The Sci-fi RPG Consortium will be replaced with a remastered version:

CONSORTIUM Remastered

CONSORTIUM Remastered is a complete Unreal Engine remaster of the original Game One of the iDGi-1 Trilogy (CONSORTIUM 2014).

As Consortium Bishop Six, players are tasked with investigating a mysterious murder, uncovering hidden conspiracies, and navigating complex interpersonal relationships among the diverse crew members. CONSORTIUM Remastered features a highly interactive narrative, allowing players to make choices that impact the story's direction and the relationships with other characters. With its innovative branching dialogue system, immersive storyline, and richly-detailed world, CONSORTIUM Remastered offers players a unique and engaging gaming experience that explores the consequences of their decisions and the nature of trust and loyalty.

Thanks Couchpotato!

Just go to the steam page and install it if you want the game - this weekend only. Then it will be yours for good.

Bob-iDGi [developer] 2 hours ago
If you added it to your library it this weekend, the game is yours permanently. It will not vanish from your library, and you do not need to pay a cent for it.

Interdimensional Games latest update on Steam has news a patch has been released for Consortium to fix many bugs, and they talk about the games second episode.

The Tower Prophecy / V1.22 / Spanish

A slightly belated Happy New Year to you all!

It’s been just a few days since the one year anniversary of CONSORTIUM launching on Steam, and we are proud to say that our game remains as unique and original as the day it launched! We felt an update was in order due to some important announcements about CONSORTIUM as we head into a brand new year, so let’s get down to it. First....

Rock, Paper, Shotgun have recently published a new feature on CONSORTIUM

CONSORTIUM: The Tower Prophecy

We are excited to be at the point where we can officially announce our work toward Game Two of the iDGi Trilogy[thetowerprophecy.com].

Please feel free to share that link far and wide across the internet! Currently the Tower Prophecy team is split into two parts: pre-production, which consists of writers and art, and those working on a crowdfunding pitch video.

Check out a recent post from Vidal Desertch

Finally, Please consider signing up for our Game Two mailing list in order to receive updates and have a chance to weigh in on our pitch video efforts before we go live on the campaign. Your feedback will be extremely critical for the final product.

V 1.22 is here

We have just released CONSORTIUM v1.22. Included with the patch are a huge list of fixes (big and small), game balance improvements and tweaks based on the last year of feedback. For a complete list of all new stuff and changes made in V1.22, scroll to the bottom HERE (Spoiler alert!).

We would like to extend a huge THANK-YOU to all players who went out of their way to tell us of issues and bugs on the Steam forums and through email, as this communication helped us immensely in making this patch happen.

I found a new article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun this weekend from Sin Vega who talks about how Consortium breaks the fourth wall for player interaction.

We can’t keep saying video games are a young medium. We’ve been saying it since I was your age (or since you were mine, if that fits better), and besides, the last few years have finally shown that there’s plenty of room for games that do more than idly amuse us. Consortium is one such game.

Unlike any RPG I can name, Consortium throws you in with no map, no introductory cutscenes or tutorial. When you start, you don’t choose a character, you sign a disclaimer. It’s disorientating and strange, and immediately different, dedicated fully to its central conceit; you the player are accessing a satellite, provided by the developer, iDGi, that allows you to control a man known as Bishop 6, on board an aircraft, in the year 2042.

It nails role playing as a person in a specific situation, to an extent no other game has. Paradoxically, it achieves this by telling you nothing.

Interdimensional Games posted a new video from Pax Prime last week, and mentioned that everyone should join the mailing list for news on Consortium II.

PAX Prime video and CONSORTIUM 2 mailing list...

We wanted to share a video with you all, showing a bit of the team and our booth at the insanity that was PAX Prime. It truly was an amazing experience and we can't stress enough how much fun we had showcasing the game to so many new people, as well as meeting a few already-fans along the way! 

Please consider also signing up for our exclusive mailing list, where we will be posting (important) news and information on our progress toward CONSORTIUM 2. 

The more people willing to sign up for our mailing list, the more we'll be able to better gauge interest in the sequel and its Kickstarter campaign we have been steadily working toward. 

To sign up, simply go here: http://eepurl.com/39dij 

We promise to NEVER share your emails with anyone, and only let you know about important and significant updates in the world of CONSORTIUM!  Signing up will also automatically enter you into any raffles we hold to win posters, t-shirts and other iDGi and CONSORTIUM goodies along the way. We did a few such draws at PAX and thought, hell, we should do more of those! If there was a physical reward from our Kickstarter campaign that you had your eye on but were never able to get your hands on, this would especially be for you.

Steam First has a new late review posted yesterday for Consortium, and awarded the game with a score of 4.5/5. Probably the highest score since it was released.

It has been a very long time since I have played through the original Deus Ex, though when I spoke to the developer at PAX, that was a major touch point for their description. Since I can’t vouch for that, the reader may ask why I bring it up. The reason is this: for the few flaws this game has, I have not been pulled into a story like this in a long time. Part of it may be the fact that I played differently than I usually do, but I would also say that the story flexibility afforded, the high quality of the writing, and the attention to detail in the initial lore planted my rear in my computer chair and I did not want it to end. If mentioning Deus Ex will get more people to try it, mention it I will.

Steam announces that you can now buy Consortium for 40% off for the next 40 hours.

Taking place entirely aboard a massive futuristic aircraft, CONSORTIUM is a first person science-fiction role-playing experience unlike any other. The story begins in our world - the "real world" - where we here at Interdimensional Games have developed a satellite (iDGi-1) capable of opening a digital rift through time and space...

Anyone with an internet connection can travel through this rift and awaken within an alternate dimension from our own - the "game world" - in the year 2042.

The developer also released a new patch they call the master edition.

We have worked to address every single issue that has been reported to us by players and critics since launching V1.0 in January. We would like to humbly request anyone who has already reviewed CONSORTIUM (on Steam or anywhere else) and gave low marks due to bugs, to please have another look at this Master Edition. We guarantee you will not be disappointed and hope you would be willing to re-consider your original review.

Interdimensional Games has a new update for Consortium about a new version of the game called The Master Edition, and talks about the baker awards.

CONSORTIUM:  The Master Edition

Lately, we've had our heads down once again, working on polishing, fixing and optimizing our game to a very high degree.  Our goal?  Essentially we are gearing up to re-launch the game on April 29th, as "CONSORTIUM:  The Master Edition". 

Polished and improved combat gameplay, greatly optimized and bug fixed, greatly polished choreography, and much more.   All backers at the $10 (gimme the game) + level and everyone who owns the game will get this version for free.  We will also be launching the game on GOG.COM and the Humble Store.

You heard it here first.  This version has the benefit of thousands of players playing it for a few months, and we've been working to address every single issue that has been posted to the Steam discussion forums.

Backer Rewards Update

As per our last update about this, we did hope to largely be completely finished with the rewards at this point.  Our focus has shifted since then a little bit, as we've gone back to the dev grindstone to get the Master Edition completed.  HOWEVER...real progress has been made, and here's proof:

• T-shirts and Posters.  As you can see above, they have all been created.  We are now working through the process of shipping everything.  U.S backers will be receiving T-shirts first...watch for them arriving within the next few weeks!   The rest will follow soon...
• Kickstarter Special Edition and DVD:   This version will be built on top of the Master Edition described above.  The core development team spent three days in March, playing through the whole game together.  During these sessions, we had a room microphone hooked up and we were all encouraged to just talk out loud about memories from the production, funny development stories, etc.   Steve and Gregory will be getting together soon to compile all of this into "sound bytes", create additional commentary AND place developer commentary triggers into the game itself.
• iDGi-1 Discoveries:  This has taken us much longer to produce than we anticipated, but I am pleased to announce Steve has completed work on it and it is currently in the polish and edit stage. It's shaping up to be a very dense 130 pages long and is just an awesome read into the deep back-story of CONSORTIUM, specifically through the lens of our early quantum stream explorations (the A.R.G.)

We all really appreciate your continued patience with getting your goodies, and hope that the quality level that we're aiming for with all of it will be well worth the wait.

Finally, we would also like to mention that after we ship the Master Edition, work will resume on our Mac and Linux ports - so for those of you in the "Other Platforms" tier, there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel! 

Wish us luck with finishing up the Master Edition - we'll be updating more this month as we approach April 29th....

Well another week and Interdimensional Games once again posts information a new patch is now available for their kickstarter game Consortium. Here are the details.

V1.15 is here

• Fixes doubling sub-titles issue
• DX9Ex upgrade is now up for everyone (fixes alt-tabbing, etc), and the "Failed to create D3D device" issue that was introduced in v1.14.
• Game balancing tweaks.

Interdimensional Games once again posted information that a new patch is now available for their kickstarter game Consortium. Here are the details.

V1.14 is here

We are finished with performance optimizations...the game now runs as it should on minimum spec machines and higher.

In two weeks, on March 24th, we have decided that we will be once again updating the maps of the game with a variety of fixes and improvements based on all the feedback we have received since January 31st. This WILL mean that any on-going saves will be invalidated. Remember, however, that all completed universes will not be affected!

This is the third and possibly last time that we will have to do this, but what it means is that your game will become more polished and immersive in a variety of ways.

MAJOR FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• DX9Ex upgrade is now up, but requires opting into a new beta. This fixes the game crashing when alt-tabbing and allows you to make changes to the video settings while the game is running. To opt into the beta, right-click on Consortium, go to properties, click on the betas tab, then select "beta_4 - Direct X 9 EX Test".
• The games script parser and script tree hierarchy walker which originally was written in python has been replaced with a C++ version. Not only is the C++ version far quicker, it also eradicates the serious issues we have seen with the python interpreter on some machines.
• The "white line" that was appearing across the screen for many folks has been fixed.
• Kiril Angelov related Steam achievements are once again firing when they should.
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when loading certain saved games.

MINOR FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Zenlil defense minigame: tuning work that increases the player energy recharge rate on easy and medium difficulties. In addition, a bug was fixed that was causing far too much camera shake and iDGi-1 distortion.
• Music polish. Various tracks throughout the story have been fixed and improved.

IN PROGRESS STUFF / ISSUES WE ARE FOCUSSING ON

• We are deep into porting the game to the Mac (OSX) and Linux platforms.
• A few system configurations out there are still having trouble with the IGGY controlled HUD. Crashing when closing the inventory screen is one of the rare symptom of this. We are working to track down the cause.
• We are working to uncover a rare issue late in the game that can sometimes occur, involving most of Zenlil's lights being off in addition to various doors remaining locked.
• Spanish localization. Lots of progress made, working on it...
• Doubling sub-titles. This is an annoying issue that is still at large, because we're still having trouble reliably replicating the issue to debug it. We will get to the bottom of it though...

Interdimensional Games has once again posted information that a new patch is now available for their kickstarter game Consortium.

V1.11 is here

FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Performance: Optimizations were made to ensure that only 1 light that casts shadows can be on at any time. For machines with mid-low end CPUs, this will boost your frame-rate.
• Fixed chipbanks not accepting chips sometimes. This was due to the entity responsible for "eating" the chips being "killable" (by punching or shooting them). If this has occured for you, load a game that is just after the Zenlil defense minigame and continue from that point.
• Fixes ability to "kill" invisible entities in the briefing room, causing issues.

IN PROGRESS STUFF / ISSUES WE ARE FOCUSSING ON

• Rare python related non-responsive characters / crashing update: We are now working on a fairly hefty guaranteed solution to this issue.
• Performance. We're continuing to look for ways to further improve the game's performance.
• Game has been upgraded to DX9Ex. This solves the alt-tabbing crash issue, changing video settings in-game, etc. Still working on making sure this works across many configurations before updating everyone's build.
• Spanish localization. Lots of progress made, working on it...
• Doubling sub-titles. Still trying to track down the cause of this, as it seems to only happen on rare occassions with certain configurations.

Interdimensional Games has posted information that patch V1.107 is now available.

V1.107 is here

MAJOR FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Performance: The deferred lighting shaders were optimized, boosting frame-rate across the board.
• Fixed Merc A.I "stopping" after dealing with Kiril.
• Game updated with latest version of IGGY (Many Flash HUD stability and performance improvements)
• Controller support now working. We intend to polish this more in the future.

MINOR FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS

• Reduced player utility energy drain for CEAR laser
• Dramatically reduced the damage the CEAR laser does to the player over time.
• Lowered shield recharge rate.
• Reduced difficulty of traitor fight

IN PROGRESS STUFF / ISSUES WE ARE FOCUSSING ON

• Non-responsive characters. This is very rare, but the cause is possibly related to the python code that controls the conversation system breaking on certain configurations. We have added additional debug information to help us in these cases. Working on it...
• Performance. We're continuing to look for ways to further improve the game's performance.
• Game is being upgraded to DX9Ex. This solves the alt-tabbing crash issue, changing settings in-game, etc. However, after testing it we uncovered that some configuations were unable to start the game at all, so it was removed for now. Working on it...
• Chip replacement issues. We're still working on isolating the precise cause of the rare issue of the chips not being fixable in a few spots in the game.
• Spanish localization. In progress...
• Doubling sub-titles.
• Issues with some achievements not firing when they should.

Finally, here is a special note from us , the developer/publisher of CONSORTIUM, to you, our treasured gamers who are supporting us through buying and playing our game (THANK-YOU!)

-The iDGi and CONSORTIUM team

I Game Responsibly reviews Consortium and awards the game a low score of 2/5.

Consortium is a game with a lot of good ideas, but lacking the time and budget to realize them. The game is pitched as a fully immersive world with full player freedom and choices that matter. It delivers on, at most, one of those promises.

I have two more reviews for the recently released Consortium.

Softpedia - 8/10

Consortium is a really immersive role-playing experience that plays like an adventure game set in the early days of the Star Trek universe. It is similar to what a modern incarnation of the classic point-and-click adventures of old should be like, complete with diplomacy and multiple choices with different consequences and end results.

The most disappointing thing about it is how short it is. You can easily go through it in around 3 to 4 hours, and while it is exciting and it ends in a well-executed cliffhanger, you're still left with the feeling that it's only an episode, and not an entire game.

Consortium is a valiant effort in the end, not a revolutionary force but a solid game experience from an unknown developer that shows a lot of potential, and offers a better written but watered down and much shorter Mass Effect style of encounter.

Die Hard Game Fan -  No Score

Consortium takes the interesting premise of a gamer being in charge of someone from a future time and gives you options on how to handle everything and really delivering an interesting roleplaying experience. Some great dialogue options, really well done world-building given that you’re stuck on a plane the whole time, decent replay value and the promise of future entries helps this game immensely. But at the same time some strange glitches, a lack of controller support at launch, and some really weird slowdowns and other detractors bring the experience down quite a bit. While the game is getting patched up, it can be a rocky playthrough, but the short overall play time can help. If you’re interested in the premise it’s worth the look, but if you’re on the fence about the price or length, let the developers iron it out a bit more.

Interdimensional Games has posted information that patch version 1.1 is now available.

V1.1 Patch NOW LIVE

As promised for nearly a month now, we’ve just upped our V1.1 patch of CONSORTIUM. This patch WILL KILL ALL INCOMPLETE SAVE GAMES.

If you’ve been holding off before digging in, now is the time. We are extremely confident in the maps in their current state and hope this will be the very last time in many months that we’ll need to wipe incomplete save games for the purposes of a patch. As always any *completed* games have been permanently saved and can actually now be viewed from the main menu.

The number of improvements that have been made is rather staggering and thanks to the support and help of so many of you, we’ve turned what was admittedly a fairly embarrassing release version into something we can now be proud of on all levels. Thank you!

To anyone reading this that has played the game in a previous state, we highly encourage you to jump in for another spin. Here is a broad overview of some of the major changes outside of general improvements and bug fixes.

Here are two new reviews for the recently released Kickstarter Consortium.

Escapist Magazine - 4/5

 Consortium is an ingeniously subversive gem, containing enough backstory to fill a Triple-A trilogy while focusing exclusively on an airship crew in distress. The execution is a little clunky at times, but Consortium still has the charm and depth to encourage multiple playthroughs as we wait for the sequel.

Videogamer - 6/10

Ambitious ideas define its best qualities, but also visibly leave Consortium crippled, crushed under the weight of a creative vision that – as a player – I desperately wanted to see it achieve. Unfortunately, the result is mess: a spider-web of variables that can’t reliably hold itself together, despite restricting itself to telling a very short story.

Interdimensional Games has posted information about a new patch for Consortium.

V1.1 Patch will be here in 4 days

Just a quick update: we are hard at work on the patch to 1.1, and it's on track for release on Friday!

A reminder: All on-going save-games WILL be wiped at that time. This should be the last time this will have to happen for many months.

However, all games you have finished are safe. Also, with this patch, we are introducing a feature where you will be able to browse all your finished games so you can rest assured that all your game states are ready for importing into the sequel.

The Digital Fix has a new review of Consortium, and gives the game a score of 8/10.

Consortium is a short adventure but with a lot of flexibility in how you can play it and with your choices and actions leading to very different stories. With fairly limited, and entirely optional combat, this is definitely a game for those looking for a good story rather than action. The game has a great cast of well-voiced characters and intriguing plots with plenty of mystery. Whilst the launch was set back by technical issues, these should now be largely resolved by patches.

Gamespot has posted a new video review for Consortium.

Does this unique small-scale open world game force a checkmate? Find out in our review.

Gamespot has the first review for Consortium that I could find this week, and they give the game a final score 6/10.

Consortium delivers a uniquely enjoyable RPG experience despite its rather disappointing running time of around four to five hours. That's not as bad as it initially sounds, however, since you discover remarkable differences in gameplay depending on how you make your decisions throughout the game (and on whether you decide to shoot up the place), thus lending Consortium a dose of replay value. For now, at least, it's best to wait. Consortium has a fascinating story to tell that leads you down some bizarre narrative pathways that break the fourth wall, and it's likely best experienced when you can get it to play without crashing or bugging out. Considering that it's partly a game about time travel, a couple of weeks isn't that long to hold out.

Interdimensional Games has finally released the new update for Consortium.

V1.03 has landed. We now invite EVERYONE to dig in...

Hi everyone!

Over the past 9 days, we've worked extremely hard and have cleaned all game-breaking bugs from the game. We've also polished many parts of the experience.

We still do plan on patching the game again on the 31st, but it's clear to us now that this version is what we *should* have launched with on the 8th.

MAJOR STUFF FIXED IN THIS VERSION

(NOTE: there's a lot more than this that has been fixed, but these are the big things; we ran out of room in the annoucement text to list everything).

Interdimensional Games has released an update about the upcoming mega patch. I'm guessing they need more time as it's the 17th , and no patch is out yet.

January 16th Patch

One more day and the patch goes live, and all of your on-going saved games will be wiped.

We apologize for this in advance, but as expressed before it is completely out of our control as the changes we'll be making to the maps are significant.

We’ve nailed every game stopper, made a significant step forward in frame rate improvements for at least middle-range video cards, and made a slew of smaller tweaks here and there to improve the experience as a whole. We want to be sure that when this patch inevitably (and unavoidably) wipes your save games, playing a new game will feel like the first time.

Tomorrow evening, January 16th, between 6-9pm EST, we will be uploading an automatic patch that will invalidate all of your save games EXCEPT for those in which you successfully completed the game...those will always be saved for Game Two.

We encourage everyone to play this version and let us know about your redux experience on the forums, or comment below! We promise a significantly improved experience across the board.

Right now anyone linked into the optional Beta can get access to the latest improvements and fixes, which are all listed here (keeping in mind all save games are invalidated daily while using the optional Beta).

After the botched release of Consortium Interdimensional Games has released a status update on Steam about the state of the game, and their future plans.

We deeply apologize to those of you who found yourself engrossed in the game, only to be thrown out of it due to a crash or other game breaking issue. Firstly, this is inexcusable and we will be working around the clock to clear out all of these major game breaking bugs.

The truth is that we honestly felt the game was ready, and in hindsight didn't realize or anticipate the full range of systems we've not even remotely tested on and how many frankly strange performance issues folks are having on really solid machines. Our experimental renderer is largely the culprit for many of the crashes and slowdowns being experienced, and was something we were honestly worried about though we did not expect such a rash of issues tied to it after seeing it run smoothly on a number of different setups. Without the renderer the game would look far more static and much of the atmosphere in key scenes would be lost.

Performance issues aside for a moment, the whole game is one logic check after another and it’s a FACT we should have been smarter and realized we needed far more people playing the game and all its “paths,” before we could call it finished. Even our limited Beta testing through Kickstarter (which was our “closed beta”) resulted in only a handful of people willing to test with us (quite literally under 20 people) BUT this we understood because it’s a heavy story driven game! Who wants to be spoiled in a story driven game by a Beta build?! So we forged on and for months beat on the game until it ran well and smooth on all of OUR machines.

In the end, our confidence in the game being bug free was misplaced. While we truly *hoped* that the version we launched yesterday was going to hold up against the onslaught of thousands of players around the world playing it with their own play style AND their own unique system configurations, it was clearly an unrealistic hope.

Consortium is now available to buy on Steam. Interdimensional Games is tying to get it released on other services, but seems to be having trouble getting keys to backers.

Update- Here is the latest news in the games latest post-funding update.

CONSORTIUM IS HERE

As of right now, CONSORTIUM v1.0 is available for all "Gimme the Game" backers and higher.

The game is available on your own personal Humble Bundle page: Go HERE and enter in the email you used to back us here on Kickstarter to get access!

Steam keys?

We are offering Steam keys to all backers at the $10 level and higher.  We have sent out surveys to you all, and we have started sending out keys.    However we chose the wrong method to get you keys (individually pasting a key into an email to each and every one of you...), and it's taking forever.  We also just ran out of keys and requested a ton more (we underestimated how many of you have Steam accounts!).    

Anyways, we are looking into getting the rest of you keys who want one via Humble's page, BUT will continue the individual method if necessary.  Either way, we promise to get you a Steam key if you want one before the week is out.    Thanks so much for your patience!

What about all the other rewards?

So now that the game is "done"  (we're still working on it and will be patching it post launch!), we will shifting our focus to all the goodies we promised you last year.  We are actually very excited about the posters, t-shirts, soundtrack, the Kickstarter only Special Edition AND the iDGi-1 Discoveries PDF that we have in the works.     Generally speaking, we are aiming to wrap up production and complete and ship all the remaining rewards before the end of February.   We care very deeply about these things, and though they are coming very late, we promise that you won't be disappointed with the quality of the stuff.

Consortium has been delayed by two days according to a new post by Interdimensional Games on the games kickstarter webpage.

Short answer: Yes. Watch for an update on Wednesday....in addition to launching on Steam, the game will be made available on Humble Bundle for all $10 Gimme the Game backers and higher! Steam keys will also be made available for those backers that use Steam...

Thank you Morrandir for the links.

Interdimensional Games announces the release date for Consortium in the games latest post-funding kickstarter update.

Consortium Release Date

I realize we've been telling you all that the game is just a few days away from being done. We WERE planning on launching just before Christmas, but we've been informed by Valve that launching new games during the big Steam holiday sale is a bad idea...

In addition, the simple reality is that all the ongoing testing being done continues to reveal bugs that need fixing, so we are deciding to take the next two 2 1/2 weeks to debug and polish our experience.    This means that...

CONSORTIUM will be available for downloading by all "Gimme the Game" Kickstarter backers and higher via Humble Bundle, in addition to being available on STEAM on:

                    MONDAY, JANUARY 6th, 2014

We would also like to offer a sincere THANK-YOU for all the beta backers that have banged on the latest build and sent us .CAI files and written bug reports.  We can't begin to explain how invaluable this has been for us.

We will be providing a patch to the "final" Beta just before Xmas (watch for it this coming Monday) that will include well over 100 bug fixes and polish items...

That's all for right now...back to the bug fixing and polishing grindstone for us!

-The iDGi team

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted a impression article for Consortium.

There are surface similarities with Mass Effect ,and the interaction with crew and the layout of the craft with the pilot in his isolated cockpit, support the comparison. I initially thought of the game as ‘the best parts of Mass Effect’ but that’s unfair to both games. Consortium has more in common with The Last Express or even a recent Telltale release than Bioware’s space opera, and the stories it tells are both far stranger and far more believable than I’ve come to expect from sci-fi games.

Interdimensional Games has a few more short updates for Consortium with news about rewards, and shares a new gameplay trailer.

Full Gameplay Trailer...

We're just going to leave this right here...

THANK-YOU to those of you who posted comments on our Greenlight page.  We're in the top 50's out of 1400 games. While that's not bad, lets shoot to get to the 20's by the end of this month!!  To do this, we need a LOT more traffic....if you have a Steam account, please visit and drop a comment...

GREENLIGHT!  GREENLIGHT!  GREENLIGHT!

Please share this video with your friends, social networks, etc and help us spread the word! 

Think of all the poor sci-fi RPG gamers who have still never heard of us... :-)

Back to the bug killin' and game polishin' grindstone for us!

Rewards...

Some of you may be wondering when the rewards will start being sent out.  Well, the creative contribution rewards have all been fulfilled.  Many of you fine folks have contributed your awesome ideas to our lore, and it has become much richer because of it.  THANK-YOU!   Those of you esteemed backers who contributed your photo to be included in the game...you have something new to hunt for when playing, because you are in there now.

As for the non-game contribution rewards, it should be noted that we need to launch the game first before the team is able to start working in earnest on this stuff. That said, the ZENLIL poster / HD wallpaper is almost done.  The digital soundtrack won't be released until after the game is publicly available.   As for the physical rewards (posters, T-shirts, etc) they will also be given our full attention as soon as the game is released.

Cheers everybody, and on-wards to getting successfully greenlit on STEAM!

-The iDGi team

Interdimensional Games has a new post-funding update for Consortium with a new teaser video, and talks about Steam Grennlight.

New teaser video! Definitive date for V1.0! Steam Greenlight...again.

The above is a new teaser we've produced to try to generate more awareness of the existence of our game!

Next week we will be releasing a full gameplay trailer... 

Version 1.0

For all backers who have been waiting patiently for the "final version", we are pleased to announce that v1.0 of CONSORTIUM will be released to you on December 2nd!  

That is 3 1/2 weeks from now. So that means that ALL of you will finally get access to the game at that time!

Steam Greenlight

Not to repeat ourselves too much...but we still need a LOT more traffic to our Greenlight page.   CONSORTIUM takes place on December 21st, 2042....the holidays...and we would very much like to be able to launch on Steam in early December!

At this time, we invite all beta testers to feel free to start making gameplay videos of CONSORTIUM.  Create "lets play" videos.  Create and share screenshots.  Tell anyone anything you would like about the game! 

All we ask is to either avoid extreme spoilers, or at least warn people about any obvious spoilers beforehand.

Finally, we'll leave you with a new image we made for Greenlight.   

Take care everyone, it's back to stomping bugs and applying those final vital fixes and polish for us...

Consortium has a new post-funding update with news the story beta is now available, and talks about Steam Greenlight.

Development Update

We are now at version 0.975 of Consortium.  Everything is in place.  There are but a handful of content/feature related polish items remaining that we want to make sure make it into the game before we can safely label the build as "V1.0". 

• Sound FX and music passes are 95% complete.  
• All choreography has been 100% completed.  We are now firmly in the editing stage!  (lots of magic happening here right now in the storytelling department....)
• We are still tying up various content "loose threads", such as some of the fallout issues stemming from our "Extreme Zenlil Simulation" stretch goal features and other little unfinished bits here and there.
• We've been discovering and working on fixes to all sorts of technical issues related to making sure the game can run on a myriad of hardware configurations that exist out there.  For instance, the game will now run on 32 bit OS machines, and various optimizations have been made to make the game load faster and improve the general frame-rate.  This process continues...
• We're working on things like the release trailer and the credits!  

Generally though, we are largely in the cycle of testing/fixing.  Testing reveals issues and bugs, then we fix them.  Repeat, repeat, repeat....repeat.  We've said this before, but with a game like this it's exceedingly difficult to accurately guess how long this process will ultimately take.  We're a small team that's capable of a lot, but there's only so much that can be done each day!   However...it is looking *extremely* likely that v1.0 will be available for you all by mid November or perhaps a little earlier.  

We readily admit that our original estimates were simply incorrect.  The last parts of our game have been very challenging to pull off, with plenty of unforeseen problems that we've had to solve.

Beta Backers

We need ALL of your help!  Even if you count yourself in the camp of wanting to wait until the game is done and polished before playing it.... PLEASE, grab the latest beta version, install it, and just play it for 15 minutes.  That is all we ask.  We want to get the game running on all sorts of different machine configurations.  Tell us if you encounter basic technical issues.  The first few hours of gameplay are largely completely finished as well, so you would not be ruining your final experience if you kept playing for a little longer... ;-)

So, if you haven't already done so, claim your FULL STORY BETA BUILD now at Humble Bundle:  Go here  https://www.humblebundle.com/store/keyresender and enter in the email you used to back us here on Kickstarter.

Play it, then jump onto the dev forums and talk about your experience!

Consortium has a new post-funding update with a new video simulation, and news of a new stoty beta.

Extreme Zenlil Simulation

Remember that stretch goal we achieved just in time for the campaign deadline?  Well we've got non-scripted decompression events working in-game now....  Here's a quick glimpse of it. (spoiler alert!) :

Digital Rewards and Story Beta #2

We have partnered up with the extremely cool folks over at Humble Bundle, and they will be helping us out with delivering all the digital pledge rewards to you as they become available.  

To get access to your custom Consortium backer digital reward page, head on over to https://www.humblebundle.com/store/keyresender  and enter in the email address you used to back us here on Kickstarter.

Interdimensional Games has a new post-funding update for Consortium. The last update promised the game was close to completion, but it looks like it will take a little more time.

Well, as you may have noticed, the end of August, our original estimated completion date has passed us and CONSORTIUM still isn't quite fully cooked just yet. However, we are REALLY close at this point... It just needs a little more time in the oven, just a bit more TLC...  

It's widely known just how difficult it is to predict with certainty how long it takes to "finish" a videogame. What comes to mind is a Leonardo da Vinci quote: "Art is never finished, it's just abandoned". It's definitely the game we set out to make 7 years ago (!), and we have all of you amazing backers to thank for helping us reach this point. We are working extremely hard to make sure that everything is tuned and polished to just the right degree. The amount of depth and detail we've packed into this game kind of blows me away personally, and we all hope that you're going to enjoy the final experience!

Interdimensional Games has updated their kickstarter webpage with an update on the progress of Consortium.

Where we are at:

CONSORTIUM is now sitting at approximately 95% content complete! If all goes well, by the end of August CONSORTIUM v1.0 will be finished!

• Almost all voice acting is now in the game. Only two recording sessions remain. One session is for the Consortium King, and the other is a special ensemble scene we're waiting as late as possible to record, so we can include all "pick-ups" that have come up through testing and the last bits of content 

• Animation work continues at a rapid pace, and we are now very close to having all the core story scenes animated. 

• Choreography continues at a similarly fast pace. Still lots to go, but luckily choreography is very low-risk content, so we'll be adding new choreography the day before we launch... 

• Gameplay scripting has made a ton of progress - within a week or two of today, principal gameplay scripting will be completed. 

• The core mechanics have undergone significant polish, tuning and improvements based on all the great feedback we received from our first two beta builds. 

• Music and Sound FX: Work has begun on the final passes for both of these, but much work remains to be done. 

In general, we're very quickly reaching the point where we will be spending all our time playtesting, debugging, tuning and polishing.....speaking of which... 

For Beta Testers ($20 tiers and higher...)

The first STORY beta build is here! We have released a custom build just for you, and download instructions can be found in our Development Forums. As before, everyone who downloads the game and sends us feedback (or simply emails us statistics files...) will get an official credit as a CONSORTIUM tester. 

For those of you worried about "ruining" the final game. We have tried to help this problem by only including the introductory Zenlil freeroam in this demo...which is almost entirely finished. You could think of it as the first chapter of CONSORTIUM. 

 We really do need as many people to play the game and send us statistics files so that we can properly tune and balance the changing NPC Alignment values....so please, come and get the build and shoot us any and all feedback that you may have - we're listening! 

More Soon...

Once we're able to ease up on the crunch a little and we are finally sitting at 100% content complete, we will begin the process of getting all the physical tier rewards put together and shipped off to you. 

In addition, we will start the process of promoting CONSORTIUM to support it's launch, so you will be hearing much more from us.

Consortium sends news on there kickstarter page that the project is now officially funded.  Congratulations to Interdimensional Games, and any of the Watchers that helped with pledges.

Greetings everyone!

So here we are....the final few hours....WE HAVE SUCCEEDED!!!   The whole team is feeling charged, inspired and more excited than ever to finish and deliver to you all an awesome experience!

We have a special video update for you today.  The following is a rough, visual history of the CONSORTIUM project, from pre-pre-production all the way to the present.  

Other than documentation and concept art, the first bit of work done for CONSORTIUM was an early prototype of Zenlil, which was initially built by Gregory as a rough "proof of concept".  Being a very old-school game designer, Gregory built the entire level with only brushes in the Source engine tool HAMMER.

In each of the three sections of the video, we are showing you various sections of Zenlil in 4 different stages of production:  early prototype v0.01, v0.3 first playable, v0.6 alpha, and the present build, v0.8 late alpha.  Enjoy!

The Consortium Kickstarter has only 32 hours to go and would like to reach their $70K stretch goal (currently at $61K).

In addition they also mention an interview at iGR.

5. The RPG elements are wide open in CONSORTIUM. Most of the time gamers nowadays attribute RPG to character leveling and customization, forgetting many of the aspects that make the genre great. What was the motivation for iDGi to focus so heavily on the more in-depth aspects of the RPG?

Yeah, we’re getting a little tired of those very old and overused game mechanics, to be honest (levels, experience points, skills and attributes, etc). They certainly work, and they do create a sense of ownership and value towards player characters. However, we are creating an RPG that focuses largely on ROLE PLAYING. We do also have elaborate and unique inventory and resource management systems as well that will allow players to customize themselves. But yeah, one of our principal goals with CONSORTIUM is to attempt to bring to a CRPG the one key element where table-top RPGs have always had the edge: real human interaction.

Consortium brings another update for the successfully funded kickstarter. This time we meet the writers.

Hey all, Steve here: 

I thought it would make sense for me to introduce this update video. You’ll find myself, my fiancée/co-writer/company editor Deanne, and the newest member of our team, Bob Edwards, content writer extraordinaire. Each of us talk about a different aspect of the CONSORTIUM story/characters, and then intermixed are various fitting game play clips.

In addition: Everything we have shown through the course of this campaign has been from the first 40% of the game, and mostly focuses around the Homeless Mercenaries storyline – which is only one story thread in the game. We are keeping the rest of the game under wraps intentionally so as not to spoil all the BIG twists and turns. Kiril and his Homeless Mercs are only the tip of the iceberg... the “setup.”   It’s how you deal with them and the consequences/choices which follow that really matters most.

Before we get to the video, I thought it would be fun to give you a list of “facts” regarding our characters and the story:  

- There is an estimated 3,300-3,500 total lines of dialogue in CONSORTIUM, split between 21 characters.

- There is not a single character (NPC) within the game of whom you cannot speak to. That is A LOT for a game almost entirely based in a single location; CONSORTIUM really will feel like "Interactive Die Hard on a plane." 

- Every single character in CONSORTIUM (including the “generic enemy”) have at least 100 lines of dialogue, some of the more main characters have 300+. The vast majority of these lines come from direct conversation with the player.

Consortium brings news with Updates #19-20. The project is already funded with three days left with $55,022 earned already. The updates detail the new stretch goals and a character update.

We have zoomed in a bit and created a few smaller stretch goals to give us all something to shoot for over the final days of our campaign.  We have updated the main page with these, but here are the new smaller stretch goals:

$55K: The third most spoken language on Earth is Spanish, so we intend to localize the game to Spanish first.

$60K: There are a few very cool interactive scenes in CONSORTIUM that we have cut due to time and resource restraints that we would love to be able to squeeze back in if we hit this goal. These scenes would increase player freedom and add more consequences to actions...

$65K: Localization to another language, decided by YOU, based on a poll.

$70K: "EXTREME ZENLIL SIMULATION". All exterior doors will be able to be shot out, triggering completely simulated decompression events, potentially causing main characters to die. The environment becomes significantly more fragile (lights, computer screens and more can become damaged). Turbulance will feel more real, creating a more immersive and believable feeling of flight.

$75K: Localization to another language, decided by YOU, based on a poll

Consortium's kickstarter has a new update that basically tells us the game has been funded. I for one am happy for the developer congratulations.

YOU have all decided:  CONSORTIUM is going to be finished in time for this summer!!   YES!! Now we have slightly less than one week to see how far into stretch goals we can manage to achieve to make this game the absolute best it can be!

You have asked for it, so we have provided, as promised.  Go HERE to make a pledge via PayPal. 

They have also posted a new video.

Here are some updates for the Consortium Kickstarter, which is currently little over $5K away from being funded.
There is some information on a new rifle, the Kinetic Assault Rifle (K.A.R.).

Then there is some more information on two in-game characters focussing on some of the antagonists in the game: Kiril Angelov and the Homeless Mercenaries.

And finally some new tiers are announced.

• OTHER PLATFORMS ($10)  Receive the iDGi Discoveries Document upon game launch + one copy of the game on a platform other than PC, once a port has been made and is available. The Discoveries document is the perfect thing to read before even playing the game!  NOTE: ALL tiers at $17 and above will receive the PC game upon launch & have access to one other copy of the game, on a different platform, when available (delivery date on this is for the iDGi Discoveries document only)
• *KICKSTARTER EXCLUSIVE* SPECIAL EDITION (PC only) ($17) - Digital Game Manual + Custom main menu content with exclusive credits, behind the scenes video, photos and more. The game itself will be identical to the game you get in lower tiers - ONLY the main menu is changed. Much of the same behind-the-scene content will also be found on the Special Edition DVD (see our Add-Ons). This version of CONSORTIUM will never be available outside of Kickstarter. NOTE: All higher tiers will also receive this version of the game.
• MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF (limited 250 @ $65) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM KNIGHT" tier + have your full name included in the game lore, discoverable via the in-game information console. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• MAKE A COMPANY (limited 15 @ $75) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM KNIGHT" tier + work with the design team to create an in-game corporation or company that will be used as a part of the lore and written about in the information console. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• MAKE HEADLINES (limited 50 @ $75) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM KNIGHT" tier + work with the design team to come up with your own current world news event for the year 2042. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• MAKE HISTORY (limited 50 @ $75) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM KNIGHT" tier + work with the design team to come up with your own alternative history event between the years 1700 and 2042, and we will integrate it into the lore.
• MAKE A PERSON (limited 30 @ $150) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM BISHOP" tier + work with the design team to create a character who is part of the lore and written about in the information console. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• IMMORTALIZE YOURSELF (limited 25 @ $175) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM QUEEN" tier + have your photo converted into Zenlil crew personal portraits. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• THE INTERACTIVE SCREENPLAY ($250) - You will get everything from the "CONSORTIUM QUEEN" tier + receive the full "CONSORTIUM" Interactive Screenplay, a ~500 page printed book, signed by the team. This is the ENTIRE GAME in written form and has taken nearly four years to develop.
• SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION (limited 5 @ $350) - You will get everything from the "THE INTERACTIVE SCREENPLAY" tier + Have your full-name spoken out loud in the game by one of the main characters. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• BE A VOICE ACTOR (limited 5 @ $1000) - You will get everything from the "THE CONSORTIUM KING" tier +  voice an entire interactive conversation with the player as part of a series of in-game easter eggs. These will not exist unless a pledge is made. (Decent microphone required). NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.
• ZENLIL MASCOT CAT (limited 1 @ $5000) You will get everything from the "THE CONSORTIUM KING" tier + design and name the Zenlil feline mascot. Only if this pledge is made will there be a cat in the game. NOTE: This tier is exclusive and will not be available to higher tiers.

Update 8 of the Consortium Kickstarter ($35K out of an asked $50K) is bringing news on Consortium DVD that you can get with a $30 add-on and is also sharing info through a video on The Consortium Energy Assault Rifle (C.E.A.R.).

There's yet another Consortium update as their campaign reaches 60%, offering the first stretch goal:

It's set at $70K, and we're calling it "Extreme Zenlil Simulation":

Basically, this means we take an extra month to further polish and refine the game, and get the following features in:

• Unscripted decompression events.  This means that with explosives, the exterior doors inside Zenlil can be blasted open, triggering dangerous decompression of the immediate area, causing internal airlock doors to slam shut.   People could potentially get pushed out before the atmospheric shielding engages...
• Enhanced environment destructibility.  This means that anything that looks "fragile", like computer screens can be severely damaged by gun fire, explosions, etc.  Pawns would immediately be assigned to repair them...
• Enhanced turbulance simulation.  We have turbulance in the game right now, but we want to add more detail and variety.  Imagine everyone on-board reacting to turbulence (getting jostled, losing footing, etc).  Imagine huge turbulence events causing objects to fly around the cabin....etc

Much more info on the game coming soon!  

Here are some more character updates of Consortium's Pawns.

Character Summary: Gary Ma (born Ma Yat Hang) was a single child born in Hong Kong to middle class parents who, at the time, owned a low-end restaurant in the Aberdeen district.  Gary’s father died of lung cancer when he was five years old, and not wanting Gary to follow in his footsteps, his mother sold the restaurant soon after.  A year later mother and son moved to Vancouver, B.C., where Gary’s uncle (father’s side) was living and doing well for himself as a hotel manager in what he called a “yuppie part of town.”

At the age of 16, after doing a school project on oceanic acidification, Gary decided he was going to dedicate his life to the environment.  It of course didn’t hurt that his class partner on the project was his wife-to-be, Carla, and that her parents were responsible for pretty much literally “saving the whales” following the Resource Wars.  They were married in September of 2028, three months before Carla and Gary’s mother were both killed in what their world calls the “Great Vancouver Earthquake.”

Gary has a long history with Taryn Fisher/Knight 15 (the “boss” of the Zenlil crew).  They met in 2030 at a vigil for the victims of the Vancouver quake which decimated the entire city and much of the Lower Mainland on December 21st, 2028.  At the time Gary was working for Environment Canada and was known for his publications on rising water temperatures off the coast of B.C. and how it’s affecting the fishing industry there.  Not exactly exciting stuff, but he was making a name for himself as a prominent environmental scientist within well respected circles.

Fast forward a couple years and a couple degrees later, to March of 2037.  Taryn Fisher was inducted into the Consortium as the first Knight for the newly constructed C-3800-D, Zenlil.  After following his career closely, she recommended Gary for a position on her crew.  He joined without hesitation, was given the title “Pawn 1” as a joke by the King (the King has unusual methods for choosing the numbers), and has since been a loyally dedicated officer.

Having past the 50% mark of reaching their goal of $50K it is time to look at the updates for the Consortium Kickstarter. The latest being on the characters in the game and their actors and a Q&A with these actors.

Character Summary:  Some of you may remember Patricia from the Alternate Reality Game based in 2028.  She was responsible for luring one of the main characters, Kevin Chard – “father” to the Consortium King, into her confidence at the bidding of one of the main antagonists.  Immediately after realizing the extent of what she was helping commit, she befriended Consortium founder Dr. David Schelter and has since dedicated her life to atoning for her mistakes which indirectly cost the lives of thousands of people.  She joined the Consortium as a general C-3800 engineer in 2039, and never looked back.

It’s now 2042, she has just recently gotten married to a man she met while vacationing in Peru (many of Zenlil’s crew went to the wedding) and they are currently working on their first child together.  Patricia is also a very spiritual person, being both a member of the Guardian and Catholic Churches.

Extra Notes:  While her name and heritage are very clearly British, Patricia spent most of her life in Mexico and so has learned to adopt a strong, Spanish accent.  Those closest to her would say that she even feels resentment toward her English heritage after being abandoned by her parents at an early age.

A new Kickstarter for the first person RPG shooter Consortium has been launched again.

CONSORTIUM is a first-person story and character-based role-playing shooter set in an interactive world defined by your choices.

Rather than endlessly exploring a huge, expansive and ultimately static world, you’ll find yourself within a dynamic, bustling, interactive and alive micro-environment: the Consortium Command Vessel, C-3800-D "ZENLIL."
The crew of Zenlil live their lives and do their jobs throughout the ship, reacting to your presence and actions where appropriate.  Freely walk among them and speak to everyone you encounter, experience what it’s like to be a part of something much bigger and brighter than anything you could imagine – and then choose to help ensure it stays that way or work to tear it apart!

CONSORTIUM is a role-playing game in which you are able to role-play as yourself.  You are you (as in you can speak as yourself, a man/woman from "our world") and you're being given the opportunity to physically control a man from a parallel world.  This man is first day Consortium field agent Bishop Six, operative for a powerful peacekeeping force in a not-quite-utopia future of 2042.

How you choose to speak for, interpret and play this role is entirely up to you!  Do you choose to role-play the Bishop and be what the Consortium want you to be?  Or do you choose to forge your own path simply using his body and voice as your vessel for communicating with and exploring their world?

You have total control over the Bishop's inventory, medical state, and the state of all his weapons, armor and equipment.  You can also customize his Battle Utility Suit with hard-point devices such as personal deflector shields and shock absorbers. 

You must also manage and balance the Bishop's Utility Energy, with which he can power everything from medical nanites to energy weapons... as well as Storage Energy, which represents stored items such as armor, weapons and ammunition.

Consortium is now officially cancelled on Kickstarter. They are offering to all backers a PDF document they name 'Discoveries', which gives all the details of the game once it is finished.

Some specifics on the document (estimated at least 300 pages):

• Completely in-game and written by Thrie Desertch (my in-game counterpart, brother of Vidal Desertch; creator of the iDGi-1 satellite)
• Full “biography section” for every single character even mentioned in the A.R.G. With over 30 names currently on this list, many of which will be a part of the 3D game series, this will make for a really helpful tool to better understand the history and motivations of everyone involved.
• It will be written as a timeline of events, exactly as if you were playing along with the A.R.G. from the very beginning back in 2010. NO details missed.
• Will include every piece of content so far released; and this is A LOT of stuff (every written document, journal, transcribed audio files/blogs, email, descriptions/screenshots/links for videos, mini-games, and puzzles)... complete with “Thrie’s Thoughts” on everything; an unbiased look at the information and what it all means.
• A breakdown of the entire “in-game iDGi forum” found HERE. Over two years of fairly consistent posts back and forth between people from the other side of the rift, and people from our world (“players”). This will be a chronological point-form summary of everything posted by both players and characters.

They are thinking of returning to Kickstarter in February, but do not consider it a wasted effort as they had tthe opportunity to show the game to the world and learned something as well

For interest's sake, here are the top 2 lessons we've learned with this campaign:

• #1: We should have announced CONSORTIUM at least a month before starting the Kickstarter campaign. Given we are a new company announcing a new I.P, this was absolutely necessary to allow knowledge of CONSORTIUM's existence to spread.

• #2: December is not a great month for Kickstarter campaigns. People are busy visiting family, partying and spending money buying gifts, etc. We believe that this is the biggest reason it's taking as long as it is right now to spread awareness of CONSORTIUM. It's one of the busiest times of the year...

In a 'backers only' post the devs of Consortium announce that they are in the process of closing the campaing on Kickstarter. Being at just below 10K and a target of 200K with just 13 days to go, this looks like a sensible move to make.

They are planning to restart early in the new year , but I am not sure that this is the best time to start a campaign.

Development on the game will continue and can be followed on their blog.

In the last weekend there were two updates for Consortium on Kickstarer. The first is on the music which will feature no other than Jeremy Soule.

Jeremy Soule has always approached his games with a keen eye, and a steady determination to advance the role that music plays.  His scores are spellbinding, embodying the spirit of whatever work he is contributing to, and his standards are impeccable. 

We are approaching the score of CONSORTIUM in much the same way one would a film. The non-linear and branching nature of the game means that players will experience the story in their own way, from their perspective. Jeremy's music will always be there, complimenting what you're doing, playing with your emotions. There will be musical foreshadowing and powerful thematic moments that will help you to interpret the events and unravel the mystery. The music will have meaning within the context of the narrative itself, in precisely the same way that the dialogue contributes to the narrative.

In the second update the team is realizing that being at 9K out of a requested 200K and only 14 days to go, things look difficult.

We know that we should have announced CONSORTIUM at least a month before starting this campaign, in order to give time for the knowledge of our existence to percolate around the world.    We are a new developer creating a brand new I.P., after all....

Sure, our pitch could have been stronger and there is plenty more we could have shown and talked about, but at this point the biggest problem we are facing is the pure lack of traffic to our page and video. Most of our backers have found us through Kickstarter itself. Only just yesterday, Rock, Paper, Shotgun posted about us and triggered a large traffic and backer spike! (THANK YOU!). 

We need many other game sites to discover us, but with the holidays it's been very difficult to line up last minute coverage.  

Please, to those of you who have backed us and want to immerse yourself in the most fully realized and polished version of CONSORTIUM possible -- write to your favourite game news sites, and post on your favourite forums about CONSORTIUM!

Update number 4 of the Consortium Kickstarter (6.7K/200K, 20 days to go) talks about the story of the game.

First and foremost, let me start by repeating our mantra: the story of Consortium revolves around an extremely deep-seeded mystery and is too complex to simply point and say: “our game is about THIS!”  This is one of our greatest weapons to ensure the ~6 hour experience of Consortium is as unique and unpredictable as possible.  This is also why the story write up, here on KS, is mostly geared toward setting up the WHOs and WHEREs, and not so much the specific WHATs.  We want players to feel like they are actually exploring an alternate universe, as themselves, and have absolutely NO idea what is coming next.  Much like many movies tend to give everything away in their trailers (we hate that!), Consortium would be ruined if we talked too much about the specific “narrative thread” of the story.  We hope to hook people on the IDEA of the game world we have created, and on the very notion of being the physical puppet master of another human being.  It definitely helps to know some history on this alternate Earth + its characters (and this is precisely where our A.R.G. comes into play) but this is not vital to still enjoy what CONSORTIUM has to offer.

So... if you’re looking for examples of our writing team’s ability and want to at least get a feeling for the thematic/mood elements of our game and its characters, please refer to our A.R.G.  The A.R.G. is not just for show and flash – it’s an integral part to the story and lore that makeup our entire game!  Keep in mind that everything from the Corporate Blog to the Experience Space Scene is entirely IN-GAME.  So if you email a character, such as Vidal Desertch, then you can expect an in-game reply.  This Kickstarter campaign is the ONLY element of Consortium and/or its A.R.G. that is ‘out of game.’ 

Essentials of our A.R.G. include:

• Audio blogs.
• Audio puzzles.
• Alternate world/future News Articles and Mission Reports all about countless elements/characters in our story.
• Regular puzzles/riddles/hidden secrets that are what A.R.G.’s normally comprise of.
• Hand-written journals also with secret codes and puzzles hidden within.
• Hidden dialing coordinates (find them all to dial into an entirely different time/place!).
• An entire “internal Worldview Industries” e-mail program, packed with over a hundred email correspondences between characters.
• A *MASSIVE* in-game forum between the public and characters of our game.
• A fun/trippy “arcade-style” game called the Greenberg Device, with 21 unique levels of play.
• Once you reach the 93-99% complete mark (according to the in-game progress bar), you can access the "King-Made Question Bot."  Simply put, you can directly ask this BOT questions about anything at all, and it will reply to the best of its ability.  It has just recently been given a huge overhaul and is jam-packed with easter eggs and other fun stuff to discover.

I guess that's it for now!  Stay tuned for more updates, as I know Greg has some more game play videos planned for you!  If you have any further/specific questions about story or the A.R.G... please do not hesitate to throw me an email at: steve@interdimensionalgames.com

In the update of today for Consortium the interactive dialog system is shown.

Here is the I.D.S in action.  This footage is raw, unedited game footage from near the beginning of the current build of "CONSORTIUM".  Note our commentary, explaining what is happening.    

(Please excuse the bad video quality, and those lines across the screen appeared after Kickstarter encoded it...)  

(SPOILER ALERT: This is giving part of the game away!)  More soon!

Consortium is a "narrative first person RPG set 45,000 feet in the air and 30 years in the future" from Interdimensional Games, who are seeking $200k over the next 25 days. Apparently the project has roots in a project from 1999 titled 'Amen' from Cavedog, though I can't say I recall that development.

JOIN US in bringing to life this bright vision of humanity’s future – a world that has overcome many of the gravest environmental and societal issues we face today. Step through the rift and join the CONSORTIUM; the most feared and revered paramilitary peacekeepers on the planet.

WHAT IF you could take complete control of another human being? And what if that human being was a man destined to decide the fate of an alternate dimension?  Speak for him, move for him, and be known as merciful and/or a killer, hero, liar, wild card...or perhaps the strong/silent type? 

CONSORTIUM gives you that chance...

The story of CONSORTIUM begins in our world - the “real world” - where we here at Interdimensional Games have developed a satellite (IDGI-1) capable of opening a digital rift through time and space. Anyone with an internet connection can travel through this rift and awaken within an alternate dimension from our own – the “game world" - in the year 2042.

Upon crossing the rift, you’ll find yourself aboard a Consortium command vessel, designated C-3800-D, “ZENLIL,” and in full control of a man codenamed Bishop Six. Zenlil is one of five such Consortium vessels, and is the ultimate in air superiority. A massive jumbo jet that’s powered by fusion batteries and capable of taking missions in orbit or even as far as the Artemis-1 Moon Colony.

• PLAYER FREEDOM: Our game will never force you to stand in one place, staring at a character, while they ramble on. Walk away from people at any time, or talk to people while doing other things. Just remember that characters will respond accordingly to any strange or rude behaviour!

• NPCs REMEMBER: Similar to the recently successful (and fantastic) "The Walking Dead" game series, everything you say is remembered by characters.  Their opinion of you will change over time, and the course of the game narrative can be altered. Your decisions will cascade into future CONSORTIUM games as well, so choose wisely...

• ENSEMBLE INTERACTIVE CONVERSATIONS: Our game allows you to carry on conversations with multiple NPCs simultaneously. Guide the ensemble and speak to who you want, agree/disagree with who/what you want, or say nothing and let things unfold without your input!

Watch as our extremely detailed story unfolds based on your responses and actions, or simply walk away from any conversation and/or choose to say or do nothing at all... The choice is always yours!

Jeremey Soule has already been announced as the composer, by the way.