RPG + Rome had me interested at first but this seems to be more of a CYOA/management game with stats and strategy/sim elements, like King of Dragon Pass or Reigns etc. And the graphics - static screenshots of porcelain-doll-like characters as if taken directly from a 3D modelling tool - don't really convince me. But I'm sure there's an audience for it, so why not.

I was a Kickstarter backer for this game and played the free demo which was released to backers (and is now available to everyone on Steam). I actually enjoyed it quite a bit more than I expected - there's a lot more to it than just 'visual novel + stats'. Though the stats page looks intimidating, the actual gameplay is a more intuitive:

- You'll have mutiple options to handle every stage of every confrontation you face - some of them dependent on items you've found or actions you've taken previously - and you can draw from a pool of 'control' points to increase your chances of success for each one.
- Success is heavily dependent on keeping negative emotions such as anger and fear under control, and the game strongly emphasises diplomacy, guile and creative solutions over brute force. You're an ordinary person, not a superhero who can slice and dice their way through everyone they meet.
- As you go along you'll pick up new gear as well as memories, insights and personality traits which can alter your stats in various ways. You can use your pool of experience points to develop these traits in different directions.
- The characters you meet will develop their own personalities in the same way, as well as their relationship with the player. They're not passive and static like in most RPGs, and they get dice-roll checks for success or failure the same way you do. As time goes on you'll increase your standing within your tribe in various aspects, but so will they.

My main issue with the demo was the balancing - lucky dice rolls early on in an encounter will tend to lead to further success, whereas one failure can set off a cascading chain of failures that's impossible to escape. However, each individual scene is fairly short so it's easy to replay one if you mess things up. Anyway, I'd recommend trying the demo for anyone who's interested.

And not even a purely informative site, but one that tries to sell you personality assessments... Suspicious

The game might still be good, tho. We'll see

Basically an overcomplicated version of Reigns, then?

Haven't played Reigns, but I didn't find this to be overcomplicated when playing the demo - I grasped pretty quickly how everything worked. YMMV of course...

When I say overcomplicated, I mean in the context of trying to do too many tricks at once. Internally overcomplicated. Even if the game is intuitive to play, the presentation is pulling at itself to vie your attention.

Reigns itself is a massively flawed game due to having absolutely no depth, but the presentation gets the idea across very quickly.

Legally, It applies to any store, when selling ANY declared as unfinished product, the purchaser accepts that product AS SEEN.

The store has NO lrgal obligation to ensure the project is completed, the store may do so to foster good will, but they have no legal obligation.

One would hope GOG being curated would at least, ensure In-Dev games reach the bare minimum of an alpha state
Clearly the pay Valve $100, and sell any old crap Flea market that is Steam, doesn't give refunds after 2 hours played, even if an Early Access title never gets finished, and especially in the zombie/survival genre dead Early Access games, are a meme.

Regardless of GOG's policy, this games a typical example of a publisher using an awful business model.

First by Crowdfunding a game, the publisher's only job, is to fund the development, not get gamers to do it for them.
Adding insult to that injury, they compound their awfulness, by selling the unfinished game, after crowdfunding it.
I'd be OK with that if the dev didn't have a publisher, but if the publisher doesn't have the cash to fund the game, they should stop expecting to take any profit out of that game.

As a gamer, I'm only willing to back a game project without a publisher, but if the publisher want the profit, they can damn well fund the games development, with their own money, not mine.

Thanks for the description, that does sound interesting. I hope we get the demo here, that would help. The thing I'm confused about is that the trailer shows numbers slowly increasing in a few places, I'm guessing from clicking on them but it isn't clear how that is working and how annoying the animation is. I really can't stand those lootbox animations, text slowly appearing, or anything where the game forces you to wait on a regular basis. Sometimes it is possible to turn off such things in the settings. A Steam demo doesn't help those of us who don't use Steam :/.

Yes, looks quite shady. At least it isn't related to how the game works exactly, just how the game's stats are defined, only instead of just explaining the terms in more detail (they are general psychology terms and there are a bunch of descriptions of what they mean available) they send you to a site that sells personality assessments (a freely available assessment at that, they just claim that their special analysis method is better than published research while of course offering no evidence of that).

I agree publishers should not use crowdfunding. However, I see in development differently since I think it is often helpful for developers to get feedback on the game and it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me to combine that with purchasing the game as long as there are some reasonable assurances that they will produce something reasonable. I wouldn't keep an in dev game if fixing major bugs on the existing content isn't something I would find minimally acceptable for what I spent on it. Possibly my standard should be something I consider worth the price at the time I buy it even without additional bug fixes, but I do think GOG would refund in any particularly bad situation (I did a quick search and it sounds like even Valve ends up refunding everyone in some cases; I wouldn't be at all surprised if Valve gets sued over early access at some point so they likely refund when their lawyers think they might get sued).

It sounds like Valve explicitly states that the game may not be completed, that GOG does not seem to do. Even in that case, they can't legally profit from outright fraud and it seems to me that accepting money for early access games without producing something reasonable is likely to be considered fraud (of course plenty of argument possible over what is reasonable based on what was promised). There have been lawsuits over Kickstarter campaigns in the US, although not against Kickstarter itself that I know of. I suspect GOG does a check of the finanaces of the developer or publisher before listing in development games and that seems like it would make it likely that particularly bad situations would be considered fraud.

Nice, this looks different (in a good way), definitely going to keep an eye out for it!

And the all go to my wishlist now, thank you.

Also what surprised me is that Vampire the Masquerade one

Hi guys, I just received two Early Access keys for this game through my Kickstarter pledge. So if anyone would like my spare key and is a regular poster here (i.e. not someone who signed up just to swipe free keys), let me know and I'll send you a PM. First come first served I guess...

Count me in, pal :)

I just tried the demo and liked a lot what I've seen

Just sent you a message, Lone_Scout. :)

Thank you very much!
I'll make good use of it