Earlier this year we reported on Citizens of Earth, a humourous RPG in which you are the world's Vice President and recruit from up to 50 characters for a wacky quest. It was reported that it would come to the Wii U in 2014, alongside PC, Mac, iPhone and Android.
That was back in March, and it seems the project's scope and progress has somewhat evolved since then. Developer EdenIndustries has now launched a Kickstarter campaign, with just PC, Linux and Mac as the initial confirmed targets should 100,000 Canadian dollars be raised in the next 27 days. The Wii U is the first console stretch goal at $160,000, with the 3DS following closely behind on $170,000; at the time of writing the campaign has had a relatively quiet start, accumulating a little over $5000 in its first couple of days.
The presence of the Wii U is no surprise, as the developer has cited EarthBound's style as a major influence, and as a result would like to publish on Nintendo's home console. The goal for the 3DS seems to be primarily driven by the experience of some of the team, as some have clearly done work for Next Level Games in the past — four of the team have Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon credits to their name.
They're early days in the campaign, so we'll see whether those Wii U and 3DS targets are reached. If you want to see what it's all about check out the video below.
Thanks to Ryan Millar for the tip.
[source kickstarter.com]
Comments 25
"Wacky RPG" instantly reminds me of Earthbound, and I get all giddy as a result.
The premise does seem fun, but the cheap flash game graphics are a letdown.
This game really doesn't seem all that great. I'd rather wait for Mother 4 (which will never happen) then play this.
I hate when people call any game that uses 2D animation in their games as a "flash game". Rayman is completely 2D and we don't call that a lazily made flash game.
@ricklongo
I'm so sorry that the game doesn't have an 100 strong development team and AAA budgets :/ sheesh...
Id get this..Where else could I play as a hobo? Hoping it reaches its goal..
The music is a let down...
Looks interesting. I guess there are some ex-Silicon Knights personnel too, as they list that awful X Men game and Too Human as one of their previous works.
I found quite encouraging when they say Nintendo is receptive and gave them a Wii U dev kit, while Sony has not even bothered to reply to their emails.
@MrWalkieTalkie You're seriously comparing this game's graphics to Rayman Legends? "2D animation" is an incredibly vast spectrum. I wasn't criticising the graphics because they're based on 2D animations, but because, well, they look like cheap flash graphics.
Hey everyone I'm Ryan, the creator of Citizens of Earth. Thanks for checking out the game! If you have any questions about it feel free to ask and I'd thrilled to answer them. Cheers!
@EdenIndustries All the stretch goals aside, how long do you want the campaign to be?
@Kyloctopus Great question! So we've purposefully designed the game's content to be enjoyed pretty much however you like playing RPGs. There's a TON of content to discover and explore. Most of the Citizens are optional, and there are many optional dungeons and environments. Moreover, the gameplay possibilities created by the World Abilities of the various Citizens can create a ton of replayability and supplementary content and features to explore.
Now that all being said, you'll notice that the keyword in all that is optional. For the player that wants a fast 10-12 hour game where they just hit the highlights, you'll find that in Citizens of Earth. For a player that wants to discover all of the depth that an RPG has to offer with dozens of hours of gameplay and tons of secrets, etc., you'll find that as well!
So in terms of how long the game is, I'd ask, what kind of player are you? The game pretty much supports however long you want it to be!
And this idea of supporting the individual styles of each player is a design theme that runs throughout the whole game. The entire equipment system, character roster system, stat growth, and many others have been designed to be as streamlined as possible, without sacrificing depth.
So essentially, you can go as deep or as shallow as you want, and we're prepared to have an exciting experience for you!
@EdenIndustries About the online multiplayer: How would it play? Would it play similar to Pokemon, in which the game has single double and triple battles, or is that too outside of CoE's gameplay.
Finally, how do stats work in the game? Does the player decide which stats go up, does the player find items that bring up strength, or do stats randomly go up?
@Kyloctopus Currently the online multiplayer features one team of Citizens vs. another team. So you choose your favourite 3 and pit them up against a friend or rival to see who has the better strategy! We're still working on some of the specifics, but it's already a pretty fun feature amongst the team here at Eden Industries
Actually stats are handled in a pretty fun way in CoE. So first off, each Citizen has a unique rate of growth per stat. But, the customization comes in to play in the fact that when a Citizen levels up, he or she will receive boosts to stats based on who else is in the party.
Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a party consisting of the Brother, Conspiracy Guy, and Police Officer. The Brother's most prominent stat according to his natural growth is HP. The Conspiracy Guy's is Focus, and the Police Officer's is Defense. When the Brother levels up, he'll receive all of his normal stat boosts from his natural growth, plus extra bonuses to Focus and Defense as provided by the other Citizens. In this way, you can customize stat growth for each Citizen by pairing them up with other Citizens who have the stats you want.
In some ways, this is similar to the way stats are handled in Pokemon (if you're familiar with how the IV's and EV's work) but we tried to make it a more more transparent process so that it's really obvious how to craft the Citizen that you want to make.
Thanks for the great questions! Let me know if you have any others.
Thank you for answering Ryan. I really want to see this game funded. Especially for Wii U, and I'm glad to see such a game merge a very hardcore genre, and make it very colourful and humourous.
@Kyloctopus My pleasure, thanks for your great questions! If you can help spread the Kickstarter around to friends and try to get some word of mouth happening, I'd be extremely grateful
@EdenIndustries 50 Citizens? I'm a little skeptical because that's a lot of characters and since you can use them all in battle I'm wondering how much depth there will be to these characters. I don't mind the quantity but will it mess with the quality? If I decide I want to use a certain character from the beginning of the game will I get bored of him/her soon or will there be enough incentive for me to keep using that particular citizen throughout the most of the game?
@mamp We're putting a ton of effort into designing each Citizen to be unique from the ground up, don't worry! Many Citizens have completely unique battle abilities that I've programmed specifically for him or her. So they each feel super unique.
That being said, we are definitely also encouraging a play-style of trying out new characters. In contrast to games you might be familiar with like Pokemon and Suikoden that don't do anything to encourage experimentation, there's a ton of incentive to do that in Citizens of Earth through the unique World Abilities that I've mentioned.
Moreover, you don't need to worry about grinding up low-level Citizens either! By dropping them in the School for a while to gain some passive EXP or by utilizing the auto-win system against weak enemies, you can get any Citizen into fighting shape in no time! This way you're rewarded for experimentation, and not punished for switching to a low-level character.
I hope that answered your question, but please feel free to ask for more details if there's something I can clarify for you.
Why are people dismissing these graphics as ugly flash. It has a ton of quality animation good character design. I'm sad this game will likely not make it to Wii U.
It's not like Cloudberry Kingdom and Ittle dew when it comes to flash like graphics.
@brandonbwii Thank you! We think the animations have a lot of character! Although I admit, screenshots do not do them justice. Perhaps people need to see it in motion.
Plus regarding the Wii U, don't give up on it so fast! The fact of the matter is that Nintendo has been very supportive of us so far (even sending us a dev kit in the hopes that we'd port it) and we have in fact already begun the port. The Wii U port is something I personally feel very strongly about, and I really do hope that one way or another it'll happen. Hitting the stretch goal would make that very easy, and ensure that the Wii U port is given the care it deserves and a simultaneous release. But I'm hopeful of release on Wii U even without the stretch goal.
@EdenIndustries: Anything like Earthbound has my vote! Please bring this to the 3DS!!!!
This looks like a lot of fun, so I'll definitely be keeping my eye on it.
I really love the amount of detail that has gone into the environment as well. The giant cupcake sign on the Bakery, for example, is fantastic
@KnightRider666 Thanks! We sure do want to. Hopefully the stretch goal will be met, and then that'd be a much easier proposition
@Klinny I'm glad you noticed the detail! We're sure proud of it.
And to anyone that is interested in playing the game, we just released our demo on our Kickstarter page, so go check it out!
This looks pretty fun. I have a few friends who also love rpg's and particularly earthbound.
@KilluaZoldyck Awesome! Well if you're able to support the Kickstarter (and give the demo a try!) we'd be very grateful
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