"Shantae: Half-Genie Hero" Kickstart Campaign

And I didnt want to imply that we are as bad as any typical Sonic community.
But yeah, if you had experiences I had, you surely would feel uneasy about this stuff too, if you didn't have any better experiences to compensate.

Either way, just me having bad feelings, due to my past experiences.
This whole "I am with you and you" business...
I dunno, for some reason it reminds me of those quarrels I had with your generic Sonic community.
And I am sure you know by now, how much the appreciate different opinions.

It starts out as a small candle, but becomes a huge inferno quickly.

.Luke wrote:Voice acting certainly isn't cheap, and WayForward knew it, because that was made an optional stretch goal instead of a mandatory part of the game's funding, so the game will be fine with or without it. (And if I recall this correctly, WayForward originally wasn't even going to give DuckTales voices, until Disney offered to round up most of the original cast.)

Well, how come the voice-acting goal gets to come before Clockwork Night? If anything, voices should be the absolute last thing on that list (with cutscenes being second-last). Again, more gameplay should come first over the added bells and whistles.

And Disney was footing the bill on the already well-established DuckTales cast, so WayForward had nothing to lose on it (plus you never say no to the Mouse... ever).

Maybe Clockwork Night would be dependent on voices for depicting certain scenes, or would be less limiting to sneak in some comical effect by having them? It does seem a bit odd to have voice acting set as a higher priority above another additional chapter, but there has to be an explainable reason for it.

Then again, costumes were one of the first stretch goals above other chapters, so I'm not too sure how well contemplated the goals were prioritized.

Maetch wrote:And Disney was footing the bill on the already well-established DuckTales cast, so WayForward had nothing to lose on it (plus you never say no to the Mouse... ever).

I didn't know the cast was on Disney's tab, so that's definitely an easily honored request, and I imagine it wasn't very difficult to say yes to the idea.

.Luke wrote:Maybe Clockwork Night would be dependent on voices for depicting certain scenes, or would be less limiting to sneak in some comical effect by having them? It does seem a bit odd to have voice acting set as a higher priority above another additional chapter, but there has to be an explainable reason for it.

Or more likely WayForward simply did a very poor job of prioritizing their higher stretch goals.

Then again, costumes were one of the first stretch goals above other chapters, so I'm not too sure how well contemplated the goals were prioritized.

At least the costumes have bonus abilities going for them, so they're not just there for show.

Are the costumes going to replace fighter's equipment?

The Patricia Wagon costume could be an easter egg, but the others replacing Fighter Equipment would be an interesting idea. I nearly forgot the costumes had abilities attached to them.

Well I think they knew alot of players like those options for playability. For example in Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland, there's Meta Knight mode. Would I give up that mode for an extra area? No. I feel the same way about Shantae's similar modes. I think they actually did a good thing going back and forth between new chapters and much-desired extras.

That's one way to look at it. Additional play modes do make playing existing content more fun. It's half the reason I still enjoy some 2D Sonic games simply for the replay value the other characters provide. I wound up selling Colors DS because there wasn't much I could do with Sonic alone, whereas Sonic Rush still gives me reasons to play through its stages alternating between Sonic and Blaze. I may do much the same with Freedom Planet's characters.

Sonic was playable in Rush? Coulda fooled me. (Blaze mega-fan alert! Sound the alarms!)

Anywho, I largely agree with the order of the kickstarter's stretch goals, although I might've even slotted voice acting and animated cutscenes together as one final 'aesthetic' target. Squeeze in more levels, more characters, and more replayability before committing to endearing yet skippable additions - meaning that, past the initial playthrough, a lotta folks (not everybody, but many!) will merely mash buttons to breeze through dialogue and cutscenes, whereas extra chapters and characters will beef up the game for a larger percentage of players. Don't neglect anyone, just....prioritize? S'the way I approach it, anyhow, without disrespecting other viewpoints. ^^

I think it would have made more sense to lump voices into the cut scenes goal myself, but they're the developers, so it's their choice in the end.

And I also imagine that if talking was in, you could still skip texts, and the voices would move onto the next line of dialogue. That's how Spongebob SuperSponge handled it on the PSX. (Wasn't half-bad for a licensed game, and it's a 2.5D platformer like Half-Genie Hero is.)

I recall that game, vaguely. Hot dang, s'been a while. I only rented, never owned it. ^^''

So! Who's heading out to that WF Halloween party? I WOULD! If I lived over there. I suppose photos will hafta suffice. ;w;

You only rented it? O: You're really missing out, that game had lots of great artwork and animations. I still can't think of another Spongebob game I enjoyed more than Super Sponge on the PSX, it had all the charm in the world going for it, and I loved the music especially.

And wait, there's a Halloween party? I hope they take tons of photos, that sounds interesting.

Ah, I'd misread it; it wasn't so much a WF-themed Halloween party as it was a typical Halloween bash with WF's composer DJing. Whoops! >.< Sounded groovy anyhow~

And mm, I could, I could try to snag that game again, although TBH SpongeBob isn't a series near and dear to my heart. ^^''

Leaning back toward a series that *is* near and dear to me - our (not so) little half-genie has been infiltrating the lives of my friends recently. Persuasion is a potent skill! Now if only they'd visit here and register to post. OTL

Ah, that makes more sense, and here I was expecting maybe a Patricia Wagon cosplay somewhere in that.

It's cool some of your friends are becoming interested in the series too, and I hope they enjoy the games themselves later down the road. Not everyone is an active forum poster, so it would be understandable if they shy away from registering here.

And it's okay if Spongebob isn't as endearing to you. I was a huge fan of the show at its best, so that beautifully done game on the PSX kept my interest. Even though I don't care as much for Spongebob anymore, I do still enjoy that game.

The promotional wallpaper is very good looking.

Wow, that does look nice. That's the backer exclusive wallpaper, right?

Yes.

Yeah the backer wallpaper is nice looking. Currently have it as my laptop background.

I would probably do the same if I was a backer. Official wallpapers are always cool. Lord knows I alternated between so much official art of Sonic Adventure as a kid; gotta love that those wallpapers were right there on the Dreamcast verson's disc, or at least the tiny ring inside it that's readable to most CD-ROM drives.

.Luke, it is still not too late to become a backer and get a copy of the game. : )

http://shantae.net/about-shantae-half-genie-hero.html

They are still taking PayPal payments and we need all of the support we can get to help us get to those next stretch goals!

-Thomas

I would love to be a backer, but what spare cash I had recently got spent on a new hard drive and art tablet. It'll be a while before I get a PS3 or desktop PC that could handle the game anyway, it'd probably kill my laptop.

Speaking of which, I've been busy setting up a new install of Ubuntu on this hard drive, and installing a lot of stuff, so I gotta apologize for not posting lately.

Sorry I haven't said much lately guys, just haven't made any time to post on the forums lately.

But there is something new to talk about! WayForward showed off some new preproduction artwork of the game over at Kickstarter! Lots of cute sketches and paintings on the article to glass over.

^^'' Slightly less hopeful that Shantae 3 will launch before April - or that Risky's Revenge will surface on Steam before the end of the year x.x - but at least the KS updates are decent.

Also, I too apologize for vanishing; apparently I had accidentally deleted my bookmark for this place in Chrome. x.o Along with a range of other bookmarks. Sorry!  

Well it just seems that since there's a comments section on the Shantae KS site that's where the Shantae fans have been posting lately. Hopefully when the games are released and that site's done everyone will migrate here so that the conversations can keep going.

Only a scarce few Shantae fans post there regularly, though. The Shantae community is more visibly sizable than it was 2 years ago (as an example, I wasn't a part of it then), but it's disjointed and fractured right now; the Kickstarter's got a small crowd, this forum's got a small crowd, the /r/WayForward sub-Reddit's got a small crowd, the Shantae Steam group's got a small crowd - etc. etc. WayForward themselves are designing a new site that'll feature a 'WayForum' as an attempt at a central and official hub for their games and fans; to be frank, though, I wouldn't reliably be able to estimate whether or not it'll draw a large crowd and/or unify the scattered Shantaerians.

In the meantime, we await the incoming Shantae 3 on 3DS and Steam port of Shantae 2. Oh, and if they announce a Mighty Switch Force! 3, I will be all over that.