Posted May 03, 2015
Ah, I get what you were saying. Yeah, we have several angles we can approach promoting our game. Story and characters is one. Unique game mechanics that express story is another. We use something along these lines for talking about the characters and story:
I agree about minimizing the catharsis aspect of the game - that's why I didn't go into that in the original post and I'm a little reluctant to talk more about it. In fact, you won't find that in any of our promotional material. The narrative arc will take its course and people have said that the ending is satisfying. (A lot of people who played the demos asked if there WAS an ending, which is interesting. Yes there is!) We hope the demo does a good job of teasing what the game is like. Promoting this kind of game is tricky because we have so few references to go by (and our game is quite different from those too) and it's very different from what most people think when we say "game".
I think the Kickstarter page is the best way we've told our story yet, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. We'll keep thinking about it though, for our final release.
Nick Connor just got dumped. His girlfriend of four years has left him behind. Explore the wreckage of their relationship by uncovering the memories scattered throughout their apartment. Venture outside to visit his neighbors: a displaced loner, a lost daughter, a widow, an uncertain newlywed. Strangers living within a single apartment complex.
Enter their apartments - their lives, their relationships, their innermost thoughts - in a series of surreal, textual, poetic vignettes.
I can go into even more detail about our characters since they're all very fleshed out. (Even more than what we show in the game, actually.) My initial pitch here on GOG was pretty complete, talking about Nick and the characters as well as the gameplay, but I edited it down because it was just a massive wall of text and no one wants to read that much at the start of a thread. :P I'll pass your thoughts on promotion to the rest of the team and we'll see what we can come up with. Enter their apartments - their lives, their relationships, their innermost thoughts - in a series of surreal, textual, poetic vignettes.
I agree about minimizing the catharsis aspect of the game - that's why I didn't go into that in the original post and I'm a little reluctant to talk more about it. In fact, you won't find that in any of our promotional material. The narrative arc will take its course and people have said that the ending is satisfying. (A lot of people who played the demos asked if there WAS an ending, which is interesting. Yes there is!) We hope the demo does a good job of teasing what the game is like. Promoting this kind of game is tricky because we have so few references to go by (and our game is quite different from those too) and it's very different from what most people think when we say "game".
I think the Kickstarter page is the best way we've told our story yet, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. We'll keep thinking about it though, for our final release.