I think its funny the article talks about swift progress when this project has been around since 2009.

I really hope they finish it, I loved the ideas and the tech demo when they first announced it.

testing

Interesting, I hadn't heard about this.

I really enjoyed Loom back when it was released. I thought the use of musical notes to cast spells was rather innovative. If I recall correctly, there was a hard difficulty where you had to pick out notes by ear that was a bit beyond my capability.

Now I feel I must go dig around in the closet to see if I still have that audio cassette that came with Loom.

Thanks for bringing this one to my attention.

True but an article can only post with the info given..

Remember Space Quest remake?

IT'S NEARLY HERE.....

4 months later...

NEARLY HERE...

A year later :p

Well, I must say that the site name is apt. This is certainly "retro" news. The Forge demo I have on my HDD is dated May 1st 2010. It's pretty much the same with The Forge. The demo the article talks about, which they say should be released sometime during spring 2013? Here's a quote from the Forge blog from May 2012: Still, I do hope they finish it, and I'll certainly play it if they do. I doubt it'll be as good as Loom (I really do love that game), but hopefully it'll be enjoyable nonetheless.

Hello people,

I'm Gabriele "Abisso" Nannetti, project-manager of Forge.

First of all, let me say I'm really happy to see that more people than I though are speaking about the game. I owe this to Loom mostly but I also believe it depends on what we've shown during these years. Because yes, it's "years" we're talking about, but do you know how many Loom sequels have been announced since Loom came out and never even arrived to a tech-demo stage?
Let me tell you a bit more about the story of Forge and Quill O' the Wisp, its team.

It's true that our "team" (me and the former project-manager) has been assembled in July 2009, but we were just two guys. A game-designer and a coder, both somewhat amateurs. We had to struggle to find cooperators, and so I'd say we've been swift in providing a tech-demo which not only showed the mechanics of the game but even original graphics, music, sfx, and plot elements.

Then we started working on the first part of the game, outsourcing almost everything and spending our own money to pay for the backgrounds. To be completely honest, that money, which amounts to about 2000 USD has been paid in full by the former project manager: my opinion at the time was that we absolutely had to look for an artist that, like us, was willing to work for free. Then I understood pixel-art of such quality is almost impossible to be found for free, and this is why I suggested the current donation system at the end of 2010.
Anyway, we were lucky, and we slowly found (and lost) people that helped us with small sprites and animations, some music tracks, and so on. Then both me and the project manager had tough times for different reasons. During summer 2012, he left the team and I had to take his role and re-invent myself as a project-manager. Not the easiest job in the world, especially if you have to work on the code as well, believe me.

You alsohave to understand all the people except the background artist have always worked for free on a freeware game, which means none of us will ever make a single cent out of it.
The people that worked on Forge have lifes, the most lucky ones have families and a job. We're doing this on our free time, and you can't imagine how many hours I've personally spent writing lines of code, emails and forum posts.

At this point, some of you may think mine is an angry, maybe even arrogant reply, but it isn't. Frankly, I'm just sad. Because it's really frustrating to learn that you have deluded people expectations, even more if you've deluded YOUR OWN expectations well before that. And this is the truth, cause I have to admit the announcement of the demo for the end of Spring 2012 has been an awkward move. I'm human, guys. We all are, and it's very difficult to make correct predictions.
Does Daikatana, Alan Wake or Rage ring a bell? Those games were commercial projects, had huge companies with dozens of people working on them, and they missed the estimated deadline by about 5 years each.

That said, I want to admit once again that announcing the demo so early has been stupid and premature. Please accept my apologies for that. As you can see I haven't made an announcement this time, but we are in beta-stage, so you probably understand we're not that far from our goal.

I try to post monthly updates on forgegame DOT com, so please check it out sometimes if you want to know about our progress and have a better grasp of how and why development can be slow sometimes.

And please, if you already haven't, ask yourself what YOU did for the project, and if you could have done more. We have a donation system and we are crystal clear about how the money gets spent. With the current budget we can barely afford 4 new backgrounds and we need about 20 more instead. You don't have money or you don't want to entrust it to us? I can understand that. Donate some of your free time then. There's a lot of positions we need to fill in our team. Don't just complain, be part of the change. The more we are, the faster we can develop the game.

Check our Donation page if you want to lend a hand.

And we have a Forum! Why don't you join our community? It's free, and it's the best way to stay up to date and see things from the inside. I truly hope to see you there.

Sorry for the "outburst". I hope you all understand Forge is like a child to me, and I tend to get overprotective, but just because I actually care a lot. I love it.

Thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,
-Gabriele "Abisso" Nannetti

Uhm... You need to stop caring what random people on the internet have to say about your project. It's your baby, go work on it, and ignore what anyone says. Particularly avoid making overly long aggressive-defensive rants about it on random forums. Don't try to spread awareness about it until you have something to show, and try not to promise anything publically, because it will bite you in the ass if you fail to deliver.

That said, I do hope your project will succeed, and I'll play it if it does.

I just want it to be known that I in no way meant any disrepect to the project or its people. I was more commenting on the fact the journalist seemed to disregard the many years of service that Abisso and Duke put into the project and the passion shown to keep the fires burning as it was.

Sorry if it sounded otherwise.

Thanks to both of you for your interest in the game.

I only stumbled upon this thread by pure chance, as a friend of mine told me the bad news of a recently launched commercial game that's called like mine. Though it's not an adventure game, I wanted to check how search engines reacted to its presence, and found this thread as one of the first instead.

That said, why should I ignore what people think about Forge and my management? I think it's the best way to improve, actually. I care a lot for people's opinion and I believe it's normal for me to. And I'm grateful for all these comments and critiques.
Moreover, the more the game gets discussed, the more people get to know about it. But I totally agree that public promises should be fulfilled.

The only thing I regret is the fact I answered without pondering what I was writing first. That made the reply more honest and heartfelt, but made it look a bit more aggressive than I meant.

Please continue to help me overcome my limits and point out my flaws. I'm grateful for what you did. Seriously.

-Gabriele "Abisso"

It took very long, didn't it?

But Forge: Chapter One is finally a reality.

I've said enough about the project in my previous posts already, so let's get straight to business:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE GAME.


I hope you enjoy, and since the 25th is approaching, I also wish you a Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,
-Gabriele "Abisso" Nannetti

How long is the gameplay? And when to the next episode?

Thanks for the heads up, will try to play it over the holidays :-)

Amazing project! Have never heard of it before. Actually I loved Loom and the main sound theme is still in my ear. What a nice Christmas present, thanks Abisso! +1

Excellent! I've downloaded and installed it. I've only played a little bit of it so far, but I'll give you my impressions when I've played more. Probably in a few days.

Ahh, fan based sequels to old classics?
I've waited forever for those about the great Fate of Atlantis:
Fountain of Youth -> it will be finished.. someday?
Fate of Atlantis 2 -> waited years, now halted, probably dead :(