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Outland 17 Kickstarter Q&A

by Kevin "Couchpotato" Loveless, 2015-04-26

We had the chance to ask Grant Taylor of Grenade Tree Games a few more questions now that his game Outland 17 has launched on kickstarter this month.

A three year passion project in the making, Outland 17: Void of Liberty is a tactical RPG inspired by the American revolutionary war. Lead a customized squad into open rebellion!

Couchpotato: Welcome back the last time we talked Outland 17 was on the Square Enix collective website. So how have you guys been since then?
 

Grenade Tree: After the Collective we went to GDC and both where a great experience. We learned a lot about what fans wanted and have worked hard to integrate their feedback. The product of our hard work is a fully playable Alpha Demo. There's been a lot of time spent getting making the concepts we've been talking about a reality.
 
We released our first build about a month ago on GameJolt and have been getting a lot of positive feedback from the community. Using that input, we've been fine tuning the presentation and improving certain game mechanics.

Couchpotato: You just launched the game on kickstarter this week so you guys must be nervous, and very excited right now?
 
Grenade Tree: We're a little bit of both actually. I think most developers can relate to the moment where you’ve gone from keeping your work private to exposing it to the whole world. After the initial tension of publishing our Kickstarter, we became excited to finally put the game out there. Now we are working hard to reach out to press and post regular dev logs to keep people in the loop.

Couchpotato: The kickstarter campaign is only asking for $10,000 to help fund Outland 17. Why the small amount, and will it be enough to fund development?
 
Grenade Tree: In a lot of other projects we see very lofty goals from small teams. We want to make sure that we don't get carried away with our costs to complete the game and begin with a realistic goal. Since most of our game's engine is already set up, and our development plan has been written up, the $10K is for the licenses for the software we need to finish the game.
 
That's not to say we aren't ambitious with our project. We have a whole list of stretch goals that would allow us to improve experience including getting new models, multiple platform releases, and new animations.

Couchpotato: To go along with the last question I see you offer a nice graph that explains how funding will be spent. So if the game is not funded do you have a back up plan?

Grenade Tree: In the unfortunate case that we don’t get funded, we will still continued development on the game with cost coming out of pocket. We’ll switch to a cloud subscription for a limited time and finish development of the game by that method. It may take a little bit longer, but we’ll still have something published in the end. We also are trying to get Greenlit on Steam, so we could use that as our distribution platform when the game is finished.

Couchpotato: I received a few news-letters by e-mail with information this month about a new demo. Can you talk about what is offered in the demo for gamers to play?

Grenade Tree: It certainly isn’t a five minute concept level. We’ve packed as much content as we can into the demo. There are 9 missions, averaging at about 10 minutes each, for an average gameplay total time of 90 minutes.

The missions range from having to infiltrate an enemy stronghold to plant a virus to saving civilians from the Sol Guard who have sentenced them to execution for aiding the rebellion.

We also have an early version of the perk tree and item system, so players can get a sense of the customizable freedom they’ll have with their squad.

Couchpotato: How has feedback been based the demo. Is it positive, negative, and can you share any of that information with the public?

Grenade Tree: Feedback has been on the most part very positive. We’ve received a lot of good comments on the game saying they liked the concept and visual style we have going there. We’ve sold a lot of people on the colonial punk universe we have set up.

We value everyones input and when we get requests to make improvements, we take it seriously and do our best to implement them. The results have included small bug fixes, like making click boxes on the planets larger, and significant gameplay changes, like including extra abilities that focus on manipulating enemies on the battlefield. We’re even currently updating our camera system to be more dynamic, thanks to an article that was written up by a TRPG veteran.

Couchpotato: The rewards you offer backers seem to be mostly cosmetic, and offer backers a chance to help development. Will some of the items be available for non-backers later on?

Grenade Tree:  It’s pretty common for indie game developers to include ways to influence the project as part of their rewards. It gives the community a chance to feel really engaged with the project they’re invested in and directly contribute to the project. We have some physical rewards like Kickstarter exclusive artwork and t-shirts. As of right now, all rewards will be available only through Kickstarter.

Couchpotato: Alright thats all from me  so thank you once again for the answers, and as usual do you have anything you would like to add?
 
Grenade Tree: I know it get’s said a lot but we really do appreciate each person who has backed our project and every person who’s helped share our Kickstarter. Step by step, one travels far and we’ve certainly come far since we started development two years with 2D sprites.

Box Art

Information about

Outland 17

Developer: Grenade Tree

SP/MP: Single + MP
Setting: Sci-Fi
Genre: Tactical RPG
Combat: Turn-based
Play-time: 20-40 hours
Voice-acting: Partially voiced

Regions & platforms
Internet
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Cancelled
· Publisher: Unknown

More information


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