About this project
CONSORTIUM
$70,435
3,142
"I had the opportunity to play an early build and came away filled with wisdom and excitement...It has the beginnings of a fascinating science fiction adventure, with heavy touches of mystery and meta-fiction."
- Adam Smith @ ROCK, PAPER, SHOTGUN
"Overall, there's a definite, "condensed" Deus Ex vibe to it (the original) and the visuals remind me quite a bit of System Shock 2" "...the gameplay, if you're into that sort of thing - story-heavy first-person RPG-shooters, that is - looks like it could be amazing."
- Andy Chalk @ THE ESCAPIST
"I thought the writing was top-notch, as well as the voice acting....I was enjoying the story, and I was curious to see where it was going. You certainly had me hooked!"
- Timothy Cain @ Obsidian Entertainment. Senior Programmer on Project Eternity,after having played CONSORTIUM.
The first "official" Stretch Goal is at $70K, but there are a number of things unlocked as we make our way towards it.
$55K: The third most spoken language on Earth is Spanish, so we intend to localize the game to Spanish first.
$60K: There are a few very cool interactive scenes in CONSORTIUM that we have cut due to time and resource restraints that we would love to be able to squeeze back in if we hit this goal. These scenes would increase player freedom and add more consequences to actions...
$65K: Localization to another language, decided by YOU, based on a poll.
$70K: "EXTREME ZENLIL SIMULATION". All exterior doors will be able to be shot out, triggering completely simulated decompression events, potentially causing main characters to die. The environment becomes significantly more fragile (lights, computer screens and more can become damaged). Turbulance will feel more real, creating a more immersive and believable feeling of flight.
$75K: Localization to another language, decided by YOU, based on a poll.
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UPDATES:
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A Visual History of Consortium
Meet the Writers
Stretch Goals Detail
Diplomacy or Combat?
A.I. Video Update
Interactivity
Interview + Game Mechanics: ENERGY
The iDGi Mandate + Steam Greenlight
The Consortium Mind Communicator (C.M.C.) + Information Console
The Consortium Energy Assault Rifle (C.E.A.R.)
The Kinetic Assault Rifle (K.A.R.)
Character Update #1: Pawn 32 and Pawn 4
Character Update #2: Pawn 1 and Pawn 12
Character Update #3: Kiril Angelov & The Homeless Mercenaries
Character Update #4: Pawn 24 and Rook 13
Character Update #5: Pawn 19 and Pawn 44
New Tiers!
*More On Limited Tiers*
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ADD-ONS:
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How the add-ons work: Simply add either $30 or $10 onto whatever tier you've pledged at, and you will automatically be sent these add-ons. You could also choose to add $40 for both of them. NOTE: The "iDGi-1 Discoveries" document is included in the $50 "CONSORTIUM KNIGHT" tier and higher but the DVD is exclusively an add-on.
CONSORTIUM is a first-person story and character-based role-playing shooter set in an interactive world defined by your choices.
Rather than endlessly exploring a huge, expansive and ultimately static world, you’ll find yourself within a dynamic, bustling, interactive and alive micro-environment: the Consortium Command Vessel, C-3800-D "ZENLIL."
The crew of Zenlil live their lives and do their jobs throughout the ship, reacting to your presence and actions where appropriate. Freely walk among them and speak to everyone you encounter, experience what it’s like to be a part of something much bigger and brighter than anything you could imagine – and then choose to help ensure it stays that way or work to tear it apart!
CONSORTIUM is a role-playing game in which you are able to role-play as yourself. You are you (as in you can speak as yourself, a man/woman from "our world") and you're being given the opportunity to physically control a man from a parallel world. This man is first day Consortium field agent Bishop Six, operative for a powerful peacekeeping force in a not-quite-utopia future of 2042.
How you choose to speak for, interpret and play this role is entirely up to you! Do you choose to role-play the Bishop and be what the Consortium want you to be? Or do you choose to forge your own path simply using his body and voice as your vessel for communicating with and exploring their world?
You have total control over the Bishop's inventory, medical state, and the state of all his weapons, armor and equipment. You can also customize his Battle Utility Suit with hard-point devices such as personal deflector shields and shock absorbers.
You must also manage and balance the Bishop's Utility Energy, with which he can power everything from medical nanites to energy weapons... as well as Storage Energy, which represents stored items such as armor, weapons and ammunition.
- The choice to say nothing is always available every time you are able to speak.
- Antagonize your enemy or disobey orders for maximum action!
- Choosing to kill or incapacitate your enemies will have a definitive impact on the world!
In CONSORTIUM you will face combatants that feel and act like real people, and combat situations which only exist to serve the storyline. There’s only one question you need to ask yourself when it comes to combat: do you want to be a cold-blooded killer or a merciful savior?
Combatants you face will flee when afraid of you, become bolder when overpowering you, fall unconscious, become mortally wounded, bleed out, and surrender.
- Make the right choices and it’s possible to play all of CONSORTIUM without ever raising your weapon.
- Hold realistic feeling conversations with twenty-one different and fully realized cast members.
- Build relationships that develop and change over time based on your choices.
Intelligence. The first thing you’ll realize when traversing Zenlil as Bishop Six, is that everyone you meet have wholly unique personalities and each react to your presence differently. Some people like you right from the start, some don’t... and all can have their minds changed through your dialogue choices, action, or inaction.
Alignment. All twenty-one cast members you’ll find in CONSORTIUM have a number called "Bishop Six Alignment." This number represents a character's general affinity towards you. Everyone starts with 0 (neutral). As you interact with people, you will often see plus or minus numbers over their heads, indicating their B6 Alignment changing. Over time you will begin to notice characters with high or low B6 Alignment treating you differently.
Note: All alignment HUD elements (the number that appears over character heads) will have a toggle option in the main menu, for turning them off!
CONSORTIUM is the game equivalent of a novel that you'll want to curl up on a couch with and lose yourself in. It is designed to stoke and challenge your imagination. What this essentially means is that we are very proudly single player. Not that there's anything wrong with these things, but you’ll find no micro-transactions in our game, nor will you require an internet connection to play.
This term is taken from the imaginary “fourth wall” envisioned in the production of a play – the wall that separates the characters and the world of the story, from the members of the audience. When characters speak directly to the audience, or acknowledge their presence, this is referred to as “breaking the fourth wall.”
CONSORTIUM is a unique experience in that we are constantly skirting along the edge of the fourth wall, as the player is both part of the story-world, as well as the audience. We believe this technique makes for a more interactive, and fully immersive, form of storytelling, which has yet to be employed to the full extent in other forms of entertainment.
The story of CONSORTIUM revolves around a universe parallel to ours, but in the year 2042. This is a surprisingly bright future... even nearing utopic. Global hunger and energy problems seem to have been largely solved, and war has taken a back-seat to peaceful endeavors. Thousands of people are living in orbit, on the Moon, on Mars...
iDGi-1 is the name of a satellite constructed within our own universe, capable of connecting you to this parallel universe and to the mind of a powerful, sentient A.I. residing on the other side. While exploring this new world through the use of iDGi-1, you will inhabit the body of a human being known only to us as Bishop Six (his true identity and back story have been concealed from us to avoid a "temporal breakdown”). Upon first connecting to the other world, it will appear that your interdimensional arrival has gone unnoticed by its people.
But not everyone is ignorant to your presence! The sudden and unexplained murder of a Consortium officer racks the crew, and a once-thought harmless enemy re-emerges with a frightening array of experimental weaponry and equipment. Shortly after your arrival you will learn that someone in their world knows who you really are, where you're really from, and they'll stop at nothing to ensure the Consortium does not use you for their own agenda.
Who, why, and how are all mysteries that must be unraveled for yourself. You are led to believe that the Consortium is a force of good in this world you have entered – but is this truly the case? As the true purpose for your presence is revealed, you will come to realize that your actions will have far-reaching consequences, not only for their universe – but for ours as well.
Far more detail on the story behind CONSORTIUM can be found HERE.
CONSORTIUM unfolds in a non-linear fashion, its presentation and pacing dictated in many ways by your conversation choices, actions and what you choose to look at. There are no cut-scenes and you always have complete control over what to do and say.
Why does the game look so simple?
The iDGi-1 satellite is a brand new technology, and is currently only able to stream basic details of the parallel universe to your computer. Details that are considered extraneous are discarded due to bandwidth limitations. In addition, iDGi-1's environment streaming ability is currently limited to a low color light spectrum.
It is imperfect, and the quantum connection often experiences various issues, resulting in distortion, especially when the host you are inhabiting (Bishop Six) is injured.
Our flash-based A.R.G. started in 2010, and acts as the back story to everyone and everything happening in CONSORTIUM - and it is absolutely 100% free to play. Three years of A.R.G. updates (with the help of the public!) has helped us build the level of depth required to truly make the CONSORTIUM game world as immersive as possible.
To begin your own explorations of the other world – click “Experience” at INTERDIMENSIONALGAMES.COM and then wait for the Moon to eclipse the Sun on the space scene. Click the anomaly once it appears. This will take you to when we first connected to their world, back in 2010. The system will allow you to ‘play along’ as if you were with us at that time. NOTE: Keep an eye on the Progress Bar on the top right of the screen, as this will tell you how close you are to being caught up to present time.
Here are some of the things you'll find while experiencing our A.R.G...
- Audio & written blogs.
- Audio puzzles.
- Alternate world/future News Articles and Mission Reports regarding countless elements/characters in our story.
- Regular puzzles/riddles/hidden secrets that are what A.R.G.s normally comprise of.
- Hand-written journals also with secret codes and puzzles hidden within.
- Hidden dialing coordinates (find them all to dial into an entirely different time/place!).
- An entire “internal Worldview Industries” e-mail program, packed with over a hundred email correspondences between characters.
- A *massive* in-game forum between the public and characters of our game.
- A fun “arcade-style” game called the Greenberg Device, with 21 unique levels of play.
- Once you reach the 93-99% complete mark (according to the in-game progress bar) you can then access the "King-Made Question Bot." Simply put, you can directly ask this BOT questions about anything at all, and it will reply to the best of its ability.
We invite YOU, the gamers, to become our publisher!
We want hundreds, hopefully even thousands, of people to play our game before we're done to help us focus on the right elements to polish, and to be an active part of the process of balancing and refining the game. Also, because we are entirely independent, we do need some financial help to allow us to finish the game to a degree of polish and gameplay refinement to meet our high standards.
CONSORTIUM is being developed with Valve Software’s SOURCE engine, which has been used to power immersive single-player experiences such as Valve’s Half-Life and Portal series of games.
We were chosen from over a thousand applicants for the “experimental stream” of the awesome new Canada Media Fund (C.M.F.). Their support has allowed us to come as far as we have...
We were also backers of the incredible Kickstarter-funded Oculus Rift project (have a dev-kit incoming!) and believe that CONSORTIUM would be the perfect fit for this technology. We will be doing everything in our power to make this a reality.
CONSORTIUM is actually the first in an envisioned large series of games. Each game would be completely separate, yet connected through the game world, its characters, and of course the meta-storyline involving the "in-game" version of Interdimensional Games. And to be absolutely clear: this Kickstarter campaign exists solely to fund and help produce one game, CONSORTIUM, and any future games will be entirely separate entities.
Gregory is an 18 year video game development veteran. Through working with companies such as Cavedog Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Relic Entertainment, Turbine, and Radical Entertainment, Gregory has experienced video game development from many vantage points. Gregory has played principal creative roles for the following titles, among others: “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets PC,” “Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction,” and “Scarface: The World is Yours.” Gregory was also the project lead for Cavedog’s ambitious “Amen: The Awakening” and wrote the original game design treatment for Relic’s “Homeworld.”
Jason started his video game development career in 1994, with Sierra On-Line. He worked on such game classics as “King’s Quest 7,” “Space Quest 6,” and “Leisure Suit Larry.” In 1996 he became the animation director for “King’s Quest 8,” the first real-time 3D adventure game from Sierra. Jason was the animation lead for “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets PC,” where he worked closely with Gregory. Jason has been running his own art asset development company, Turnstyle Studios, for over 10 years.
To learn how Jeremy's music will be used as a storytelling tool in CONSORTIUM, click HERE. From the very beginning of this project we’ve believed that music is one of the most important storytelling tools we have at our disposal.
Known to many as the “John Williams of video-game music,” for the past 18 years Jeremy Soule has provided music for some of the most successful and admired games of all time. “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,” “Harry Potter,” “Total Annihilation,” “Guild Wars 2,” and the “Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” are a small sampling of Jeremy’s games.
Jeremy worked with Gregory on the unreleased AMEN: THE AWAKENING project and they’ve both been chomping at the bit for a chance to work together again in a creatively unrestrained fashion.
Risks and challenges
Consortium as a game is very nearly realized; the current build has hours of implemented content. This is not just an idea, or the outline of a project; it is a game that will be complete in just a few months. We're asking for help to polish a product that is low risk, and a very high return.
That being said, shipping games is hard and challenging work!
Among our remaining challenges is the Beta testing phase: this is when we test the game across as many machines out there as possible, gathering all feedback and working hard to get the game completely bug free and polishing all aspects of the GUI and game mechanics.
The success of this campaign will allow us to take the time needed to do this right, but most importantly of all: it will make us directly accountable to YOU, the gamers, to make sure that we're focusing on polishing all the right parts!
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Funding period
- (30 days)