse of Monkey Island. The art style will use hand painted 2D backgrounds, and have 3D animation, real time lighting, and 3D characters models.
This episode should be about one third the size of A Vampyre Story, and have about five total hours of game play. Our reach goals will include converting the game to other platforms, making the game bigger and increasing the quality of the game art and tech. We will announce the final reach goals at a later date.
In the spirit of the Kickstarter reward suggestion page we tried to come up with rewards that adventure games patrons expect and some that are unique to us. So a lot of the rewards are art based like sketches and art by me and my art team and even some video tutorials form our professional team. I think you will like them.
Thank you for considering backing this project! I am so excited to get back to graphic adventures and work with my old team again. And I am really looking forward to making you all happy by giving you a great game.
And remember, graphic adventures aren't dead. They are undead!
Risks and challenges
We are just going to upgrade the existing engine so it works with Win 7 and 8, and add all the new features that comes with it. We have done this twice before so all in all, I am confident about the development of "A Vampyre Story: Year One
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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If you played the first A Vampyre Story, this game will be about one third the size, that is why we only charged $8 for it, and are only asking for about a third of the cost of a full game.
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No, this is a short self contained prequel about how Mona met her good friend, Froderick the Bat.
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Yes, if we raise enough money. We estimate it will cost $40,000 to $50,000 to convert the PC version to Mac and Linux based on past experience. but we are upgrading our PC game engine and that may (hopefully) lower the cost of conversion substantially.
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Yes. She is now - and in the game will be - played by Mary Nitschke, a wonderful actress and the wife of Jeremy Koerner, who plays Froderick. We did this for a few reasons. Mary and Jeremy have great chemistry when performing together, Mary is very easy to work with, and gives a great performance.They are very easy to direct and easy to coordinate with. Rebecca Schwartz is great and did a great job on A Vampyre Story and I like her a lot. But many, many players and critics felt the pitch of her voice was too high and was tough to enjoy. It didn't bother me but it did bother quite a few members of the team. So we felt it best to make the change and Mary was the logical choice, and we have been very happy with her. But I'd love to work with Rebecca again on the game.
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Yes.
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Yes, will have German, French and Spanish subtitles. And if there is a strong desire among backers and it fits in the budget we will seriously consider additional languages for subtitles.
Rewards
Funding period
- (30 days)