Do you think Matt Clifton intentionally withheld the fact that this was an episodic game?

After all, GOG thought it was a full game, and he never mentions it's an episodic game during his latest interviews.

I know, I'm so angry; that's shady business practice.

The low retail price made me suspect it, but yeah, I would have like to have known this beforehand.
OTOH, I didn't do much research before clicking the 'buy' button.
But GOG should have posted this on the main page.

It is? Wasn't aware of that when I bought it. Well, considering the price and fairly small size, I guess I wasn't expecting it to be very long. If it turns out that I'll really like the game, I wouldn't mind buying another episode or two ( whenever they're released ). I just hope it has some sort of satisfying "ending", even if it's just an episode.

GOG seems to have been under the impression that this was the full game and not an episode. It'll be interesting to see where the miscommunication came from. http://www.gog.com/forum/general/preorder_montagues_mount/post55

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look.

Just wondering Frosty, where did you hear it was episodic? I haven't finished the game myself, so I can't say. Did you finish the game and get a "to be continued" type of thing, or did you read about it somewhere?

The game was originally planned as an episodic project, you can look up its failed funding campaign on Indiegogo

GOG was under the impression that the episodic structure had been dropped and that they released the full product.

However, when you reach the end, you note that:
- The game ends on a rather terrible cliffhanger.
- None of the 3 story arcs receive closure.
- None of the questions in the game are answered.
- The narrator literally tells you "I must find my remaining family to find out what happened", but you can't do that.
- The outro shows you in big letters: "Concluding in 'Liberation', out on PC (etc.) soon".

That's pretty strong evidence that the originally planned episodic structure was _not_ dropped, I'd say. ;)

Everything that Psyringe said. It wouldn't surprise me a third installment was also planned, but with this shady business practice, I doubt it will see the light of day.

Someone left a message on the Greenlight Discussions section expressing their opinions on finding this out after completing it. Mastertronic gave a fairly hollow apology, saying that they wanted to see what kind of response the game got before focusing on sequel(s). They also said they're going to attempt update the store pages to make the episodic nature clearer to people.

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/146521424/792923683675464016/

I really, really have trouble with the developer's statement that MM "was always conceived as an episodic indie series. We have combined those episodes into Montague's Mount as it is today."

That would mean that the original concept consisted of several episodes which, even after the last episode, raise only questions and answer none of them (well, perhaps one about the specific death of one specific person, but even for that, the circumstances remain unclear). I also cannot imagine how these 5 hours of gameplay could have been split up into several separate episodes. There just isn't enough content.

I have to say that the developer's response raised my skepticism rather than clarifying things. I left a post asking him which content was supposed to form one episode in the original concept, let's see what he answers.

Yes, please let us know how that turns out, I'm interested to see how he answers.

Matt Clifton: "Well..uh, you see, the first episode you walk 1.5 hours around a rainy beach, until you find a walking stick; stay tunned for the next episo.. uh, I mean, sequels! ;) "

An exceptionally well-written post, I must say. I'm interested how he responds (though I have a feeling that 'mtxsm' is the publisher Mastertronic Games rather than Matt himself). I've subscribed to the discussion on Steam.

Thanks for the detail, Psyringe.