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[nenjin]

M E T A

At this point I can't expect anything, but I certainly enjoy listening to and thinking about what this thing might be.

[birdy51]

"Yesss, the good work continues..." Mutters the Prophet, tying the tired corpse once with string and tissue paper. His eyes glisten. Soon the corpse once sleeping will shamble on again. Soon. Soooooooon.

[ZeroGravitas]

The thing that struck me while watching the videos is how complete the game looks - there doesn't appear to be any dummy text for anything. Every resource, character, option... everything has its full flavor text.

oh, there's more dummy text than you think

[SangerZonvolt]

Few things of note. There seem to be 24 turns to a year, so 100 turns is "just" about 4 years. Which doesn't strike me as unreasonable for some of the challenges with that time. It also makes sense from a game play perspective. It means small things of importance could be happening on each individual turn, punctuated with large discoveries or shifts spread much farther out. It's the type of game play you'd want a game like this to have.

The things we can see in the video that take about 100 turns or more:
Transcribing a tome
Identifying a relic
Scribing Arcana
Experiments
Penning a critique

Except for the last one 4 years seems like a reasonable timeframe indeed (if the tomes and Arcana are suffiently complex, like large books or encyclopedias). But that must be one hell of a critique.

[AlStar]

The thing that struck me while watching the videos is how complete the game looks - there doesn't appear to be any dummy text for anything. Every resource, character, option... everything has its full flavor text.

oh, there's more dummy text than you think

Maybe there's something I missed, but - for instance - when he was quickly scrolling over the seals for his god, those all had full stats and text, all the trade goods his mouse happened to hit also had a description and effects, as did the upgrades in both the civics tab and the underworld tab.

I didn't see anything that looked like "TEXT GOES HERE" or "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...".

[nenjin]

I think he was implying more than stating. With so much text present, it'd be a stretch to believe it's all detailed out.

But yeah, every time I stopped the videos to read, I didn't see anything that looked like placeholder text.

[E. Albright]

All the text being filled out seems, uh, very plausible with the type of psych issues that are alleged to surround the development. I could totally see that sort of thing being both a useful coping mechanism to be able to work on things even when they didn't feel like they could do what they need to do, and a serious hindrance to having something they felt like they could release and/or could change easily...

[ThtblovesDF]

We are basically at 2 Videos per Year of development, so lets remember this is a hype-turtle at best.

[Damiac]

Hey guys, since you seem like the patient type, I've got a new crowdfunded game going.  It's already 100% done, I just need some money from you to make it 101% done and ready to ship.  But I swear, it's already playable and fun and totally exists.

If you give me your money, I'll repay your trust by updating you on the progress of the development of my finished game once a week month Year When I feel like it.

Oh, just to clarify, I'm not actually the dev of this game.  I'm a close business associate, and I've actually played through the 100% complete game.  The dev is just kinda shy, so he prefers for all communication to go through me. Also I've never met him, nor do I have any idea what the game will be like, even though I've already played it. 

Now, I'm a busy scam artist business man, so once the already complete project starts rolling I might just stop communicating entirely, this should be taken as a sign that everything is going extremely well and you should probably give me more money.  I expect such dedicated fans such as yourself to glean what might be causing me not to communicate by investigating any social media/other crowdfunding attempts in which the dev or myself might be involved.  Remember that asking for updates/communication/signs of life will cause additional delays in the completion of this already finished product.

Thank you, and give me money.  Don't be an entitled brat about it either, in the unlikely event that the game fails to exist, you should appreciate that you had the opportunity to participate in the development of this already complete game.

[nenjin]

3/10. Not M E T A enough.

[Xgamer4]

... I realize you're caricaturizing That Which Sleeps, so this is kinda moot, but you're overdoing it a bit.

The claim hadn't really been that the game was 100% complete. It was that a stable demo for playtesting existed (and even that got walked back when the Kickstarter went live). The actual Kickstarter just says they have a "stable working game engine". Whether any of that's true or not we'll never really know, because anything that existed got jettisoned because a new engine was required for the stretch goals. (which is still terrible project management...).

Joe being the one that did all communications is definitively wrong. Josh did a lot of communication back in the beginning. That's part of why this was all such a shock - he went from extremely active to nothing. No idea as to why - emotional and mental state seems to be the prevailing theory, and makes the most sense, but it could've been as simple as just keeping away so he'd stop making promises on features - but he did communicate heavily.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Where is the original thread from? Before the kickstarter. Facepunch or Somethingawful... he was just like, yo look at this cool game I have, and it was way more complete, but then the whole kickstarter happened an kablam! shit hits the fan.

[Karlito]

The TIGSource thread is probably what you're thinking of.

[RebelZhouYuWu]

This game is one that I get hyped up for, get disappointed when no new information comes up, forget about the game, and then out of no where a major update comes back and I get re-hyped again.  It is an endless cycle a hell.  But still, each update shows that a ton of work has been put into the game, the UI changes seem to be meaningful, and the game has changed a ton since it was first announced.  My suspicion is that all of the mechanics are there, however balancing the AI and other mechanics is proving to be a large problem and is taking a long time to complete, in some cases having to rework some mechanics because of wonky effects.  Anyways, the actual lore put into this is what I am most impressed with, from all the little quotes on nearly everything in the game, to the pretty consistent art style (it might not be the best, but it is very well themed and an amazing accomplishment if you compare from the beginning of the kickstarter.)  I think that the developer is a really big perfectionist and wants try to perfect everything and doesn't want to show anything that isn't just right.  I think that after last gameplay footage, when he was recording the next bit of gameplay something wonky came up and on working to fix that revealed some problem with some mechanic that he had to fix (I mean he rewrite the entire AI code and the gameplay around that just because of some problems).  But I will say that he does seem dedicated to the game.

[IronyOwl]

The TIGSource thread is probably what you're thinking of.

Wow, that's a lot of detail and a lot of flavor text. No wonder people were a bizarre mix of hopeful, enraged, and incredulous when it all vanished somehow.