Hello everyone,

Thomas here to catch you all up on what's been happening. We were a bit quiet last month, and part of the reason for that is Adam Heine, Colin McComb and I were all at the inXile office for a week of discussions, meetings, and just hanging out. These occasional get-togethers really help us connect and make it easier working together remotely. Plus for Adam and me, it was our first time meeting George Ziets in real life—an awesome bonus! And after a productive day we'd stick around in the office to play one of Jesse's many board games – such as a few interesting games of Avalon where each and every time everyone was convinced Colin was one of the evil guys (I suspect it's the goatee).

A Design Review of one of the Bloom areas. (Clockwise from left: George Ziets, Thomas Beekers, Colin McComb, Steve Dobos, Jesse Farrell, Adam Heine, Kevin Saunders, Matt Findley. Photo by Brian Fargo)

Before we get onto other stuff, I'd like to point you all to our website again, especially if you haven't registered yet (please do!) We're continuing to enhance the site and our backer system, and there's two improvements in particular I want to point out:

First, with thanks to Monte Cook Games, you can now spend your Torment points on a variety of digital and physical Numenera and The Strange pen and paper books, from the Corebook to Sir Arthour's Guide to the Numenera. Opting for these rewards provides you with a coupon code to use at the MCG store, and supports both us and them!

We also added the capability to gift points to other people. If you have enough excess points in your account (the minimum is 500 points, equivalent to $5), you can change these points into a gift code in our system, give this code to a friend and they can claim the points on their own account and use them to select their own rewards! As the holidays are almost here, perhaps spreading a little Torment to your loved ones is just what the season calls for?

New Team Members

Kevin here. Over the last couple months, our highest priority has been ramping up Torment’s new team members and welcoming them over from their duties on Wasteland 2. While both games are single-player RPGs and built in Unity, there are major differences between them in all facets: animation, art, design, programming, sound, visual effects, and even elements of the production process. So while moving ahead creating content, we are taking some time to cross-train, acclimating our team with Numenera and the Torment project, while also infusing Torment with expertise gained throughout the development of Wasteland 2.

While we’re still keeping inXile a small and focused company, we’ve staffed up a bit to better meet the requirements for Torment and our planned future endeavors. Two new environment artists have joined us, and the Torment team. The first is Damien Evans, who actually began his game industry career in Quality Assurance at Interplay, where he was a QA lead on Planescape: Torment. InXile gave Damien his first art-related position many years ago, and we’re thrilled we’ve been able to lure him back with Torment.

After receiving a paintover pass, this 2D render (artist: Damien Evans) will serve as the background for an in-game Scene, where visual effects and possibly 3D props would be added.

The second, Paul Fish, joins us at the end of this month, driven by his love for Planescape: Torment and his excitement about the Numenera setting. Aaron Meyers, Torment’s Lead Artist, had the honor of extending Paul’s first game industry job to him about 7 years ago, and since that time Paul has mostly worked at Obsidian Entertainment, where his efforts included some of the Pillars of Eternity environment art. Although we’ve adjusted some aspects of the environment art pipeline we’ve licensed from the PoE team, enough is the same that Paul will be able to hit the ground running.

If you are interested in more details related to our production, you might check out our official Torment forums. One of our environment artists, Jon Gwyn, and Josh Jertberg, our Lead Animator, both have threads there in which they discuss and occasionally give updates on those aspects of the game.

Alpha Systems Test

Early-ish next year, we intend to have the first alpha systems test (AST). These are not exactly a common part of current game development, so I wanted to explain them a bit. Each AST will be a very limited build (version of the game) that highlights particular elements and is released to our alpha systems testers for their feedback. For example, the first one will likely focus on the Conversation UI. It won’t include any actual game world or characters. What it will have is a reasonably complete implementation of the Conversation UI, along with a single conversation that will be fairly involved, but still only take a couple minutes to play through.

The ASTs will hopefully be interesting for the testers, but they are by no means game demos or beta tests. To be blunt, these ASTs are for the benefit of the game, not those who play it. Alpha systems testers should expect them to be be ugly (or, more accurately, bland), with clearly placeholder graphics for anything that’s not central to the AST. (For example, the Conversation UI AST will have candidate final art for that interface, since its aesthetics contribute to the overall conversation gameplay experience.) They may have some bugs, though in general we're looking more for the alpha systems testers to be providing feedback, not finding bugs.

Because of the development goals of the ASTs, we’re not planning to announce them in advance – while we have our own internal deadlines for these things, I don’t want the team to feel compelled to make compromises to meet publicly announced expectations or deadlines. I want the ASTs to be whatever they should be, whenever they should be, as will be best for Torment. Also, while we’ll be mentioning the ASTs a bit in these Kickstarter Updates, we will generally communicate more about them through Tumblr and directly to the eligible backers (i.e., those whose tier included AST access (Artifact Collector and higher Tiers), or who chose it as an add-on).

Kevin out.

Adam here! For once, I'm going to tell you about something other than game mechanics: the history of the Oasis of M'ra Jolios.

Well, not the whole history. The underwater city of M'ra Jolios has existed since the beginning of recorded time, and possibly much longer than that—but no one knows who built it or why.

It is home to the Ghibra Ny'kul, the collective name for a variety of water-breathing races from all over the Ninth World. The Ghibra believe M'ra Jolios was created by their god, and that they were placed in the Ninth World to bring "water and life" to the Ninth World. It was this worldview that guided their meeting with the first Jerboans hundreds of years ago.

Concept art of the Ghibra (artist: Rebecca On)

The Jerboans were (and mostly still are) humans, refugees from the surrounding lands. The Tabaht still held sway in much of that region, enslaving some and driving many from their homes. Hundreds crossed the mountains into a vast desert valley with a sparkling dome at its center (its exact center, by the way, which is a point of interest among those who study M'ra Jolios). Thinking it to be an oasis, and having nowhere else to turn, these refugees hazarded the enormous wasteland in hopes of a safe haven.

Most of these migrants were never heard from again. The wasteland surrounding M'ra Jolios is called the Lost Sea for a reason. It's more than just an enormous desert; ripples in space-time make it nearly impossible to traverse. You could walk in a straight line for weeks on end and find that you were still exactly where you started. Or you might end up on the other side of the valley without ever having gone near M'ra Jolios. Or you could wake up every morning in a different place than where you slept, never able to escape even if you went back the way you came. But with the right numenera (or a lot of luck), people could sometimes get through. That's how the first Jerboans arrived at M'ra Jolios.

Some say the Ghibra greeted the weary travelers and helped them establish the air-breather town outside the Oasis. Others say a man, who somehow lived among the Ghibra, welcomed the refugees and helped them survive with the aid of the Oasis. Still others suggest the founding Jerboans themselves taught the Ghibra about the world outside their bubble and proposed an alliance.

Regardless, the two towns—Jerboa and M'ra Jolios—have grown together for centuries. More refugees from other conflicts and disasters have come to Jerboa Town since, growing Jerboa’s population much faster than M'ra Jolios, and as different methods have been found to safely traverse the Lost Sea, they have attracted a strong tourist trade. M'ra Jolios has grown more slowly, protecting their culture by controlling traffic into their environment. They also provide Jerboa with potable water, without which, the Jerboans would perish.

Today, most Jerboans view their relationship with the Oasis as a symbiotic one. The Ghibra give the Jerboans the means to survive—literally giving them water and life—but the Jerboans bring significant trade and tourism to the Oasis, making the Ghibra exceedingly wealthy. Many in M'ra Jolios agree that their relationship is mutually beneficial, and though the Ghibra are leery about giving Jerboans permanent access to their waters, they have come to Jerboa's defense on more than one occasion over the centuries.

But as the Jerboans bring more and more attention to the Oasis, the air-breathers are becoming increasingly discontent with being forced to live outside in the hot desert, allowed to enter the Oasis only with a guide holding their hand. The Ghibra are mixed in response to this, and there are rumors the Oasis hides an éminence grise, a shadowy figure who works behind the scenes to maintain M'ra Jolios's seclusion for his own purposes.

The tranquility of this desert paradise is wavering, and in the brewing storms are opportunities for the daring (or devious) to exploit the conflict for their benefit.

Denizens of the Oasis (artist: Rebecca On)

Adam out.

Visual Effects Artist Sought

Thus far, our Kickstarter Updates have helped us discover two great talents (Jason Dora, our web programmer and the mastermind behind the new backer site; and Nathan Fabian of Longshot Studios, who is a contract programmer responsible for the lion’s share of the Conversation UI implementation) and so we’re reaching out to you all yet again. We seek a mid- or senior-level (Tier 3+ ;) ) visual effects artist to aid Charlie Bloomer, Torment’s Art Director and Lead VFX Artist, and Jon Sanders, a talented but fledgling VFX artist, in helping Torment look spectacular. If you, or someone you know, is interested and qualified, please check out the full description on our jobs page. (An underwater city like the Oasis of M’ra Jolios isn’t going to make itself, after all!)

Our Good Friends

Our friends at Monte Cook Games are doing a one-time exclusive Numenera boxed set edition only available by backing this Kickstarter, with just a few days to go. It's been a huge success and the amount of support is allowing them to put a bunch of extras into the boxed sets. Well worth it for the collectors amongst you!

inXile is very happy to support Patrick Rothfuss and Worldbuilders in raising money for charity by offering copies of Wasteland 2 as one of the item's for offer on Pat's Tinker's Packs site. You can read Pat's thoughts on this on his blog, particularly this post. We're over $500,000 raised for charity, with all profits of these sales going to Worldbuilders charities, so let's keep it rolling!

And finally, one of our writers, Brian Mitsoda, with his team at DoubleBear, recently released their own cRPG title: Dead State. One of the early successful Kickstarters, Dead State is a zombie apocalypse survival game with strategic turn-based combat and base-building mechanics -- the game is very story-driven and is not your typical zombie fare. Our congratulations go to Brian and his team! You can check it out on Steam or GOG.com.

Thomas Beekers

Line Producer