Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter Update #13, $3,324,957 and Counting

The latest Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update is out and includes news on new stretch goals up to $4.5 million and new add-ons, a a test video showing the developer’s lighting solution and more. Here’s a snip:

$4M

Enhanced Tide and Legacy System: Number of Legacies increased from 11 to 16

You may recall your Legacy is determined by which Tide or Tides you favor, and that Legacy affects NPC reactions, item bonuses, and your character’s Focus. At the start, we had planned only six Legacies, determined solely by your dominant Tide (plus one for when no Tide is dominant). At $3M, we expanded that to 11 Legacies, so that your Legacy would be determined by your TWO strongest Tides (irrespective of which of the two is stronger).

While Adam, Colin, and I were developing the Tides concept over the past months, we envisioned the full system as including 16 Legacies (ten possible pairs, plus five for when one Tide dominates all others, plus one for when no Tides are dominant). We contemplated how we would handle and leverage this robust system to create an unprecedented degree of reactivity. Prior to the Kickstarter, we crushed our dreams as unrealistic and contented ourselves with 6, which we felt still left us with a more intricate system that most games have.

But at this Stretch Goal we can return to our original, ideal vision for what the Tides and Legacies can become. Torment’s fourth pillar is Reactivity, Choice, and Real Consequences and while this pillar covers far more than just the Tides, the Tides and Legacy system are at the core of both Torment’s themes and its approach to gameplay. This means even more opportunities for reactivity based on your personal play style, and a deeper, richer experience for you.

Oasis of M’ra Jolios and More Mark Morgan Music

At this Stretch Goal, we’ll also be adding the major city location of the Oasis of M’ra Jolios (the underwater city in the desert whose concept we sent in Update 11 and whose wallpapers are available on our website). And we’ll be adding even more Mark Morgan music, which of course will be included in the game’s digital soundtrack and audio CD rewards. (We’ll want more music to properly convey the mood and atmosphere of the new areas and companions we’ll be adding including the Oasis.)

$4.25M

Longer Story

More areas, more villains, more NPCs. We’ve sketched out some of these already the First Castoff, the Angel of Entropy, the Ruins of Ossiphagan, the crystalline dimension, etc. But at this stretch goal we’ll sketch out an even longer, more intricate story than we had planned. A few of the optional areas and ideas we had planned for the core story showed obvious potential for being extended into major subplots, or even adding to the core plot and storyline. We pared back these ideas to be realistic about the game scope – making a great game requires focus and you have to be willing to cull many of your ideas so that the game will be highly polished. At this Stretch Goal, we have a couple specific threads in mind we’ll resurrect and incorporate into the story Colin originally dreamed up, confident that we’ll have the resources to really do them justice.

Voluminous Codex

We always intended for Torment to have a journal that would log your discoveries within the Ninth World. Not the kind of Journal that tells you exactly where you need to go next and what you need to do you are an RPG connoisseur after all, and don’t need us to hold your hand. But what you might like is a journal to catalog your travels and discoveries, one to which you might refer when some past details elude you. One of your suggestions that we really liked was to take the journal quite a bit further. At this Stretch Goal, we’ll do that we’ll expand the journal, giving you more lore, more creature and character portraits, and more information on interesting/important events as you come across them. As with the rest of the game’s user interface, the journal will be highly customizable to suit your tastes.

Crafting Numenera

The numenera may be beyond our understanding, but they aren’t beyond our use. This Stretch Goal will allow you to learn the tricks to combining the numenera into your own custom cyphers and artifacts. This would not be a rote crafting system, but one that includes some puzzle-solving elements (though not what you’d call a mini-game) and that is tied into the world and narrative. This is yet another idea we started to explore early on for the game, but that felt out of scope for our original budget. But at this Stretch Goal, we can confidently commit to restoring this aspect of our design vision as well.