The Lost Pisces |KS| The Little Mermaid meets UE4-powered futuristic shooter

Golnei said:
In fairness, in this case it comes across less like 'here's this piece of children's literature but EDGY'; and rather 'the original story has some interesting implications worth expanding on'.
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I agree, it does come across that way -- like I said, it's just a really niggling personal tic. I wish he had said "the original story has some interesting implications worth expanding on" instead of "darker," just because I get annoyed at the propagation of the "dark=good" or "dark=depth" notion. It's such a hollow thing for a creator to say in 2015.

Anyway, I don't mean to dwell on my neurosis. Really, the game looks great. It reminds me of the mid-tier third party games we used to get more of in generations past, which were more likely to do original and strange things. As much as I love pixel art, I'm glad we're getting to a point where indie games can start filling that void, if that makes sense.

Also, I really like the title.
 
Thanks for sharing this! We would have had no idea about this game until someone RT'd a picture of it in our Twitter feed and we immediately snapped up the opportunity to learn more. This is honestly one of the most interesting projects I've personally heard about in a long time and I can't wait to see the game in action.

The development team will be joining us on our podcast this Sunday, so if you have any questions you'd like answered hit me up with a PM and we'll be sure to get it covered!
 
This looks fucking fantastic. Art design is strikingly beautiful. And, they're looking into putting on the PS4 as well!

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Prime focus on AI rather than visuals? Not a shooter? Thank the heavens. After seeing Ex Machina, I'm on that AI kick.

UE 4 seems to be making things easier for indie devs looking to make bigger 3D games.
 
Messofanego said:
Prime focus on AI rather than visuals? Not a shooter? Thank the heavens. After seeing Ex Machina, I'm on that AI kick.

UE 4 seems to be making things easier for indie devs looking to make bigger 3D games.
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Have you seen the iPad interactive fiction game Blood & Laurels? It's the first game to use the Versu engine, which allows for AI-driven personality states
http://versu.com/2014/05/28/blood-laurels/

And of course the AI in Rain World is crazy complex
 
I'm always very, very skeptical of Kickstarters that pitch with Artwork instead of Gameplay Demos - It's easy to come up with artwork, but it's incredibly hard to actually make it all work in a game that's enormously fun to play.

From my experience, I wouldn't be surprised if these artworks are all that they have... cause Kickstarter. Is there any gameplay footage available? To me, that's the true test and that's where every developer should start. Start on Artwork and you'll re-do a lot of work, always start on gameplay and focus on art later.

So: Looks cool, but it's a wait and see.
 
thomasmahler said:
I'm always very, very skeptical of Kickstarters that pitch with Artwork instead of Gameplay Demos - It's easy to come up with artwork, but it's incredibly hard to actually make it all work in a game that's enormously fun to play.

From my experience, I wouldn't be surprised if these artworks are all that they have... cause Kickstarter. Is there any gameplay footage available? To me, that's the true test and that's where every developer should start. Start on Artwork and you'll re-do a lot of work, always start on gameplay and focus on art later.

So: Looks cool, but it's a wait and see.
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We'll see when the Kickstarter launches if they use gameplay footage.
 
Love the idea, so out of leftfield. I'll see if they show gameplay and if the KS has console versions to see if I'll support it.
 
Another damn Kickstarter where the game will never release. Hell they can't even get it on Kickstarter. Definitely might be another HLD or Project Phoenix.
 
More_Badass said:
What's the issue with HLD? I've seen smaller far less ambitious games take years to make.
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June 2014 is the issue with it. All these guys make up these ridiculous release dates that they know that they can't meet. Here we are in 2015 and they are trying to hire programmers.
 
Rayge said:
June 2014 is the issue with it. All these guys make up these ridiculous release dates that they know that they can't meet. Here we are in 2015 and they are trying to hire programmers.
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I do tend to be wary of crazy release dates

Unless it makes sense. Like Slain's date is May 2015, but the game is pretty far into development. And the devs of Catacomb Kids, That Which Sleeps, NOCT, and RimWorld were all really good at meeting their set deadlines for alpha, demos, etc
 
IGM #48 April 2015: http://indiegamemag.com/april-2015-issue-48-sneak-peek-kiss-the-girl/ ($3)
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12-page cover story on The Lost Pisces. Very thorough, lots of details, so I downloaded it.

Main inspiration is The Little Mermaid because they want to be more faithful to the themes of the original story than the Disney animated movie about desperation to have a soul by becoming human.

Could be amazing. FPA (first person adventure) about connection with a mermaid-like advanced synthetic called Pisces in the wake of Atlantian civilisations, with stakes raised pretty high compared to other FPAs of going against 20 story tall mechanical "gods" that will involve puzzles rather than combat to take them down. It's very Shadow of the Colossus. You play as the protagonist Pisces' companion Erebos. One of those gods is Pisces herself who wants to become human-like instead of an immortal machine, so she's closer to your size. There will be 3 open world areas, one of which, Port of Aries, will be shown on the Kickstarter campaign. You'll be able to use vehicles to travel around (tanks, helicopters, submarines) that will be used against the gods and dive under water. Unlike most power fantasies, the further you progress, you grow weaker because Pisces is becoming more "human" so she loses some of her abilities. This makes the game more difficult:
Rutkowski: "The fact that Pisces becomes more and more human over time is just a different twist on a gameplay mechanic that everyone is familiar with: As a game progresses, we expect it to become more challenging! Stage 5 is usually more difficult than stage 2.

Likewise, the enemies you encounter in The Lost Pisces don’t necessarily become more powerful or intelligent (they’re easily likened to almost Lovecraftian cosmic forces that are pure, unbridled chaos… not evil geniuses), and so the increased difficulty can’t arise in that sense. So we thought that the fact that Pisces herself becomes more fragile is a great mechanic that allows for the game to become more difficult over time. An attack that in the beginning of the game may do minimal damage to her, may later-on critically injure her in the final portions of the game."
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The Kinect stuff has me uncertain. It's basically trying to be Project Milo again, where Pisces will be able to read your facial language through the Kinect and react in different ways:
IGM: "Sirenum intends to integrate Kinect so that Pisces can learn from a player’s reactions, reading their facial features and “remembering” her experiences. Can you detail some specific examples of how you’d like this process to effect gameplay, or the relationship between players and Pisces?"

Rutkowski : "Emotional responses are context sensitive. A shocked look on the gamer’s face can mean many different things. Depending on if the enemy just finished an attack animation, or if a piece of information regarding some hidden truth was just read off an ancient tablet, the same look can mean very different things. And so we use a Boolean system to gauge what different emotional responses really mean… i.e. if A and B are “true,” then the emotional response likely equals Z.

As an example, things you may have done with her will define how she will react to you in the present. If you’ve come to her rescue, if you’ve shown compassion in your face when she asks you for a favor, if you’ve smiled at her when you thought she wasn’t looking… these things all mean something to her, and will change her perception of you. If you’ve shown despair or concern in your face when she has been hurt, that too
means something to her. They’re really simple ideas, but these subtle responses that your face generates gives her a clue as to who you are, and whether or not she can trust you."
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Three main designers: Dan Rutkowski, Maya and Michaell Bakalars. They're industrial designers with 30 years of total experience and because of their fast-working field and "tasked with almost project management positions", they're apparently very fast and very efficient compared to traditional videogame developers.

Been working on The Lost Pisces for 3 years now. Originally were using Unity but because of framerate issues, switched to Unreal Engine 4 in 2014:

Rutkowski: "The time we were using Unity to build the game, and while we love Unity for specific reasons, we weren't confident that we could provide a stellar experience using it. We were able to prototype all of the original ideas for Pisces, with Kinect-enabled learning AI and such, but when it came to a visually-stunning world, it was insanely difficult to maintain a consistent experience at a decent framerate. Unity can do an amazing amount of things, and can look outstanding when you purchase enough of the community-created plugins that provide better and better lighting and AI effects. But it comes at a price.

Framerates became miserably low and we were unsure of how to remedy the situation in May of 2013. Optimization is one thing, but we wanted our characters and world to be amazing… we wanted the terrain to be awe-inspiring. We wanted water to look and feel like, well, water! Unfortunately these effects are just outside of what we felt Unity 4 could provide on a console or common-range gaming PC. So we held off.

Fast forward to March of 2014 and Unreal Engine 4 makes a debut. We had dabbled with UDK in the past and knew that the technology was insane (in a good way), but for one reason or another never perused that engine for The Lost Pisces. But Unreal Engine 4 was something special, and we began the long journey of porting our art into that engine. The fact that Unreal can handle such a gigantic breadth of things well, from massive terrains to realistic foliage, to their incredibly robust blue-print visual-scripting system, has given us the confidence that we can deliver the game we’ve always envisioned."
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Collaborating with two outside studios: Opaque Media (who created Kinect4Unreal), and Rival Theory (for Sentio Character learning AI tech).
 
Hey guys,

I was the one who interviewed the Sirenum team for the Magazine. Some stuff was left on the cutting room floor, editing-wise (the Cover Story and Interview were long enough as-is, but so much was new info I decided to keep it in), so if you have any questions, I can answer them as best as possible.

Obviously, I'd prefer it if you bought the Mag and read the story first but............ that's wishful thinking. For now, I will say the KS delays have been legitimate so far. (Mostly due to getting Xbox One approval, The latest delay I'll have to check with the devs to make sure I can disclose. But it's partner-related, not any sort of development snag.)
 
These days it's always the indie stuff that excites me the most. Just hope it plays smoother than most
 
HeroesInAHalfShell said:
Hey guys,

I was the one who interviewed the Sirenum team for the Magazine. Some stuff was left on the cutting room floor, editing-wise (the Cover Story and Interview were long enough as-is, but so much was new info I decided to keep it in), so if you have any questions, I can answer them as best as possible.

Obviously, I'd prefer it if you bought the Mag and read the story first but............ that's wishful thinking. For now, I will say the KS delays have been legitimate so far. (Mostly due to getting Xbox One approval, The latest delay I'll have to check with the devs to make sure I can disclose. But it's partner-related, not any sort of development snag.)
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Cool. Haven't checked out the mag but I read the site often

Do have to say I'm concerned about the delays. The devs have a pattern with that. Originally the Kickstarter was slated for spring of 2013, then summer, then silence for two years, then February 2015, March 2015, April 2015. Now late April 2015
 
More_Badass said:
Cool. Haven't checked out the mag but I read the site often

Do have to say I'm concerned about the delays. The devs have a pattern with that. Originally the Kickstarter was slated for spring of 2013, then summer, then silence for two years, then February 2015, March 2015, April 2015. Now late April 2015
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A lot of the delays are discussed in the Mag, but the cliff notes version is:

The game was originally built in Unity, but after the team decided to expand their vision, Unity simply couldn't handle the workload without massive framerate issues. Spring/Summer 2013 was going to crowdfund the Unity version, but after Epic unveiled UE4, the team decided to reconsider and learn UE programming. They spent two years rebuilding the game to take advantage of UE4, which comes across in the latest batch of screenshots.

They then shot for Feb. 2015 to crowdfund, but Microsoft reached out about bringing the game to Xbox One, and Sirenum decided it would benefit the campaign if they could promise PC and Xbox One support right out of the gate. They expected it to take a month or so to complete the paperwork, so they pushed to March 20. Paperwork didn't move as quickly (working with MS and Sony is never a quick process. I'm coordinating some Cover Stories for the rest of 2015 that have taken a LONG time to get approved. It's not difficult, and it's not like they're trying to be a pain, they just have a lot of moving parts and a million people have to sign off on any given decision.) so it then became April 2, as cited in the Magazine.

The latest delay is related to a partner they brought on to help make good on the Kinect-related promises they're boasting. (Which, frankly, I was very skeptical of initially. I think that comes across in my interview. I didn't pull any punches with Sirenum, and they were good sports for taking it in stride and answering candidly.) The team knows they're asking for a LOT of money, so they want to launch the campaign to coincide with a major media push. (April 2 was to coincide with the Mag release, which didn't pan out. Late April coincides with a Microsoft conference.)

Sorry, guess that's not the cliff notes version after all. But that's basically how crowdfunding has gone up to this point.
 
HeroesInAHalfShell said:
A lot of the delays are discussed in the Mag, but the cliff notes version is:

The game was originally built in Unity, but after the team decided to expand their vision, Unity simply couldn't handle the workload without massive framerate issues. Spring/Summer 2013 was going to crowdfund the Unity version, but after Epic unveiled UE4, the team decided to reconsider and learn UE programming. They spent two years rebuilding the game to take advantage of UE4, which comes across in the latest batch of screenshots.

They then shot for Feb. 2015 to crowdfund, but Microsoft reached out about bringing the game to Xbox One, and Sirenum decided it would benefit the campaign if they could promise PC and Xbox One support right out of the gate. They expected it to take a month or so to complete the paperwork, so they pushed to March 20. Paperwork didn't move as quickly (working with MS and Sony is never a quick process. I'm coordinating some Cover Stories for the rest of 2015 that have taken a LONG time to get approved. It's not difficult, and it's not like they're trying to be a pain, they just have a lot of moving parts and a million people have to sign off on any given decision.) so it then became April 2, as cited in the Magazine.

The latest delay is related to a partner they brought on to help make good on the Kinect-related promises they're boasting. (Which, frankly, I was very skeptical of initially. I think that comes across in my interview. I didn't pull any punches with Sirenum, and they were good sports for taking it in stride and answering candidly.) The team knows they're asking for a LOT of money, so they want to launch the campaign to coincide with a major media push. (April 2 was to coincide with the Mag release, which didn't pan out. Late April coincides with a Microsoft conference.)

Sorry, guess that's not the cliff notes version after all. But that's basically how crowdfunding has gone up to this point.
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Thanks for going in-depth. You can probably understand why some would be cautious from an outsider perspective. Game looks so promising, but the repeated delays weren't looking good.
 
More_Badass said:
Thanks for going in-depth. You can probably understand why some would be cautious from an outsider perspective. Game looks so promising, but the repeated delays weren't looking good.
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Yeah, it's totally understandable. Everything from the game's overall scope to their AI implementation seems too good to be true. It's crazy to think a small team can pull of AI that AAA hasn't been able to execute yet. But those were the hard questions I put to them, and the core team is still confident, and working with a number of partners who excel in areas of the field they themeselves haven't mastered. They are admittedly all exhaustively experienced in their fields.

If it gets delayed again, I'll start to worry myself. But the latest update (the project lead emailed me this morning after I asked for an update) is that April 28 is still a go.

Also, I realize I didn't really prove who I am (sometimes I assume GAF just has all the answers already), so if someone wants to verify: My name is Vinny Parisi. My twitter is @Vincent_Parisi is someone wants to tweet at me. Or you can tweet at the official twitter @indiegamemag and I'll respond there, either way.
 
Screenshot's look fantastic but the title urks me. The Lost Fishes? Really? I don't know if terrible puns really suite the vibe they're going for.

Oh well, no big deal, will keep an eye on this anyway.
 
There is something terribly exciting about this although I can't imagine it being any good. The concept is right up my alley. It reminds me of all of those old GPU boxarts, so it gives off this nostalgic futurism vibe. It also reminds me of Armored Core 4's nearly greyscale artstyle, which wasn't very good at all.

Ambitious. Might be my first kickstarter backing.
 
More_Badass said:
@HeroesInAHalfShell - Probably best to pick up the magazine, but did you guys see actual gameplay when you covered the game?
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I've only seen the most up-to-date screenshots that will be used for the Kickstarter. For the Cover Story - which keep in mind was prepared a couple months ago - they walked me through the pitch for the game, including a handful of gameplay sequences in basically moment-to-moment detail (some of which is in the Mag) with accompanying screenshots. I'm waiting on a preview link for the campaign page (which I thought I'd have yesterday), which will definitely showcase gameplay footage.
 
I created a thread here and pointed this game out over 3 months ago when the Kickstart was supposed to start. Then they Moved it to march and now they moved it to April. They always change the KS date on the day of. I wouldn't hold my breath. Game has been in limbo for years.

After reading more about it back then I grew disinterested. Hopefully it does come to fruition this time around.
 
Looks interesting. Also interesting is these constant changes in dates. Didn't even realize I was reading something from Feb until someone mentioned the KS date to be 2/20 in the comments (looks like a mod changed the date in the title).

However vaporware is vaporware. Despite the explanation from the article, there sure as hell better be gameplay in that KS if it ever comes out.
 
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