Good news for people who love flat things and ghosts: The Outbound Ghost, an indie Paper Mario-like adventure game, is now live on Kickstarter, where you can back it for any amount from One Swiss Franc (get yer name in the credits) to 2,775 Swiss Francs (about £2k or $3k) if you want to be a ghost writer (get it?) for the game.
Here's how the Kickstarter describes the game:
The Outbound Ghost is an adventure game about a ghost figuring out the cause of their own death, and helping others come to terms with the afterlife.
You'll play as an amnesiac ghost who wakes up in the outskirts of the town of Outbound. It just happens that it was the site of a serial killing a few weeks before you came into the picture.
The ghosts in the game — including you, who is also ghost — are "the embodiment of regret", sticking around in the world because of some unfinished business. It's up to you to help those people out, by taking part in various puzzles to guide them towards some kind of enlightenment. There's even a lockpicking minigame! Everyone loves lockpicking minigames!
Unlike a lot of Kickstarter games — which often have console releases as stretch goals — The Outbound Ghost has already been confirmed for Switch as well as Steam, and the "Poltergeist Patron" backer level ($20/£15) will get you one digital copy of the game on Switch.
The financial goal for the Kickstarter is just over £7,000 and just under $10,000, and it's already halfway there! If you want to contribute, check out the various backer rewards and the stretch goals here. There's also a free demo on Steam, if you want to try before you buy snack before you back.
Does The Outbound Ghost look like your kind of paper game? Let us know in the comments!
[source kickstarter.com]
Comments 24
This remind's me I still need to pick up bug fables.
@Snatcher I was coming here thinking the same thing. lol
I have never ever heard the phrase, "snack before you back."
@Harmonie @Snatcher I have it, but this reminds me that I need to actually play Bug Fables!
I have NEVER heard of this until now. I feel like the ghost is as cool as the one in Animal Crossing.
Let me guess... The plot twist will be that the amnesiac main character was the serial killer behind the murders.
Looks good.
I'm so, so pleased the indies are picking up the slack after Nintendo threw the whole game concept out the window for no reason.
Gonna have to try out the demo for this one. The combat is heavily inspired by Undertale, and I was not a fan of that... But everything else about this game looks good
Played bug fables on xbox game pass... man that saved me a bad sale on the Nintendo switch.. won't be touching that game again.
The game looks fun until they mention the part about it having an Undertale battle system. Could had just made it without jumping into a battle sequence similar to Super Paper Mario. Bug Fable was good too but had its own flaw.
@Snatcher You really do
@KnightsTemplar Just curious- What didn't work for you about it? The videos I've seen make it appear to be quite similar to the N64 Paper Mario (which I loved). It's popular here but I'm always interested in dissenting opinions.
Nintendo saw the plethora of Advance Wars clones and realized there was still potential in the franchise and are remastering it after all these years.
Nintendo saw the popularity of 2D metroidvania games in the indie realm with games like Hollow Knight and Ori, and now they're releasing the first new 2D Metroid in 19 years.
Now we're seeing indies tap into another unsatisfied market. Maybe it's foolish for me to still have hope, but I feel like Nintendo HAS to see this and start working on a traditional Paper Mario game again.
@DarthXenos How did you not like undertale?
This is how a new paper Mario should have been imo. Excited for this! Bug fables is ok, but I think this looks more like my aesthetic.
@Sans_Undertale I didn't like the combat
@Not_Soos Tbh this one's inspiration seem more visual than gameplay.
Considering it seem to be stated to be more of an adventure game rather than stating itself as an RPG I suspect it would have more in common with modern Paper Mario games than 64/Thousand Years Door.
@Muddy_4_Ever music/soundtrack and dialogue put me right off at the start of the game... I didn't play enough to give a better opinion. Just wasn't for me
@Ludovsky I didn't watch the trailer, but I figured that might be the case. The point still stands, though; Origami King only looks to have sold a few million copies, which isn't a very good attachment rate for a console with 80+ million sales, yet people continue to make games in styled after it. Hopefully Nintendo will interpret this to mean there is still demand for Paper Mario, just not as much in the way they're going about it. Scrap Story and Bug Fables are just two examples of Paper Mario lookalikes that do retain the classic RPG formula, and there are lots of others I don't know the name of.
Paper Mario meets Avenging Spirit.
@Dethmunk If you love the game, that's great for you--I'm not trying to take that away from you. I haven't played it, but I did watch an entire playthrough from beginning to end and decided it wasn't worth spending 60 dollars for me. Not everyone has that kind of money lying around for a game they're pretty sure they won't like.
The Switch has sold approximately 85 million units, so 3 million sales of Origami King means the attach rate is only about 3-4 percent. Thousand-Year Door still managed about 2 million units on the GameCube, which was a commercial failure with 22 million hardware sales. So you're looking at around 9 percent, or double the attach rate. And based on my research, it looks like Super Paper Mario was actually the highest-selling game in the series with over 4 million sales.
Origami King might continue to sell, but for an established franchise with decades of history like Paper Mario to be doing numbers compared to ARMS or 1-2 Switch while other Mario games are selling 10, 20, 30 million units on the Switch, it's really not that great. Especially considering HD games are more costly to produce than something that would have been on the GameCube. An indie team might not snub their nose at 3 million units, but this is Nintendo.
We as a society are never going to normalize having different opinions, are we? Just because I don't like a something doesn't mean I'm trying to throw anyone under the bus who happens to like that particular thing. It just sucks when your favorite game hasn't gotten the sequel you've wanted and it's been over 20 years.
By virtue of the fact Nintendo continues to make the Paper Mario games you like, you and other Origami King fans are already winning this battle. Telling us we aren't allowed to be upset just kinda rubs salt in the already open wound, ya know? Believe me, I would give anything to still love the direction Paper Mario was going, but I don't. The new and old games are literally as night-and-day as Federation Force is to Prime, but no one complained about that game's backlash, even though it was probably still good on its own merits. It just still wasn't the same.
I'm not sure if you've played the older Paper Mario games, but if not, I would strongly encourage you to give them a chance because you might not know what you're missing.
@Not_Soos Origami King only looks to have sold a few million copies, which isn't a very good attachment rate for a console with 80+ million sales
Coupled with the poor sales of later AlphaDream titles, my hunch is Nintendo will say that the Mario audience and the RPG audience don't sufficiently overlap to justify making new games in either series. Which is a pity. Thousand Year Door and Bowser's Inside Story are two of my all time favorites.
@Muddy_4_Ever Dude, you're gonna make me cry.
It's funny though, I never got that into Bowser's Inside Story, even though I love the concept and know everyone holds it on a pedestal. I was even one of the five people to buy the remake but still wasn't that impressed. My favorite is probably Superstar Saga, but I actually think Partners in Time is really underrated.
@Not_Soos I love Partners in Time! The difficulty spike on the final boss(es) have prevented me from finishing it. Should probably give it another go.
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