Grimoire - Interview @ RPGCodex

[RPGWatch]

Cleve got annoyed enough at RPGWatch forums to never visit them again (so he says), but the folks at RPGCodex are much nicer so they got him to talk and share some screenies of Grimoire.

In your Indiegogo pitch, you speak of your perfectionist trait that you ascribe to your "Neanderthal genes". Do you see this kind of perfectionism as a threat to the target release date of May 2013? How do you make sure the game does not end up being delayed again? And most importantly, how would you convince people that it is for real this time?

If you get a chance, ask your scienmagists about the lovingly drawn 'thal cave paintings of the spotted horses. Ask them how wild horses could have those spots when that is a recessive trait specifically associated with domestication. Horses with spots are night blind which is a great trait if you are in a stable after sundown. Ask your scienmagists, tell them your crazy Neanderthal buddy is an inquiring mind and the rodeo clown wants to know. I reckon the spotted horse alone blows apart 400 years of Sapiens scienmajistics in five seconds. Stupid Enkidu, always peeing in the scienmajistic punch bowl.

No new features. No improvisational ideas. No added work. In several places, I have cut the Gordian Knot and just made it work. The miniquests had been this nightmarish complexity for a while with three game editors involved. I slashed all that a couple weeks ago and had miniquests working in ten minutes in a far more simplified form.

I think most reasonable people would realize that after a long acquiescence the game has entered a phase now where the target has become clarified and bounded by a deadline to simply complete it and ship it. I am certain the people pledging have realized this may be a long bet with a pretty big payoff if they end up with exclusive copies of physical media for one of the biggest vaporware RPGs in human history that we know of at this time.

Do you have any plans to release a trial or demo version of the game? If you do, then at what point?

I will be releasing a demo of the basic starter region with four maps before end of December, possibly at the end of November. Right now the biggest hurdle has been adapting to the new resolution of 1024x768, our first goal on IndieGoGo which we achieved. This demo will be public and should end anyone's doubts the game exists for good.