Gas Powered Games helm by industry veteran: Chris Taylor has worked on a variety of series over the years. From the massive scope of Supreme Commander, to the action of Dungeon Siege and created the short lived MOBA: Demigod.
Now they are working on a new project and for the first time using kickstarter, to create a game that appears to combine all three of those mentioned properties into one new title.
Wildman:
Each genre itself has its own design and fan base, and with Wildman they are looking to capture all three into one game. That alone has my interest intrigued. Now there hasn’t been a lot of information about the game just yet, but the description appears to imply that there are different modes of play that are representative of each genre.
From the kickstarter page: players will have battles across areas with an army that the player upgrades as in a RTS. While controlling the Wildman in a format seen in MOBAs, and before and after battles they player explores the land looking for loot and leveling up as in an ARPG.
The part that has me excited about Wildman is that they are taking inspiration from three genres that are mostly known for multiplayer, and designing a single player title using the conventions in place.
Now while I am interested, there are a few reservations that myself and other gamers have expressed. GPG’s track record has been good… not great as of late. While I enjoyed each game that was mentioned as inspiration, I haven’t played a game yet from GPG that I truly fell in love with.
With DemiGod, I had network and sound issues that plagued my game and by the time they were fixed, the community had all but disappeared. Supreme Commander was good, but I didn’t enjoy the multiplayer. Lastly with Dungeon Siege, while it was a servable ARPG, it never grabbed me in the same way as other ARPGs like Diablo or Titan Quest did.
Interestingly, AI designer and Modder Sorian: who revamped the AI for Supreme Commander 2 making it one of the best AIs in a strategy game, left GPG to work on Planetary Annihilation at Uber Entertainment.
From day one of the PA kickstarter, I was on board with the idea and having him join the development has pushed that title into “can’t fricken wait” territory. But with Wildman, I haven’ seen that something special, that makes me want to pledge just yet.
To be fair, the kickstarter is only a few days old and there are 29 days left at the time of this posting. And just like with Project Godus, there is plenty of time for them to release new information.
With a recent update to the kickstarter, Wildman will not have any copy protection attached to it, along with being able to play the game both off and online. GPG is looking for 1.1 million to fund the development of Wildman and at the time of this posting they are sitting around one hundred and sixty thousand.
Given the success of studios like Obsidian, Double Fine and Uber Entertainment hopefully we can add Gas Powered Games to the list of companies that can make the game they want with help from the fans.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHzCZ53qOpg[/youtube]
