Adventure Gamers - Forums

Hey guys, Liviu aka Mr Underhill here, letting you know about our new game, Near-Mage

You have been invited to stay in Transylvania for the summer… Only to find out that you come from a long line of witches. Meet your new vampyre and strigoi classmates, embrace your destiny, and enroll in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick!

Near-Mage is a narrative-heavy adventure game with a bit of role-playing DNA where you study Magick in Transylvania

It’s finally summer! You’re 18, you’ve just graduated highschool, and the road ahead is as blurry as it is open. All your friends have decided what colleges and universities they’ll be attending, but you, well… You’d rather think it over while playing video games.

Suddenly, a letter from your great-aunt Domnica arrives. She lives in Transylvania, and she’s inviting you over for the summer. Seems like a perfect way to clear your head and decide what it is you want to become in life…

But what if, once you’ve arrived, you discover that both you and your great-aunt come from a long line of witches, and you are offered the possibility to enroll in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick?

A summer in dark and storied Transylvania, and a chance to become a…

· Study spell crafting in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick as a mage-in-training -  a Near-Mage;

· Experience a deep and engaging story that plays like an adventure game;

· Craft your own spell inventory, use it with different results in every play-through;

· Dozens of unique characters in and around the Institute for Magick - your spells change their lives for better or worse;

· Vampyres, pricolitch, moroi, strigoi, ghouls, shtima, and more mythical Romanian creatures to interact with;

· Over 80 lushly rendered environments hand-painted in glorious 4K resolution;

· Traditionally animated frame-by-frame;

· Darkly colorful atmosphere bolstered by meticulous on-location research of myths and folklore;

· Rich cinematic orchestral score (recorded with live instruments if stretch goal is reached);

· Fully voiced by professional actors (if stretch goal is reached);

· Dozens of itemized outfits and hairstyles to customize your main character;

Switch from pointing and clicking with your mouse to direct control via gamepad on the fly;

· A game about Transylvania made by Transylvanians!

If Near-Mage seems like something you’d be into, you can wishlist us on Steam:

We’re Kickstarting Near-Mage today!

The Adventuregamers forums were the first place we ever showed Gibbous, back in December 2014. Five years later we managed to launch it, and it did so much better than we had dared dream. We hope you guys will join us in the journey of creating its follow-up, Near-Mage.

Ready to answer any questions, but once the Kickstarter page is live you’ll find a much more detailed description of how the game works there

Thanks!

This looks great. Your selling points are amazing.

Plus you get to dress like a a punk/goth/drummer in a hc band. I’m feeling this.

Thank you! We were 100% funded in 12 hours, which is mind-blowing. We honestly didn’t expect this outpour of love and support. Time to start smashing some stretch goals! 😁

Mr Underhill - 06 August 2021 03:07 AM

Thank you! We were 100% funded in 12 hours, which is mind-blowing. We honestly didn’t expect this outpour of love and support. Time to start smashing some stretch goals! 😁

This is well deserved. The quality of Gibbous is above what the bigger developers in the adventure genre are putting out these days.

Hey!

I was on holidays and I missed this. Already backed it. I really hope you to smash the translations stretch goal for obvious reasons.

You rock!

The game looks good.  Too bad there’s not going to be a Mac port for it.

Lady Kestrel - 09 August 2021 12:52 PM

The game looks good.  Too bad there’s not going to be a Mac port for it.

That was asked on Kickstarter Lady K and this was Mr Underhill’s reply:

“Hi Michael, thanks for your support! We didn’t officially say Mac was doable because we are still looking into it, but we’re doing our utmost to make it happen. We totally understand if you retract your pledge, but we’re looking into it and we’ll decide whether we can officially say it’ll happen by the end of the campaign. Thanks for understanding! Hopefully we’ll announce something in the following days.”

So don’t write off a mac port just yet

I missed that.  Thanks, Jabod!

Hey all! Thanks for all the support.

Basically the mac port comes down to us affording a Mac computer for our programmer. Given the rate at which we’re knocking down the stretch goals, we will include it in an intermediary stretch goal that we’re pretty confident we can hit. Since we don’t yet own said machine we were reluctant to promise it from the start.

It’s been an amazing first 6 days, the campaign is going way better than we had hoped. We’re seeing a huge surge of backers that have never heard of us, whenever we get a pledge without the Gibbous Steam key add-on it’s an exception - looks like there are a lot of adventure gamers out there who didn’t even know we existed

I have to say, I love Kickstarter ‘cause even though adventure games seem to be in a constant cone of shadow, they’re still SO popular with crowdfunding platforms. We were on the front page of Kickstarter for 4 days straight, in more than one place. We’re the #1 most popular video game campaign, and pretty popular overall in the games category. It’s confirming what I’ve already been convinced of from our first Kickstarter, that fans of this genre are some of the most dedicated and generous out there. It really is heart-warming.

Thanks for supporting us!

At this rate, you can include an stretch goal for porting the game into VR and Assembler hahaha

😁 I’ll be very happy to see the localizations one smashed. Less than $400 to go!
We’ll reveal more fun stretch goals once that one is hit.

Lady Kestrel - 09 August 2021 01:36 PM

I missed that.  Thanks, Jabod!

giom - 10 August 2021 11:10 AM

Oh I backed it without even considering it might not see a mac port since they had one for Gibbous. Hope that they actually do it, very inconvenient otherwise

Mac support is now a stretch goal folks
Comes in at $90,000 and they’re at $75,000 after 1 (one!) week of the campaign. Got to be a really good chance that will be achieved in the following 3 weeks.

Okay.  I backed it and will keep my fingers crossed.

With $77k made in the first week and 20 days to go, we’re fairly confident we can hit that $90k stretch goal 🙂