Soul Saga! A J-RPG inspired by PlayStation classics

SynGamer

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A love letter to J-RPG classics from the Playstation era like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Suikoden, and Persona.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g11-GXceUzA[/youtube]

Kickstarter

$15 minimum pledge nets you a digital copy of the game for one of the following systems: PS Vita, PS4, PC, Mac, Linux, or Wii U.

Why a J-RPG?

J-RPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games) are the reason I fell in love with the game industry. When I was young, I spent countless hours playing games like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Suikoden, and Persona.

What attracted me to J-RPGs was that they are one of the most impressive forms of multimedia to date. They contain nearly all forms of media in one beautifully orchestrated piece of art. Traditional art, graphic design, 3D, music, sound, lighting, cinematography, choreography, script writing, acting, story telling, and a whole lot more!

But it's a fine balance. If one part seems off, the rest suffers greatly. For this reason, it's also one of the most challenging forms of media to orchestrate successfully. I hunger for that challenge!

 
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Thanks for starting this. Haven't been on my computer to do the formatting and doing it on a phone is a pain.

Anyway, I am pledged in the $15 tier. Also, the game just made its $135,000 stretch goal for Forgotten Beasts.

I wish the tiers didn't jump so dramatically for the kind of rewards I want. I would like the physical OST and maybe the figurine, buuuut $150 tier is a bit expensive for my blood for a 12 cm figure and a CD.
 
looks good, thanks for posting this. never jumped on a kickstarter before, but since it's already funded and coming for vita, i'll dive in.

 
so they charge your  CARD     MONDAY 

BUT you dont get the game till   July 2014!

one year later... though class of heroes 2 was  bad     at  2 to 3 months  this is a  FREAKING YEAR... i just buy a code cheaper on ebay  

 
so they charge your CARD MONDAY

BUT you dont get the game till [font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif]July 2014![/size][/font]

[font='Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif]one year later... though class of heroes 2 was bad at 2 to 3 months this is a FREAKING YEAR... i just buy a code cheaper on ebay [/size][/font]
Your investing in development not preordering per say. This is the purest form of supporting devs.
 
so they charge your CARD MONDAY

BUT you dont get the game till July 2014!

one year later... though class of heroes 2 was bad at 2 to 3 months this is a FREAKING YEAR... i just buy a code cheaper on ebay
As Stryder said below, Kickstarter is essentially a public way of investing in projects. I KNOW that my money is being taken now so that the product can be developed/created. But when it releases I won't have to pay again, I have already secured a copy for myself :)

 
Well, just in case any of you were turned off by the chibi style characters, the dev said he is scratching them and making life like models now.
 
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We're about $3,000 away from the next stretch goal of Atelier of Souls
The Atelier of Souls is a mysterious Tower with ever-changing, living corridors. The Atelier appears and vanishes as it pleases, it's origins unknown to modern man. The Atelier is a maze filled with traps and monsters that have never been conquered. Could there even be a better way for Mithos to prove his Guild's strength? Not only will you need to delve into the Atelier of Souls yourself, but you'll have to split your team up to help explore the whole Atelier! What treasures await you in this mysterious and deadly place?
Might be even closer if they are including the PayPal totals, which means we're only about $2,000 away :)
 
8 hours left! We're currently at roughly $187,000 (plus at least another $2,000 via PayPal) so we're very close to the $200,000 stretch goal :)
 
Soul Saga - Update 1

A FRESH BEGINNING

That’s right! I’m resetting the counter of updates now that the Kickstarter has given fresh life to Soul Saga. As I mentioned in the previous blog post, I will not have a whole lot to talk about for at least a month while the story is nailed down behind the scenes and get the concept art work started. For the past week I’ve just been exploring some different designs for Mithos with a new artist to see if anything else pops out, but I’ve fallen in love with Mithos over the years I’ve spent with him so it’s hard to consider a change. This week I also spent a lot of time catching up on messages and getting stuff ready for backer rewards for when the time comes in the distant future for that.

WRITING CONTEST
I’ve just sent out the release forms for the writing contest to all of the applicants. If you didn’t get one then I never received your application. I haven’t read any submissions yet, and I won’t be able to until you send the paper to me. The due date is about a month from now.

TIME TO WORK
My main priority right now is to get the story nailed down. The problem I’m having right now is that when I spread myself thin across so many things, it’s hard to give real creative energy to the plot. For this reason I will be taking a break from any PR related for for about a month. This means no Live Streams, blog updates, or e-mail while I work hard on making the best story I can. I have most of it already fleshed out, but need to polish it up, rewrite certain parts, and overall do a lot of polish and detailing.

I’LL BE BACK!
Please be patient with me during the next 4 to 6 weeks while I get all of this stuff done. By the end of next month I’m hoping we’ll have the artwork moving forward which will give me some more information to show you. The real news will start to pour in several months from now when the code and beta begins! I also plan on continuing the weekly live streams next month as well.
 
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TL;DR - Mike is changing A LOT of what originally made the project seeming appealing, I expressed my concern but said I would "patiently wait to see what the new path was", and he banned me. Take from this what you want, but he still hasn't replied to my refund request (e-mail and Twitter).

Perhaps I'm over-reacting, but seeing as how I backed this project and have now been banned from the ONLY source of updates...and still no reply to my refund request, this has turned into quite the nightmare. Hopefully others don't have to go through this mess.
So today I was banned from the Soul Saga (DisasterCake) forum; http://forums.disastercake.com/

This came as a surprise since I'm generally a quiet and fair member. I'm a moderator for a few sites, a respected member on countless others, and yet today sees me banned for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Why was I banned? Well it all started when Mike Gale launched a Kickstarter campaign called "Soul Saga: Episode 1". Based on the original KS campaign, the art was very "chibi", similar to Final Fantasy 3 and 4 on the PSP, Bravely Default on the 3DS, etc. This IMMEDIATELY drew me in as I loved those first two games and cannot wait to play Bravely Default. The gameplay in Soul Saga was going to be similar to FFX and other JRPG's according to the campaign page;

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/disastercake/soul-saga-a-j-rpg-inspired-by-playstation-classics

If you compare the art and gameplay, to what was recently posted in the Developer Diaries on the forum (and then restricted to members who would be "respectful" -- his words --), it sounds like things are changing considerably. Here's a comparison of the original art (during the KS campaign) and the two redesigns (AFTER the campaign closed);

NFqL3UE.png


Couple these drastic art style changes with recent posts from Mike Gale (campaign creator, man behind DisasterCake) stating "major" changes were coming and that he was going to need to reduce the scope of the project, and it's only natural some people would begin to question what they backed/invested in.

And that brings me to my current issue. As an investor in this project, I outlined, constructively (see below), my issues with the changes up to this point. I clearly stated that;

  • Art changed (see above), "chibi" style REALLY sold me, was disappointed to see that change AFTER the campaign ended.
  • Mike (creator) keeps going through artists like they're water...very concerning.
  • Game appears to be turning into a Final Fantasy 7 clone, which we have plenty of, definitely NOT why I backed this project.
  • About 2-3 days ago Mike posted on the Dev Diaries section (when it was still public) that after re-evaluating things, he was going to have to make some "MAJOR" changes and go down a "different path" and "reduce the scope" of the project...uh oh.
When I brought up my concerns (in an constructive but HONEST way) about all of these changes on the forum, Mike immediately attacked me and said I wasn't being respectful, that "threatening" to request a refund only hurts others who supported the project, that if I want "sunshine and roses" I should avoid the developer diaries...

Well, after seeing that this morning I immediately posted, requesting a refund. I was still trying to remain calm and collected in my posts and advised him that locking the dev diaries to "only respectful members" was essentially running and hiding what he was doing, AND terrible business sense.

Then I was banned.

Needless-to-say, I'm no longer interested in this project. I'll turn the first post into a wiki for others to edit if necessary...

 
yeah, i've been kinda watching the updates. not looking too promising really, and i'm not holding my breath on all the stretch goals. i'm not even holding my breath on the game itself anymore. he's shown that he can't manage this stuff at all really. i've been surveyed 3 times already to tell him i wanted a vita code(which was originally supposed to be a cross buy code), and the whole artist situation. i completely agree with all your points, even though i like the new art style a lot more. kinda shady to draw people in, and then change this much after the fact. things like this are going to ruin kickstarter for me, and i won't even give other games a chance. which is a shame, cause there probably are some really deserving people out there on it. 

i'm not even gonna bother asking for a refund, and just hope i get something semi-decent if/when it does get released. i definitely won't support him for an "episode" 2, or whatever else he follows with. 

 
I submitted a refund request with my credit card. I also posted on N4G, a couple of forums, and one gaming website *might* be putting out an article, no so much about my issue, but the fact the game itself has changed drastically from what was originally proposed during the campaign.

EDIT: harnessed the "power of NeoGAF" to spread this. At this point, Mike Gale can go fuck himself.

http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=759617

 
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yeah, i won't even bother with all that, lol.

good that somebody is gonna call him out on it though.

i really hate the cowardly road people take these days. open a forum for the game, and if you're not kissing their ass you get banned. what's the point of a forum, if you're not gonna listen to the feedback provided? this will also stop others from speaking out, cause they see what happened to you. 

i don't know much about kickstarter personally, and i haven't been watching for other games on there. makes me wonder if anyone else has done this, and how games that were funded, and released(if any), looked before/after.

 
I read your thread on GAF, SynGamer (I only lurk there though :lol:).  Same avatar, different username. ;)  What a load of shit this whole Kickstarter sounds like.  I would just ask for a refund at this point because it seems doubtful it will ever be completed.  What a disaster.  The whole "I worked for Microsoft" lie is just plain hilarious.

 
I read your thread on GAF, SynGamer (I only lurk there though :lol:). Same avatar, different username. ;) What a load of shit this whole Kickstarter sounds like. I would just ask for a refund at this point because it seems doubtful it will ever be completed. What a disaster. The whole "I worked for Microsoft" lie is just plain hilarious.
Yeah, he was a contracted tester...not even an official employee. That alone could possibly be grounds for false pretense. Right now what I would REALLY like to see if my thread (topic) make it onto a major gaming site (or seven...)

I got an e-mail reply with his "sincere" apology. It sounded so hollow I had to lol while on the train home. That's nice and all, but after lashing out, banning me, locking down the forums, and blocking me on Twitter...oh and taking 3+ days to reply to my initial request...his "apology" seems very hollow/empty. Not to mention I still have to wait until the game comes out, if ever.

So yeah, if anyone has some influence or connections, I'd love to see this up on a major gaming site(s) in teh next couple of days :)

 
So I saw your newer posts on GAF.

He won't give you a refund until it's done? But he's never going to finish it! What type of a scam is this? :rofl:
Yeah, he keeps sidestepping my [immediate] refund request. I got him to unban me, though I'm still blocked from the dev diaries so...yeah...

I don't expect to ever see my money again.

 
Sad to hear about the issues plaguing this project. Although I was only casually following it, it did appear pretty darn cool. 

 
It did look interesting, but I've pretty much decided that for any KS project, I'll just buy it when it's done if it interests me.
Also my motto. I have no problem paying a little more after completion so I have the ability to judge the final product and not the dream.

 
bread's done
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