Hi, Thomas here. I'd like to start out today's update with a huge "thank you!" for the immense outpouring of support we received for our stretch goal to add the Gullet into the game. We received some incredibly generous pledges from many backers, including an anonymous donor ($1665), Pookie ($1271), Najiok ($900), Hiro Protagonist ($750) and even a pair of $750 pledges from our very own Colin McComb and Kevin Saunders.

Unfortunately, we fell somewhat short of our goal (about 15%, or $35,000) to see the Gullet added to the final game. However, we did not want to see this great effort of yours go for naught, and we also realized based on comments about this stretch goal as it closed that awareness had not spread widely enough. Some people suggested extending the deadline, in part to allow word to spread to where it didn't before.

So, we're moving the stretch goal deadline for the Gullet to the end of Friday, October 31. Just over $30,000 to go!

Coincidentally this is also when we will be closing a number of add-ons from our Kickstarter period. So while new backers are more than welcome you may also want to consider some of our add-on options! And to remind everyone: please specify your add-ons by Friday, October 31!

Click to expand...

The Gullet Stretch Goal

With the relaunching of the site we're also looking at introducing some limited stretch goals. These will be for things for which we have not yet made the final call – content or features that will not happen in our current schedule, but that we hope to be able to add.

So we're pitching you – our funders – the Gullet, one of the areas from the Bloom. George Ziets did an amazing job on the Bloom design. We originally planned to cut a number of areas from that location but have been able to bring some back in, but in the current scope the Gullet is not a part of the Bloom's design. Here's George's description of the area:

Deep in the guts of the Bloom is a jumble of fleshy veins and cavities, known to natives as the Gullet. It surrounds a foul organic stew, containing the minds and memories of those devoured by the Bloom. The pulsing of a titanic heart reverberates from somewhere below… if you find yourself trapped here, the sound will drive you mad.

Few reach this place by intention. Most are eaten by a Maw and emerge in the Gullet, half-digested, to spend the final days of their lives in screaming agony. Transdimensional echoes of the Bloom's victims wander through the tunnels, lost and insane. Bizarre creatures, bred by the Bloom in its guts, burst from their wombs to hunt. Forgotten machines and artifacts lie half-submerged in Bloom-flesh, plucked from distant worlds of the past or future.

The only way out of the Gullet is down… to follow the sounds of the Bloom's beating heart and descend to a place where the Bloom's consciousness is at its most malignant and aware.

This area would add a ton to the Bloom, particularly as it provides more adventure-type gameplay and will better balance out its pacing. But currently we think we’re already stretching our team with the areas we’ve already committed to. With our limited stretch goals, we'll be looking to raise enough money to commit to adding the Gullet to the Bloom, by bolstering our environment art team to both make the Gullet and to benefit all other locations as well – remember that all pledges support the game development and reaching the Stretch Goal in reality gives far more than just the Gullet.

Of course, we have to make the call so that we can plan ahead, so our time is limited too: we're looking to raise our total amount raised to $4.75M by October 16th! If you’d like us to restore George Ziets’ Bloom design and fully implement it according to his original vision, consider spreading word of our continuing crowdfunding (or increasing your pledge) to help us reach this goal. All of your friends who missed the Kickstarter can still contribute to making the best Torment ever. (And while the new pledge options aren’t as favorable as those we gave you during the Kickstarter, they are better than after we’ve stopped crowdfunding and are onto preorders.)

Click to expand...

So here we are… four days remain on the Gullet stretch goal, with a little under $7000 left to raise. Before the stretch goal ends, I’d been meaning to say more about how the Gullet came to be, so if you’re interested in the realities of area design, read on!

I wrote my design for the Bloom in late 2013. At that point in time, very little work had been done on the content side of our game. All we had was a Mere that consisted of two scenes, and we still had to determine the overall look and feel for Torment. My goal was to give our players an experience that was as close to the original Planescape Torment as possible - I played PST a lot while I was writing the design documents, trying to make sure I hit just the right tone and analyzing what worked and what didn’t.

One element that sometimes worked… and sometimes didn’t… were the dungeons. While PST was primarily a dialogue-driven experience, it included a few dungeons, strategically scattered throughout the game. Some were purely combat-focused, like the mausoleum in the Hive. Others were a mix of combat, exploration, and dialogues, like the catacombs beneath the Buried Village. I thought the latter worked best. Combat wasn’t one of PST’s strengths, but when it was balanced with exploration and a few dialogues, the whole experience was tense, interesting, and fun. It also contrasted nicely with the dialogue-driven gameplay that preceded and followed it.

So when I designed the Bloom, I decided to include something similar (though shorter in length) – a “dungeon” environment that skewed more heavily toward exploration and discovery. And since players would pass through this area on their way into the Bloom’s depths, it would be set toward the end of the zone… a perfect time to pay off on some of the player’s earlier choices.

That’s how the Gullet was born. This was where old and forgotten things would be found, devoured by the Bloom in the distant past, sinking slowly into its guts, finally coming to rest here. Echoes of the Bloom’s victims would wander here too, including victims the player may have “nudged” to their demise. In the end, all things find their way to the Gullet. (Last week, somebody on the team likened it to the Bloom’s liver, which I thought was a particularly apt comparison.)

I drew up a map on graph paper, numbered the encounter areas (old-school D&D-style), and detailed everything that would happen in the Gullet. When the other leads reviewed the design documentation, they seemed to like the Gullet content, and I was pretty excited to include all this weird and horrific stuff in the game. But strictly speaking, the Bloom could function without the Gullet (and its most important content could be relocated somewhere else), so when we realized that we didn’t have the resources to develop all the content I had proposed, the Gullet became [C] priority. I was sad, but such are the realities of game development.

In the old days (by which I mean 2012 or so), a cut was a cut. If we didn’t have the resources to implement everything we had planned, we made the decision to cut something, and that was that. The cut content was forever lost. But now, in the strange world of crowd-funding, the Gullet has a second chance at life. Will we make it to the stretch goal? I hope so. I think it’ll be fun to prototype our version of a PST dungeon, full of exploration and weird discoveries. If you’ve contributed, thanks for getting us this far… and if all goes well, I’ll see you on the other side of the finish line.

Click to expand...