Adventure Gamers - Forums

Veovis - 09 August 2012 05:08 PM

Well, small studio or not, Pendulo will not get my money in advance. I got really p****d off by Yesterday having that silly DRM, both on download and boxed copies. But now, when they need your money in advance, “DRM free” is almost printed with bold letters. Go figure.

Are you aware that, most of the time, DRM are imposed by the publisher and/or the retailer (Steam for example) ?

And that’s precisely the whole point of giving your money in advance, so that developers like Pendulo don’t get forced to have stupid DRM imposed on them, because everybody knows that they are useless, except publishers.

I really loved both The next Big Thing and Yesterday, even though in both cases, the games suffered from insufficient development budgets and it shows.
Now is the time to really see what Pendulo could do freed from the constraint of a publisher and I’m really sad to see so little support from the adventure gaming community as a whole.

And come on, creating a Gamesplanet Lab account takes exactly 30 seconds. And if you own a Paypal account already, paying is even easier than on Kickstarter.

Pendulo became famous at a time where all our heroes said that creating old school adventure games was impossible. Jane Jensen did casual hidden objects games, Chris Jones did the same, Tim Schafer did action games, most of the Sierra team were nowhere to be found for ten years… Yet, during that time, Pendulo always believed in traditional adventures and always fought for the genre without compromising. And now that they are in trouble and need players help, they are being ignored by a large portion of the community. I find this a little bit unfair.

I wholeheartedly agree!

Words of Magic - 20 August 2012 04:59 AM

Pendulo became famous at a time where all our heroes said that creating old school adventure games was impossible. Jane Jensen did casual hidden objects games, Chris Jones did the same, Tim Schafer did action games, most of the Sierra team were nowhere to be found for ten years… Yet, during that time, Pendulo always believed in traditional adventures and always fought for the genre without compromising. And now that they are in trouble and need players help, they are being ignored by a large portion of the community. I find this a little bit unfair.

THAT IS SO TRUE!!!  I already backed Day One, and I hope more people do, to be honest, I was very excited about SpaceVenture, but if I had to choose one developer that really deserves our support, that should be Pendulo.

Words of Magic - 20 August 2012 04:59 AM

Veovis - 09 August 2012 05:08 PM

Well, small studio or not, Pendulo will not get my money in advance. I got really p****d off by Yesterday having that silly DRM, both on download and boxed copies. But now, when they need your money in advance, “DRM free” is almost printed with bold letters. Go figure.

Are you aware that, most of the time, DRM are imposed by the publisher and/or the retailer (Steam for example) ?

And that’s precisely the whole point of giving your money in advance, so that developers like Pendulo don’t get forced to have stupid DRM imposed on them, because everybody knows that they are useless, except publishers.

I really loved both The next Big Thing and Yesterday, even though in both cases, the games suffered from insufficient development budgets and it shows.
Now is the time to really see what Pendulo could do freed from the constraint of a publisher and I’m really sad to see so little support from the adventure gaming community as a whole.

And come on, creating a Gamesplanet Lab account takes exactly 30 seconds. And if you own a Paypal account already, paying is even easier than on Kickstarter.

Pendulo became famous at a time where all our heroes said that creating old school adventure games was impossible. Jane Jensen did casual hidden objects games, Chris Jones did the same, Tim Schafer did action games, most of the Sierra team were nowhere to be found for ten years… Yet, during that time, Pendulo always believed in traditional adventures and always fought for the genre without compromising. And now that they are in trouble and need players help, they are being ignored by a large portion of the community. I find this a little bit unfair.

I am well aware that it’s often the publisher’s decision to use DRM, but I find it hard to believe that the developer doesn’t have any influence at all in the matter. Still, you make a very valid point and I’ll probably create an account and back this project after all.

Believe me, it is very hard to negotiate with publisher on these matters. Focus applies the same kind of DRM for all their games, including the Pendulo ones.
Anyway, thanks a lot for considering backing the project.

Jane Jensen had a few kind words for Pendulo and this campaign on Twitter and Facebook.

New updates:
1) a sample of the game’s soundtrack
2) soundtracks from the other Pendulo games
3) And finally, a new reward: the Summer Sale, which allows you to get a physical version of one of the backgrounds from the first Runaway. It comes with a certificate of authenticity, which includes a brief story about the background you have chosen. And as if that weren’t enough, it is signed by the whole team

Charles Cecil and his new Broken Sword game in Kickstarter only confirms that Pendulo chose the wrong platform for Day One. I don’t think that Broken Sword games are much better than Runaway or Yesterday, however Revolution have so much fans pledging that makes you think why Pendulo don’t.

I don’t completly agree.
Broken Sword was a huge success in the nineties and is viewed by many veteran gamers as being of the same level of quality as great LucasArts and Sierra titles. Even Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky are very popular. And Revolution Software did a great job of recycling the first two Broken Sword on many platforms, thus incresing their popularity.

Pendulo is almost unknown in the US, and when people know them, they generally have a poor opinion because the English localizations of Runaway 1 and 2 were so bad. Their real strengh is in Europe, so it made sense to support multilingual and payment in Euros.

I’m really not convinced that they would have done much better on Kickstarter.

I agree that voices were not very good in Runaway 1 and 2, but still it’s sad that their game won’t be made. I don’t think their work is worse than Revolution’s.

Chrono-Serge - 24 August 2012 11:31 AM

This is pretty saddening.

I agree. i loved The Next Big Thing John Yesterday and hope for similar games from Pendulo.

Having not played most of Pendulo’s games except for the first Runaway, I do think you can’t compare them with Revolution.

The avg. scores of Pendulo’s games on Metacritic range from Average to Good, but no real standouts:
http://www.metacritic.com/company/pendulo-studios?filter-options=games&num_items=30&sort_options=metascore

Revolution had instant classics with the first Broken Sword and Beneath A Steel Sky.
Like others have mentioned, these were re-released succesfully, which gives you both new and old fans to lure to your Kickstarter campaign.

I simply don’t think that a lot of people are waiting for a new Pendulo game at the moment.
I just checked their crowdfunding page….it’s not even just the avg pledge level, but also the amount which is subpar.

Then again, when was Revoltution Software truly great game published?
Do they still have what it takes to make a game as good as BS1?

True enough.

Both Broken Sword 1 and Beneath a Steel Sky are old games (1996 and 1994 respectively).
Revolution hasn’t been able to make something of liewise quality since…let’s be honest about that.

I think the reason the kickstarter campaign is running wel at the moment is the considerable focus on “Back to 2D” and the original team to be put in place and thus re-create a sequel worthy of the original.

Whether they succeed or not remains to be seen. At least they will have a shot as the campaign will no doubt shoot past its targets.