• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Tom Hall (Commander Keen, DOOM, ROTT, etc) has a new kickstarter!

C

celebi23

Member
photo-main.jpg


3e70f0eeaed654a44e0a11661bd175cd_large.jpg


Commander Keen’s creator, industry veteran Tom Hall, is announcing his return to fun, funny sci-fi platforming, and he wants to bring you ALL with him! Not just to play but to CREATE A GAME EASILY yourself! WORLDS OF WANDER is a PLATFORM GAME CREATION TOOL that lets you build and share levels, worlds, and whole game experiences with other players. But making a game can be daunting, so it starts with a COMPLETE GAME for you to mess with -- the spiritual successor to Commander Keen -- SECRET SPACESHIP CLUB!
Click to expand...

c5d64cd1983eb70b79acd450400d08c0_large.png


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/368238381/worlds-of-wander-plus-secret-spaceship-club-game
 
Difficult pitch to get excited about. Love Commander Keen so I can't doubt the guys credentials and the pitch video was nicely put together. But the concept seems to lack a unique touch or feature to set it apart from other indie games which feature level editors or the more accessible 'game making' programs out there.

It also doesn't help that the art style makes it look like an educational game from the early 90s.
 
Loved Commander Keen but whoever made that pitch should really go back and try to minimize the amount exclamation marks and the words in all caps. I had a rough time just getting through the rewards list. The character design itself is passable, even kind of cute but those backgrounds are so blah that they kill some of the interest for me. The game could be great, if people really get into the level editor it could result in a lot of good material but I'll probably pass. I think I also have a bias against big names using kickstarter.
 
Neither the video or the page do a particularly good job of describing the features. Like can you edit the art, or are you stuck with "art packs," like the one suggested in the Stretch Goals? The best I can work out is that you choose from different "planets," each one with a single preset art style.

And early on is the Box 2D stretch goal, adding cool physics puzzles into the mix!
Click to expand...
Isn't... Box 2D free...? Implementing it isn't, I know, but I'm kind of surprised it's not already in the project.

The game engine is a side-scrolling platform engine, with three layers of parallax -- so the background scrolls with beautiful depth behind the game!
Click to expand...

...Wow, three whole layers, you say... that's... quite a feature to highlight.
 
There are a literal billion indie 2d platformers at this point. You need to be doing something *really* special to get me to back something like this.
 
I don't think this is going to work either Mr.Hall.

Also these are making me less likely to support him if he ever gets an Anachronox sequel Kickstarter going.

Plus there are so many 2d platformer tools around. Both this and his previous pitch seem to be 2 to 3 years out of date.

OLD SCHOOL RPG LIKE THEY USED TO MAKE. You mean like the BG remake, Project Eternity, and hell the Witcher games?

Make your own 2D PLATFORMER!!! You mean like Little Big Planet?
 
Azih said:
OLD SCHOOL RPG LIKE THEY USED TO MAKE. You mean like the BG remake, Project Eternity, and hell the Witcher games?
Click to expand...

Except he was talking about actual old school RPGs from the 1980s, not games from the late 90s. Wizardry in particular (and Might & Magic and The Bard's Tale and so on)

Of course, you illustrate the point that apparently no one remembers any RPGs from before Baldur's Gate.
 
fvng said:
You're playing the wrong 2D games
Click to expand...

Most 2d games these days look like games from Newgrounds and Kongregate or second rate iPhone games. Of course, that is a problem caused by subjective association, primarily. But even apart from that...the difference to low-res art is that you can't half-ass it with the hi-res stuff, whereas the layer of abstraction provided by more pixelly art tends to cover issues such as lack of detail. That is how I feel anyway. Something like Rayman Origins looks great of course, but the low- to mid-budget indie stuff just makes me barf most of the time.

Another example would be the newly announced remake of Treasure Adventure Game:

CFh37Wz.jpg


While objectively the hi-res art may be better it just looks sterile and lifeless.
 
Ehhhhhhh.

It's nice that you're trying to make a platformer again Tom, but this is two Carmacks and a Romero short of actually recapturing everything that made Keen so great.
 
I'll be honest, I'm more interested in the platform/tools than the eventual game he'll make, even if he does say it's a spiritual sequel to Commander Keen.
 
DiscoJer said:
Except he was talking about actual old school RPGs from the 1980s, not games from the late 90s. Wizardry in particular (and Might & Magic and The Bard's Tale and so on)

Of course, you illustrate the point that apparently no one remembers any RPGs from before Baldur's Gate.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. It was still a horrendous Kickstarter.
 
Alextended said:
Awful... And it looks like a collect-a-thon on top of that...

So many good freelance pixel artists out there, why didn't they pick one?

Compare to this one man show for example:



Previous works:



Loads more great artists out there... Derek Yu, Pixel...
Click to expand...

these games look amazing

edit: why did all the links disappear? do I have an extension on Chrome that's messing with me?
 
Lol, why would they even show that? This looks like a 10 year old freeware game.

Of course, since it's supposed to be an editor, the graphics aren't all that important since you hopefully can edit all of that, but still. This doesn't like they've put any effort whatsoever into this. The shown gameplay features are pretty basic as well (the programm would be a complete disaster if you couldn't do the stuff shown in the video; there's nothing new or impressive about it) and the physics are lol-worthy. Even taking into account that it takes place in space it still looks bad.

Damn.

It's like he didn't learn anything from his first kickstarter.
 
They're showing the (WIP) platform engine not the art.
It has like 10 classic mechanics already.

I think that the idea is that you can change the art assets and make your own 2D platformer.
 
Fersis said:
They're showing the (WIP) platform engine not the art.
It has like 10 classic mechanics already.

I think that the idea is that you can change the art assets and make your own 2D platformer.
Click to expand...

Well, they are doing a terrible job at selling the engine. The trailer shows nothing but a a set of standard platforming mechanics that are not even worth mentioning. It would be a total disaster if a dedicated platformer editor wouldn't have these features and since there's really no lack of such "game makers" the video clearly doesn't show me a reason why I should invest. It's also not showing a single glimpse of the actual creating environment: how will I know if the editor is good if I don't see anything of it? The only thing I got from this video is that a) the physics look awful and b) the included game apparently will look awful.

After reading the Kickstarter description again, I see that there's not even a creating environment to begin with. You build your levels in-game so to speak. So I guess that you can forget about making anything more complex this way that go beyond what Tom Hall made the engine capable of... not to mention that I don't understand how you will be able to use your own graphics this way.

God, seriously, this is terrible. The Kickstarter description does a good job of telling me almost nothing about the editor, apart of it being built-in the game and easy to use.
 
Matt Chat with Tom Hall, starts out talking about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnOPfjs_0w

Bah, with only four days left, this looks like it's going to fail badly. That's really too bad, it looks like it would have been fun to play around with. Sure, there are other game creators for PC, but most of the decent ones (like Clickteam's stuff) are still not cheap, and this looks even more approachable than theirs, while still having some nice options with the scripting language and such. I hope it somehow happens anyway. :(

Azih said:
I don't think this is going to work either Mr.Hall.

Also these are making me less likely to support him if he ever gets an Anachronox sequel Kickstarter going.
Click to expand...
Anachronox was good, but Commander Keen's better.

Plus there are so many 2d platformer tools around. Both this and his previous pitch seem to be 2 to 3 years out of date.

OLD SCHOOL RPG LIKE THEY USED TO MAKE. You mean like the BG remake, Project Eternity, and hell the Witcher games?
Click to expand...
None of those are even remotely like the RPG they wanted to make. Legend of Grimlock, maybe, but none of that stuff.

Make your own 2D PLATFORMER!!! You mean like Little Big Planet?
Click to expand...
That's not for PC, and you're stuck with LBP physics in that thing too, while here that's all obviously customizable... and there are some things you can make platformers on the PC, but this looked like it could have been a pretty nice one.

Box of Bunnies said:
So they put up a proper gameplay video. It... doesn't look particularly good.
Click to expand...
Yes it does. Simple, but good. And it's obvious that Tom did some (or all?) of the artwork, too, a lot of it's clearly in the same style as the Keen games were. :)

wrowa said:
After reading the Kickstarter description again, I see that there's not even a creating environment to begin with. You build your levels in-game so to speak. So I guess that you can forget about making anything more complex this way that go beyond what Tom Hall made the engine capable of... not to mention that I don't understand how you will be able to use your own graphics this way.
Click to expand...
Did you miss the part where they described how you could write stuff in scripting language, or something? Kind of sounds like you did...

31d2f295a623525528ab7e895fa5bb02_large.png
 
Man I wonder if Tom Hall will try again with another project. This is two kickstarters that have failed miserably to capture people attention.
 
Zarx said:
Man I wonder if Tom Hall will try again with another project. This is two kickstarters that have failed miserably to capture people attention.
Click to expand...
I love Commander Keen and Tom Hall's stuff, and hadn't even heard of this kickstarter until the Matt Chat episode (mentioned above) aired... yeah, this somehow just didn't get noticed by almost anyone.

Oh, and the Matt Chat addresses stuff like how this will work, why Tom thinks that this is needed even though stuff like LBP and Game Maker exist, etc.
 
Messofanego said:
Sounded like Matt was desperate, blowing smoke up Tom's ass by saying it looks fantastic and polished. Do they seem to be aware why the Kickstarter isn't doing well in the whole interview?
Click to expand...

But the program does look good and easy to use, and as Tom says there is a level of complexity in those other programs that this wouldn't have... being able to just draw lines and then have it fill that in as a platform is a great idea, for instance. It definitely looks reasonably polished. Being able to easily switch art styles without redoing anything's pretty cool stuff as well.

dygiT said:
Poor Tom. He seems extremely enthusiastic about his games but nothing ever seems to work out for him these days. Two failed Kickstarter campaigns is crazy.
Click to expand...
Yeah, he obviously needs something... I'm not sure what, though. Better marketing for the projects maybe? It does seem lacking. Better initial presentations too. The actual ideas, and games, look great... I very much want to play them. :(
 
Can you build an Anachronox sequel in it? :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Hexborn - A NEW Mix of Blood, DOOM and Vampire Survivors
Trailer Indie 
0
88
IbizaPocholo replied
Story-wise, DOOM Eternal Has The Worst Main Antagonist (Spoilers)
35
586
\m/etalStorm replied
[Tom Warren] Microsoft’s new Xbox chief starts making her mark
2 3 4 5
209
2K
mckmas8808 replied
SCUF has introduced a new PS5 controller -- SCUF Omega
News 
15
200
Zuzu replied
Harada has opened a new studio with SNK. VS Studio.
2
58
667
BennyBlanco replied
Top Bottom