[Game] Shadowrun returns, on Kickstarter!

[Nenjin]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns

I'd link the video but it's not a Youtube embed.

So one of my for real real dreams has finally come true, and in a better fashion than I could have hoped for.

The original creator the Shadowrun PnP game, Jordan Weisman, has bought the rights to the IP back from FASA (or at least bought a license from them) and is now asking for $400,000 on Kickstarter to fund the development of a new Shadowrun video game. With him, he brings many of the original artists, writers and content creators.

(And in case you're wondering, other games he's made: Battletech, Mechwarrior, Mech Commander, Crimson Skies, Mage Knight, Heroclix, ect....)

If you've played both the SNES and Sega games, chances are you've been waiting for this too. You probably facepalmed hard enough to shatter your own nose at the 2007 trainwreck that MS put out. Well, I don't think you get a better chance at the modern Shadowrun game of your dreams than when it's being made by the creators of the franchise.

I haven't donated to any Kickstarter projects so far, but that's about to change. Not that it needs my help anyways, $250,000 and they're barely a week in.

 

[Nenjin]

Over a week ago Shadowrun effortlessly met its $400,000 funding goal.

And today the game smashed past the $1 million dollar mark with 22k+ backers, guaranteeing fans a second location in addition to the game's main location in Seattle. They still have 14 days of funding left to go.

If you don't know squat about Shadowrun and want to read what all the fuss is about, check out this thread I'm keeping updated on another forum.

Shadowrun video games you can check out right now to get a sense of what to expect:

Spoiler!

Is there a Shadowrun game out already? A vidjagame I mean, not a PnP. Youve peaked my interest, but I have no PnP gaming group

If you want to find the roots of what's been making people squee money at this project....

Shadowrun for the SEGA

Is what I think most people consider the quintessential Shadowrun video game experience. It closely mimics the PnP character system, and you mostly commit to street samurai, decker or mage when you start the game. (You can build traits toward some stuff, but it's an expensive and uphill battle. Magic is something you either do or don't have at the start of the game.)

It's very free-form, you wander around different hubs in Seattle and take jobs from various Johnsons scattered around the city. Maybe you're delivering a mysterious package (low level), maybe you're acquiring some sensitive data (medium level) or maybe you're storming/infiltrating some place to get an important object (high level.) If you're infiltrating a corporation, it'll be a multi-story office building full of cameras, locked doors, roaming security and non-combatants, all of which play on the different skills you've got available in your party.

Each hub in the city has about a dozen locations you can visit, and you don't necessarily "do runs" to make credits. You can go hunt ghouls to make extra money on your own, there are usually thugs walking around wanting to gank you and give you their tasty loot, you can freelance hack through phone terminals, random events hit you while you walk around...all the while there are a few main quest missions which tell the story of what happened to your brother (another Shadowrunner who got gunned down in what looked to be a setup.) Matrix hacking is its own thing entirely, and while not great, it's still decent as its own sub-game and is a cool visualization of virtual reality. Programs and decks are actual equipment with quality levels and memory and ****, and so it actually makes for a satisfying experience playing a decker.

You can buy NPC Shadowrunners to bring along and have your own little crew, pretty much right from the outset if you can afford it. You really have to lean on NPC party members to do the high level missions, because they provide the skills you lack (medicine, magic, hacking, brute force, ect...) Although I suppose it's possible to play most of the game solo.

That's what makes it the most popular SR game I think, is that it lets you do what you want to a large degree and there's plenty of variety.

Then there's the SNES Shadowrun Game

It's a very different beast from the SEGA version. It's more or less on rails by comparison; the game is almost totally driven by the story. It's a bit more like an adventure puzzle game, where the SEGA version is a Jagged Alliance-esqe RPG.

There's little if any "go talk to a Johnson to get a job" in the SNES version. It barely makes an attempt at emulating the Shadowrun PnP system, opting instead to let the character be everything by the end of the game and being RPG-lite as far as your character is concerned.

Combat is meh compared to the SEGA game as well, wherein you draw your gun and you get a reticule that you move over a target to fire, then pop off a lot of rounds. It's definitely the weak point of the game, to me. Like the SEGA version, you can eventually recruit some people to form a crew but it's little more than an afterthought.

The Matrix is handled in a more classical way than in the SEGA version, where you're just looking at a network map and doing stuff on it. Programs and such aren't as detailed as in the SEGA game. The Matrix hacking is more or less story-driven too.

If it sounds like I'm really knocking the SNES game, I am somewhat. But it does one thing very well, and that's present a great Shadowrun story and setting. You wake up in a morgue with no memory and try to put together the pieces of what the hell happened to you. Throughout your journey, you encounter a lot of classic Shadowrun things that, if you like the series, pulls the game together even if many other things do not.

Then there's the 2007 FPS which I have not played. I read some interesting? mechanics for MP matches, but generally the internet seemed to think it was trying to cash in on the franchise instead of really connecting with what made it cool. In the Kickstarter video, they even lampoon it a bit.

So if you really wanna get into the series, the SNES or SEGA versions are two good places to start. The SNES version is a little easier to wrap your head around to start out with (if you're good at puzzle/adventure games), but the SEGA version definitely has more meat on its bones in pretty much every department.

You can click the image below to take you to a PDF "World of Shadowrun" Primer, that's a synopsis of where the game world and its core features stand over the last 20+ years of the series.




If it seems like I'm shilling extra hard for this game, I am! It's a sublimely worthy project, in the hands of the original creator and every dollar it earns just increases how much depth it will offer us.

If you're a fan of cyberpunk dystopias, espionage, modern fantasy, turn-based character RPGs or you just like seeing punk elf chicks fire SMGs off the back of motorcycles, get involved chummers!

 

[Harb]

I've played Shadowrun pnp for a longtime, always great fun. Although given the choice now I'll usually pick Cyberpunk2020 over it.

As for the games I have the SNES game which I think is great, like the guy says it's not a great RPG but it has a superb story and atmosphere. Always wanted to try the Megadrive/MegaCD version out but have never spotted it for less than a ridiculous price on ebay.

 

[Nenjin]

I haven't played Cyberpunk since probably the late 90s, but it's true that it is grittier and more believable than Shadowrun. To me it's just not as fun though. Maybe it really comes down to how much you like fantasy.

When you first hear about orcs with cybernetics and such, it does come across as a little cliche'd. It did even back in the early 90s when I first got into it. But when you go just a millimeter past the surface it all starts coming together.

Plus I've always like Shadowrun's approach to magic and how it singles out working with spirits as its own kind of magic.

When I have to pick between Rifts and Shadowrun, I'll always vote for Shadowrun.

 

[Nenjin]

$1,303,628! Just a little bit less than $200,000k to go, for that $1.5 million goal!

If Shadowrun Returns reaches its goal in the 8 days it has left, the devs will create a backer-exclusive mission featuring both Jake and Joshua, that will tie the threads of the SNES and SEGA games together. The mission will be available only to backers for a short period of time, then it will become available to all Shadowrun Returns players.

Hairbrained Schemes is also partnering with the makers of the Shadowrun Online game and the publishers of the Shadowrun table top game to create a "Shadowrun Universe" website, as a place for fans of the game in all its incarnations to come together to discuss and share. It's kind of unique since, for the longest time, Shadowrun has been de-centralized because it's been carved up by so many different publishers and developers. So hopefully this is the start to reuniting all the parts of the brand, and maybe re-launching it. No Kickstarter funds are or will be used in supporting the website.

Meanwhile, he's some pictures of swag you can get by becoming a higher-end backer:

 

[Nenjin]

$1,439,257

I'll just let Hairbrained Schemes do the sales pitch this time.

There are only 4 days left in our Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter! 4 days!!!

The outpouring of support for this project has been phenomenal and we deeply appreciate all of your comments, suggestions, stories and encouragement.

One of the recurring themes in the stories we hear is how the music of the Sega and SNES Shadowrun games stays with you after all this time. Whenever we read your comments and whenever the team talks about it, the conversation always comes back to,

 

[CandleJack]

Seems interesting, i've not played any Shadowrun games before, but it seems like something i'd like to play.

 

[Nenjin]

$1,540,934!

Shadowrun Returns Update #10: Bravo! - YouTube

The new $1.75 million dollar goal is....physical adepts! Man I would have totally traded the exclusive mission for guaranteed physical adepts. With only 63 hours remaining in the Kickstarter, it's going to be down to the wire if fans want to see it happen.

 

[Nenjin]

$1,623,828!


Didn't think they'd meet this stretch goal, but clearly people want their adepts.

 

[Nenjin]

Final funded amount: $1,895, 772!

Now to settle in for the long, long wait for the game.

In the meantime, you can head over to the newly christened Shadowrun.com to get your fix on discussing the game and its future.

 

[Fedorov]

It's coming out today.

► WTF Is... - Shadowrun Returns ? - YouTube

Looks very good, can't wait for Steam to free up this baby.

 

[Nenjin]

So I got it.

You get what you pay for.

And what this paid for is, as one kind of disappointed fan put it "A graphic novella with a combat mini-game."

It's not entirely fair, and it's not entirely inaccurate either.

SRR is basically a point 'n click adventure game like the SNES Shadowrun. It is nearly 100% linear. The writing, which delivers a hard-boiled detective noir story set in the Shadowrun universe, is quite good in my opinion. A little too much on the funny/casual side at times, but still engaging.

The rest....? Not so much. The rules are faithful to Shadowrun in the sense they capture the "top level" of the game with a fair degree of accuracy. But the game mechanics feel hacked off at the knees, understandably due to the budget and the fact the game was made in a year.

Other choices though, aren't so excusable. Some of the biggest set pieces are used once, as you travel through on your way to some objective. The linear nature of the game means there's no walking around, little exploration and sometimes the story contorts to get you to go the next place. There's a handful of sidequests, some optional objectives to some of the missions...but that's it. There's no "Go find a Mr. Johnson and do a run, because you need some cash." There's no real walking around IN the world to get a sense of it. The only set piece that you constantly revisit is a bar which serves as your base of operations.

There's a checkpoint save system that is universally hated, because it only saves (it seems) on scene changes. Some scenes can take up to 30 minutes, if you're the kind of person that likes to fiddle around. I say the game 'seems' to save because it does not do a good job of telling you WHEN it saves. So if you're the kind of person that likes to finish a mission, muck around in your stats and then go to bed before starting the next part of the game, the check point system sucks balls and there's no other way to put it. You'll roll back 20 or 30 minutes.

Combat is clearly inspired by XCOM: EU. But it doesn't have the mechanical or visual depth, or levels of engagement that XCOM does. Animations are passable but not very interesting, there's not a lot of tactical flexibility and the whole delivery kind of lacks oomph, from the sound effects to the timing to the actual content of fights.

That's not to say it's terrible. Here's what you can probably like about it:

-Great styling.
-Enjoyable writing that captures the world of Shadowrun very well.
-Good music
-A decent story that is at least interesting to play though.
-Enough class/race combos to support at least two playthroughs
-Shipped with a level editor and will have a ton of community created content

What's not great:

-Everything is streamlined. The tablet/PC nature of the game shows very clearly.
-It's short, about 12 hours tops.
-It's very, very linear. No exploration.
-There's not a lot to find or loot, either off of enemies or in areas.
-The Matrix is essentially a reskinned version of normal combat.
-The game engine may have been built in a way that makes persistent areas much harder to do.
-It's not a very challenging game. Karma gets handed out like candy. You have to be pretty reckless in combat to get taken down. Stats don't really have an impact on much outside of combat. It's not hard to acquire most of the stuff you'll want (although cybernetics do get pricey when you've got a fixed pool of available cash.)
-Dialog options don't really have any outcome on what happens for the most part. There aren't a lot of "tests" based on skills and stats and etiquette that factor into dialog, or into the world in general.
-For a game that requires hand-crafted content built into these scenes for them to be interesting (containers, descriptive things, things that allow interesting stuff to happen because of scripting), levels feel barren. (The odd door you can hack with decking for example. I've seen one in about half the game.)

While I think it's a solid game for what they had to work with, they clearly didn't have enough time or money to really do it justice. It seems like the bulk of development went towards the engine and asset development, with precious little left over to actually make a game out of them.

At least that's what I hope. Some of the game design choices reflect an obsession with telling a story rather than creating a robust game space, so part of me wonders if how the game came out had more to do with someone's vision than economics. In terms of how playable the Sega, SNES and PC/Tablet Shadowrun games are....right now the Sega game still comes out on top as being the most open, the most detailed and having the most features.

If you're a Shadowrun fan, you pretty much have to play this game. For people that aren't familiar with Shadowrun though (or have limited exposure to it), this game is going to stick out like a sore thumb for all the decisions it made and conceits it uses.

Right now everyone but the true believers are hoping the Editor allows the game to expand far beyond what HBS managed to do. But even that is uncertain, because the editor is missing some pretty critical capabilities for modders, like the ability to add new assets to the game. It's also not clear how much the game logic can be manipulated strictly through the scripting HBS set up.

In some ways, SRR feels very much like a game built out of an editor. What it does right now, it does in so far as an editor lets it. So the rules the game plays by, and the edges of the box it exists in, are starkly obvious. There's not a ton of nuance or mystery or depth. Which doesn't leave me feeling super excited about the potential mod content. Most of it won't even rise to the level of what HBS put out...and it's going to take some serious work and hacks to allow the game to escape the bounds set by the engine and HBS.

Anyways, for $20 it's a good story and a lukewarm RPG. Don't expect Mass Effect levels of meaningful dialog choices. I certainly got a Shadowrun game. But it has colored my opinion on backing beloved IPs on Kickstarter. The budget and time frame for SRR had a huge impact on the kind of game it ended up being. (And the insistence on making it a mobile game.) And a fan can't help but question if it's worth it to themselves to back something they know will be small, when their heart wants something big. I can't help but read my initial posts and go...."well, publishers or crowdfunding, hype will get you every time."

 

[StarworksArt]

Great project!