Unrest is on sale for 33% off on Steam, and the sale ends on October 6th.

Set in a fantasy interpretation of ancient India, Unrest is an adventure RPG focused on story and choices. Play as five ordinary people who are struggling to get by in the famine-stricken city-state of Bhimra.

Brave poverty, disease, treason, political and social upheaval. Face unique burdens and gripping dilemmas as you struggle to survive in each chapter...but choices made to help one character may well make life harder for another.

In Unrest, there are no heroes of legend, there is no mystical quest, and fate has not chosen you. You're on your own.

Pyrodactyl Games posted a short tweet they are looking for a new Programmer.

I'm looking for a programmer to add Steam workshop support to Unrest (paid work). Anyone interested? (RTs appreciated)

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted one of their usual Wot I Think articles for Unrest.

Unrest is an RPG that takes place during a period of conflict in a fantastical interpretation of Ancient India. Rebellion is brewing, and even royalty and nobles are not safe from the political, social and racial struggles that threaten to erupt. With a perspective that shifts between player characters from different backgrounds, the game shows life from several angles. The setting is convincing and the writing is subtle and effective, but Unrest creates difficulties for itself. How does it handle those difficulties and is the journey worth the effort?

Battle Screen has posted a new interview with Team Leader & Game Designer of Pyrodactyl games Arvind Raja Yadav, and writer Adam DeCamp.

After the review I did of Unrest I was contacted by the team lead and game designer of Pyrodactyl games, Arvind Raja Yadav, and the writer, Adam “Rutskarn” DeCamp, about doing an interview and discussion about the game, including some spoilerific talks about the choices and consequences you can experience.

Thanks to being knocked out by a summer cold (and other issues), I haven’t found the time to edit the thing together. Until now, that is. I hope you enjoy.

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!!!

PC Gamer has review of this game.     A qoute about the dialogue:

Dialogue is the focus. There's a lot of text here - enough to give Planescape: Torment a run for its money - and you'll spend the majority of the short 2-3 hour running time reading. Luckily it's all decently written, although I found it a little too earnest. Some lighter moments would have been welcome, even though, to be fair, that might have jarred with the subject matter.

PC Gamers conclusion:

A compelling story with many outcomes, but the game itself is a little too rough around the edges.

RPGamer staff member Zach Welhouse played Pyrodactyl Games Unrest, and gave the game a final score of 3.5/5.

Unrest aims high and doesn't quite live up to its hype. The number of non-choices could say something depressing about fate for critics interested in following that interpretation, but more than that it feels like the game could have benefited from more development time. The basics are sound and the story-telling is top-notch, but it's all over too soon to flesh out the story it wants to tell. Be that as it may, aiming for the stars has its benefits. Unrest's setting invites players to a world unexplored by most RPGs, and the writing showcases thoughtful consideration of characters and social issues. It isn't a game that will appeal to everyone, but those who like it will like it a lot.

Now I bid you all farewll as I'm going on a short hiatus, and I doubt you will miss me.  So I'll see you all in five days as I'm going on vacation for my birthday this weekend.

Pyrodactyl Games latest kickstarter update for Unrest has an honest Postmortem on the games kickstarter success from Lead Writer "Rutskarn" DeCamp.

Preface: Hey backers, remember when we promised we would write a complete breakdown of our development process once Unrest was released? Well, here it is now - thanks a lot for your support and patience!

Written by Adam "Rutskarn" DeCamp, Lead Writer of Unrest

Lack of transparency is one of the ugliest trends in game development. Sometimes it’s necessary, sometimes even legally required, but the standard of not talking about what’s going on with development can’t help but hurt old studios and new kids alike. There are a lot of pitfalls in this industry. It’s a shame to see people falling into the same ones again and again.

There are people out there setting up Kickstarters who have no idea what they’re doing or how they’ll allocate the money. Sometimes these people get nothing – or sometimes they get hundreds of thousands of dollars. When these teams fail, their follow-ups tend to be face-saving PR statements or grave silence, depending on which is more fiscally advisable. And thus, the way is cleared for another generation of well-intentioned misappropriations.

When we at Pyrodactyl Games launched our Kickstarter last June, we promised that we’d give our backers and the general public a frank postmortem. Now, we never did get in over our heads. We made mistakes, and to some extent I think you can argue we were in over our heads to begin with, but we managed to deliver a game we’re proud of. But we saw a lot of ways this project could have gone south, and part of what we’re here to accomplish is to make sure future teams deliver as well. This report comes from thirteen months in the trenches; it is based on experience.

But this post isn’t just for indie devs, and it’s not just for our backers: it’s for anyone who considers backing a game in the future. Before you support a project, it’s important that you know what money does for indies and what making a game with a small studio looks like. This is something that even the press sometimes doesn’t understand, if some of the questions we’ve gotten are any indication.

Technology Tell had the chance to interview Pyrodactyl Games Arvind Yadav about his recently released kickstarter games Unrest. Here is a short sample of the interview.

Warning: The interview contains some spoilers about the endings.

GT: Do you have any creative reasons for not providing resolution to any of the characters’ stories within the game?

Yadav: Yes, absolutely. Morality in RPGs tends to be a matter of action and consequence; you rob a man, get five evil points, he dies, your party’s reputation decreases by six. Providing this much focus on ends, not means, has a reductive effect on how players interpret those systems.

Unrest offers the idea that sometimes, there is no right and no wrong decision–sometimes actions must be weighed and judged without knowing what the consequences will be. Even someone playing the game a second time has no way of knowing whether Tanya’s marriage to Hanu will end in an uneasy alliance or an abusive, miserable domestic hell–and each time the player chooses, they must choose not based on what the outcome will be, but on what they feel is right.

GT: Who made the decision to end Unrest on a cliffhanger, and why?

Yadav: The decision emerged organically. One of the main ideas of the game is that casting Unrest’s story as Asha’s Heroic Narrative–her fall from safety, her struggle to survive, her triumphant rise to power–is absurdly, inherently artificial. Obviously the story of Bhimra’s troubles began far before Asha came into being, and obviously it will continue long after she gets her “happy ending.” Unrest has a cliffhanger ending because to the real story, the story of Bhimra – told in part through Tanya, Bhagwan, and Shyam – has no clean ending.

GT: Was the abrupt end due to a lack of funds?

Yadav: We might have tied a few things up if we had more money, but if we weren’t happy with how the game ended, we would have kept working on it. This game was made by a team of five on a budget of $30,000 over the course of 1 year – and to be honest, that is not enough money to pay enough wages to one person, let alone five. During the year, one of us worked at Home Depot, and three of us had to freelance alongside making the game to pay the bills.

The RPG Codex has ppsted a new review of Pyrodactyl Games Unrest.

Unrest is an adventure game lacking in puzzles, but strong in plot. The story is well told and there is some replay value in trying its different paths. It is, however, quite short, and can be finished in just a few hours. For those expecting an RPG that simulates some of the statistically light storyteller-type tabletop games like Amber and In a Wicked Age, I am afraid you won't find that here.

Ultimately, I think this game is going to be a point of debate on the Codex due to the high hopes some members may have held for it. The game will probably be enjoyable for those who haven't been following its development or the hype surrounding it, but I think that those who have been looking forward to it for some time will be a little disappointed that its decision paths aren't more complex. For my part, I found it enjoyable enough, but it's not something that I would put on a list of highly recommended games.

You can now buy Unrest on Steam or GOG, and I also collected a few more reviews to help you decide. Now lets get started here is a short release trailer.

Set in a fantasy interpretation of ancient India, Unrest is an adventure RPG focused on story and choices. Play as five ordinary people who are struggling to get by in the in the famine-stricken city-state of Bhimra.

Brave poverty, disease, treason, political and social upheaval. Face unique burdens and gripping dilemmas as you struggle to survive in each chapter...but choices made to help one character may well make life harder for another.

In Unrest, there are no heroes of legend, there is no mystical quest, and fate has not chosen you. You're on your own.

And lets not forget about  the following reviews in no specific order.

Gamespot - 6/10

Despite the glaring issues, I was swept up by Unrest's unique cast, and I cared about their troubles, enough to even feel responsible if the path I led them down ended up in disaster. Though flawed, Unrest's system of cause and effect is a refreshing change from traditional conversation mechanics and deserves appreciation. In a sea of clearly defined morality systems, Unrest proves that sometimes the best waters consist of infinite shades of gray.

Incgamers - 7/10

Unrest is a short narrative full of ethical dilemmas, presented through the eyes of an unusually diverse cast of RPG characters. Those choices have an isolated impact, but don’t expect them to alter the story to a radical degree.

Softpedia - 8/10

Unrest offers a gripping story about hope, failure, action and inaction, fear and security, which feels more like an interactive visual novel than an actual game. And a well-written one, at that. Sort of like A Game of Thrones without endlessly waiting for the dragons to come, the game delivers its quick shot of gripping narrative, challenges you to make a couple of life and death decisions, then leaves you boiling in the karmic print of your choices.

Pyrodactyl Games has a new update for Unrest about a poster, and the DRM-free build.

Just a few weeks ago, we promised that we would give you the DRM-free builds a week before release. Unfortunately, due to several issues and the release date rush, we were unable to do that. The good news is that you will get the DRM-free build, just on the release date. We’re taking the extra time to quash last minute bugs, especially since patching and updating DRM-free builds is a lot tougher than on Steam.

There’s only 3 days to go, so I hope this slight delay isn’t too much of a problem. Thanks a lot for your patience and support, I hope to see and hear you all once you’re playing Unrest!

Also Hardcore Gamer has posted a new review that gives the game a 3.5/5.

Unrest is a choice-driven RPG with little combat to speak of that touches on relevant social issues. It’s not unlike Always Sometimes Monsters, though it ironically takes cues from western-style RPGs where that game took them from eastern ones. Unrest feels a little more focussed than most games of its ilk, and it has a thankfully short run time to facilitate multiple playthroughs. You get a real feeling of agency as you guide the game’s story, and it’s refreshing to play something from a different cultural perspective.

Games In Asia had the chance to interview Pyrodactyl Games Arvind Yadav about his past game development, and talk about his new funded kickstarter game Unrest.

One of the rare PC-only developers

In a country where mobile game developers are in the majority, it’s rare to see someone develop for PC. Reason being, for most it doesn’t make commercial sense despite the humungous install-base and new found profitability. Yadav seems to be cut from a different cloth. He doesn’t throw statistics, numbers or jargon around. Rather, his reasons for sticking to the PC as a development platform revolve around personal interest:

"I think part of it is that I always wanted to make games that I would play. When I was growing up the games I played were on PC. I’m a huge fan of the Prince of Persia trilogy, and my brother and I played a lot of Virtua Fighter 2 on PC as well. I never really got into mobile games growing up. People when given the freedom make games that they want to play. I guess if someone grew up playing mobile games, they’d gravitate to that."

What makes a game “Indian”?

While it’s admirable for him to follow his passion, it was odd to see a game from India, steeped in Indian culture. His reasons for making Unrest were, in his words: “To see Indian stories and Indian protagonists in video games, which is super rare”. His goal was to make something holistic and organic that wouldn’t seem like a force-fit by any stretch:

"What I was interested in was modelling social and caste systems in a game. To make a game Indian I can’t take Super Mario and put the guy in a dhoti kurta [traditional Indian clothes]. Or if it plays like a match-3 where the diamonds or whatever are Indianised a bit, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t feel Indian. It’s better to consider mechanics, plot and how the game plays to give it the right feel."

Pyrodactyl Games latest kickstarter update for Unrest has information on the games graphics. and talks about new Steam Keys for backers.

First, a message from our artist:

I’m Mikk, the artist of Unrest. I’ll be telling you about how I drew Unrest.

We started work on the new set of art in the middle of the Kickstarter, when we hit that stretch goal for new art. The idea was to create a new unique hand painted aesthetic style, and that comes with its own set of problems. I could've hand drawn each level in its entirety, but there's a reason almost nobody does that. We wanted quite a large world with about 5 distinct regions, both inside and outside Bhimra. If each region had about 5 levels, that is a lot to draw. It could work with a huge team of artists and the resources to pay them, but we didn't have that. The other problem is that all the levels would be giant images taking a lot of space on your hard drive and video memory, along with the animated sprites and other misc. graphics. Even now, about half of our level files are 4000x3000 pixels or larger.

Arvind with a message about Steam keys:

Hi backers, remember that time when we told you that we would give you Steam keys?

Well, you can now redeem your Unrest Steam keys via Humble Bundle! Note that the game will unlock only on the release date, but otherwise, you're good to go.

If you don't remember how to get your Humble store page, visit this link: https://www.humblebundle.com/?s=resender and enter the email you filled in your survey.

NOTE: There was a minor snafu by Humble which resulted in duplicate keys, and as a result some of you may have got scary messages on Steam when we fixed the problem. The aforementioned scary messages were not written by us, and we do not agree with their contents. I believe Valve misjudged the situation slightly, but I apologize for any trouble the messages have caused.

Please feel free to PM me via Kickstarter, or email me at arvind@pyrodactyl.com if there's a problem.

Pyrodactyl Games latest kickstarter update describes how Unrest was developed from the beginning all the wat to it's completion. Here is the first part.

In 2008, there weren’t any pre-existing engines at the same level of popularity as Unity or Unreal today. I was familiar with Valve’s Source engine, having been part of the HL2 modding scene (I worked on Dystopia – play it now!) but source code access was limited and it was prohibitively expensive to license. All of these things made writing my own engine the only realistic choice.

After soaking up a lot of tutorials and advice, teenage Arvind realized that trying to write a general-purpose engine is a waste of effort. It's better to just try and make a game, then utilize the components and code you wrote in your next game. Now, teenage Arvind was the kind of person that makes a game about how much they hate everyone, how much college sucks and my god aren’t adults annoying?! Ahem.

So I started work on my first game, A.Typical RPG (look at these posts, I find them adorably humorous), a game about my college experience. It was literally my tutorial codebase gradually morphing into a game. By sheer luck, I managed to find a very talented artist to work with me due to both of us having been a part of the HL2 modding community.

• How I benefited from programming a game from scratch:
• I got to teach myself basic concepts like state machines, game loops, input handling.
• I learned how to manage a team, and how to set goals and deadlines for a project.
• I was learning general C++ concepts like templates, vectors, certain algorithms which I feel made me a better programmer overall.
• Due to the game being a mini-game driven RPG, I had to program lots of game systems--game event handlers, conversation mechanics, asset loading/unloading to optimize performance, saving/loading game state to/from file and so on.
• I was making something I wanted to play while doing all of the above.

Pretty much every point in that list can be taken as a negative point, and to an extent I agree--learning basic programming concepts while working on something you intend to sell is probably not a great idea. Maybe I would have ended up making all of my 3 games with Unity if I had been born a couple of years later.

Since this is a series of posts, there isn't really an "ending" here - I'm still making games, and I was incredibly lucky to meet the right people at the right time, and make the games I wanted to make. In part II, I'll discuss how I met my team and how I program my games.

IndieRPGs'com Craig Stern takes a look at the funded kickstater game Unrest.

My thoughts?

Well, a little under an hour in, it’s actually quite hard to say. Unrest strikes me as a slow-burner, even by RPG standards, and I don’t think I can reasonably reach a conclusion about it without playing it a good deal more.

I can say this much: the game world is deeply interesting, and I’m very curious to see how the rest of the story plays out. The dialog is engaging, and seems to take place in the context of a well fleshed-out conversation system.

Games in Asia took the time to preview Pyrodactyl Games new RPG Unrest.

Sporting a solid, hand drawn aesthetic and appropriately ethnic sound track, Unrest had a comfort food kind of feel to it as I roamed the village conversing with everyone along the way. There are some fantasy elements too, what with the appearance of a race of humanoid snakes known as the Naga.

For me,there’s a sense of familiarity not too different from the original Mass Effect or Fall Out: New Vegas what with an apparent depth in characters and dialogue options. While it looks nothing like nothing from Bioware or Obsidian, it would be interesting to see if it can maintain this sense of atmosphere and spirit across the entire game.

Pyrodactyl Games has news that I missed for Unrest that you can now play the demo of the game on Steam. The full release of the game is on July 23rd.

Unrest Demo is out (10 days earlier than expected)

You know that feeling when you suddenly see a huge spike in website traffic?

When you look at the source to see that Rock Paper Shotgun wrote about the Unrest Demo that launched on Steam today?

When you state, dumbfounded, as you realize that the demo was supposed to launch ten days later and ohmygod there may be some bugs left in there?

I'm writing the post in that panicked state. But hey, the cat is out of the bag, so might as well as download the demo and play it.

Having a heart attack,
Arvind

P.S. Please excuse any bugs, we're working on a patch to fix those asap.

The demo for Unrest, which is scheduled for release on the 23rd of July, is available right now at Steam.

Unrest is a RPG that takes place in ancient India and is all about choice and consequence, death and failures. It is a game where you reach your goals by convincing and manipulating others and rarely ever have to resort to fighting.

The Lead Developer of Unrest has a new post on the RPG Codex that explains the reasons behind the developer picking a publisher to help promote their game.

(Lead Developer of Unrest here) I'm going to level with you here - the reason we went with a publisher was:

1. My previous game, Will Fight for Food has been on Greenlight for 626 days. It's currently #81, so assuming it stays that way it will be Greenlit in 2 months from now. That's basically 2 full years to pass greenlight, and I was very nervous about Unrest facing a similar situation. Even if I performed 10 times better, it would be two months to get Greenlit and appear on Steam's store. As a team of 5, we don't have the funds to stay afloat that long (the last two months of development have been out of our own pockets already). I know Valve are opening the floodgates and everything, but I just can't take the risk knowing how Valve time works.

2. The publisher we chose will also simplify the process of getting on other stores, which otherwise would take a lot of emailing/negotiating and some have strange requirements like having a US address and phone (I live in India), or insisting you sell the game at a price they want. Some also require invoices be sent in a specific format, which can be a right pain and cause delay in payments for no good reason.

3. They'll also help out with PR, which in this crowded market can be very valuable. As a (mostly) unknown developer, I need all the PR help I can get.

4. I still own all IP, and their terms are reasonable for what they're offering. Maybe I'm once bitten, twice shy but my entire game-making-livelihood is at stake here so I hope you forgive me if I was a little too cautious

Pyrodactyl Games announces the release date for their funded kickstarter Unrest is pushed back due to E3, and says the game now has a Steam store page.

Unrest is on Steam! and other announcements

Let's get this one out of the way first: when Arvind shared his cunning scheme of launching on June 13th ("Nobody else is releasing that day!"), he was informed by People Who Know This Sort of Thing that there's a reason nobody releases on June 13th, and that reason is June 10-12th. The level of buzz we could expect would be somewhere on the order of "whispering the name of our game gently into the ear of a dying man." So we're not doing that. We're launching on the 26th and we're gonna spend the interim hunting bugs, I guess.

But hey--our game's on Steam! Feast your eyes on that store page, peoples, because this is probably the single coolest moment in the game's whole arduous, patient, and iterative development process. Knowing that our game has gone from occupying all of our time to knowing that it is--in some cumulative, infinitesimal way--inconveniencing Gabe Newell? You can take that to the bank. Up until the page goes live for sales, at which point Gabe Newell will be taking actual money to the actual bank, all being well.

But don't settle for watching the trailer over and over again, like I have for an embarrassing amount of time! Also head over to our Steam community hub. And head on over to our new, official, fancy-pants Steam group and join that mother. We've got avatars, we've got discussion forums, we've got an "ask me questions about the writing and design process" topic--it's gonna be great! Also, according to the dowsing-grade sciences involved in figuring out which games get Steam's attention and get featured (seriously, all of the advice people give us is in the hushed and credulous tone of a campfire story about that serial killer they "never did catch"), having more people participate in your hubs and official groups is a good thing. It's also a good way to hang out with us over the Internet in a slightly more active and personal fashion than "the occasional Kickstarter comment". Looking forward to chatting with all you fine people of exceptional taste.

Oh--before I forget, there's one more thing I should probably make clear. We did get on Steam with the help of a publisher. Greenlight is a much more accessible system than it used to be, but it's still a pretty huge risk with an investment of this size--more of a risk than we were willing to take. So we signed with a publisher, they got us on Steam, we're going to give them a cut of our profits--and that is the extent of our relationship. They have no control over the product or how we sell it elsewhere. We retain full ownership of the IP. Honestly, we're all pretty happy with how that part turned out.

Pyrodactyl Games announces the release date for their funded kickstarter Unrest in the games latest post-funding update. Thank you daveyd for sending me the link.

No Rest for Unrest; Launch is June 13!

We've got an exciting couple of months ahead of us. "Exciting." I mean this in the same sense that the last few months of any game project are "exciting." We've got things under control--really, we do--but man, this is gonna be one heck of a ride.

That ride comes to an end on June 13th, 2014, when Unrest will be launched to a seraphic fanfare and a blast of fireworks that splits the firmament. Reviewers will weep tears of joy; alpha copies of Mass Effect 4 will crackle and burst into color-coded fragments; word-of-mouth sales will reach such meteoric heights that we run out of digital copies of the game and have to dash off to print more internet. All this--and more--is what will happen according to our business plan. For PC, Mac, and Linux!

Pyrodactyl Games has posted a new update for Unrest with news from EGX Rezzed, and goes into detail about how the games combat will work.

COMBAT IN RPGS: LET'S TRY SOMETHING NEW

Combat in videogames is a funny thing. Since direct physical conflict is simple, exciting, and translates universally, it's been one of the staples of nearly all genres of game since the medium's inception. There are plenty of genres where you do little but fight things. For every other genre, it's generally a question of whether you fight a lot or a little.

And it's kind of strange that we've decided that roleplaying games are one of  the genres where a lot of fighting is expected--or even demanded. Because while there's nothing wrong with lots of fighting, there's also nothing wrong with not lots of fighting...which is something we almost never get.

For every minute RPG protagonists spend discussing current affairs with aristocrats, haggling over supplies, or trying to boink party members, they spend anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours hacking their way through hundreds of men, beasts, and monstrous creatures that all presumably wish their day had gone differently.

And sure--there's not a lot of wit in pointing this out. Obviously the higher volume of combat is a game abstraction, just like the inventory system doesn't really capture the sublime subtleties of keeping one's after-battle snacks in a different pouch from the harvested bloodpig gallbladders. It was never intended to be realistic. It's supposed to be fun. And while that's totally okay, what it simulates makes the player act and think in very specific ways that deserve analysis.

Let's try to look at personal combat from a realistic perspective for a second. Bear with me here, because I promise I have a more nuanced point than "this is how things work in teh real worlds" coming up here.

As a fun exercise, imagine you round a corner and see two people with swords trying to kill each other. You don't have any prior information, and for the sake of argument the anachronism doesn't really register with you. Also for the sake of argument, you know they're not high, drunk, or insane.

Let's examine what assumptions you can draw about this scenario from a glance:

• This is dangerous. One of them or very possibly both of them are going to be killed. SO:
• Each of them must think they've got a good chance at winning. If either of them thought their chances of losing were as low as 49%, they would have either avoided this fight or run away instantly. THEREFORE:
• The actual odds of either party winning are probably in the ballpark of 50-50. Obviously one of them has a better assessment of their chances than the other, but reasonably speaking, if they're both still swinging away gamely a few seconds into the fight, they're about evenly matched.

These three very reasonable premises lead us to one conclusion: they've probably been in very few fights like this before. In fact, they've probably never done this before. People who get into lots of one-on-one fights that they have a fifty-fifty chance of winning don't last very long.

Pyrodactyl Games has a new update for their RPG Unrest on Kickstarter. In the update we get news Chapter 3 is nearly finished, and the developers will be at EGX Rezzed.

No big updates--Chapter 3's almost finished, everything else continues pretty much according to plan. But we do have a new teaser trailer showing off some of our environments and interface elements on YouTube, and if you've got one minute and one second to kill, we've got just the one minute and one second to kill it with.

Notice how those trees are moving? That was so brutally hard that our team doesn't even want to talk about it. Making games is weird, man.

Want to see Unrest live without breaking into Arvind's house and guessing his password (currently oppan_gabenstyle)? Come to our stream next Sunday at 3PM GMT! Alternately, get your ticket to EGX Rezzed--running in Birmingham from March 28-30--and see the developers who aren't me in person! I mean, if that's the sort of thing you'd like to do. I wouldn't take any offense. I wouldn't take much offense. I wouldn't actually do anything about it, anyway, is what I'm getting at.

 Thanks daveyd for the link.

IGN interviews Pyrodactyl Games Arvind Raja Yadav about his RPG Unrest.

Pyrodactyl Games has a new post-funding update for Unrest were they wish you Happy Holidays, and give a brief status update on the game.

Best Wishes from Pyrodactyl

It looks like we're going to have a pretty solid demo prepared for this upcoming year's Eurogamer Rezzed. Content creation is going at a pretty respectable clip, and many of the assets we'll need for the actual art and level parts of the game are already finished. In-engine, we're at the point where we're tweaking things like how text appears over NPC heads and how the map should work. Right now the focus is on completing the dialogue scripts, fleshing out the story, and getting the rest of our art assets completed.

On that last note, we've added an animator named Mohd Jafar to our team to help us get the sprites looking good--both because he specializes in character animations and because it lets Mikk, our main artist, lavish more detail on them.

Our next game stream is scheduled for January 5th, 2014, at 3PM GMT. We hope to see all of you there!

-Ruts

Pyrodactyl Games has a new status report on their ancient India RPG Unrest.

Progress on all fronts

We’re going to do the usual update stuff in another paragraph or so – talk about what we’re doing, show you pretty screenshots, give the date and url of the next scheduled developer stream.

But in case you’re busy, your computer has another ten second of battery life, or you just heard local crime lords setting fire to your car, let me give you the summary: We’re on schedule. We’re on budget. No development problems. Everything is fine.

Pyrodactyl Games has another post-funding update giving everyone a update on the games progress.

We’re pretty well on schedule, having completed virtually all of the necessary art, coding, and programming necessary to put our first chapter together. This is more impressive than it sounds, because when you’re making the first part of your game work, that’s really the same as saying you’re making your game work. In our case it meant fixing movement, sprites, enterable houses, the ability to change screen resolutions without throwing a screw, and a laundry list of other minor things without which our game would look like a 2D Bethesda game being played on a Commodore PC on the night of the Bugmoon Prophecy.

We’re also quite far along into the next chapter of the game. Again, that’s more impressive than it sounds, because for this chapter we’re creating assets (primarily NPC sprites and slum art sheets) that will be relevant for the entire rest of the game. All the story and dialogue script is written, as well as most of the journals and popups, so there’s not much remaining besides finishing up the art and putting it all together. Our artist, Mikk, has provided this lovely and relevant screenshot of Bhimra’s slums.

One important note: we’ve received most of the backer “design-an-[x]”submissions, but not all of them. Assuming you belong to one of the relevant tiers, the deadline to fill out your survey is October 7th. Let us know if you have questions.

By the by: we’re going to showing off our build, live and totally raw, on September 15th, 3PM GMT. Swing by livestream.com/chocolatehammer to call us names, peep our fresh hot videogame goodness.

Unrest has a new post-funding update about how to claim your rewards for backing the game.

Unrest has the next Monthly Update available on the games kickstarter webpage.

Hello Backers,

We’re almost done with the first chapter of the game (four left now). Let’s go over what we’ve done this month:

We can load and show small interior areas directly from the level, which should mean less time spent in loading screens and more time spent playing the game. Here's an example:

We also dim the background a little when you open up a UI screen such as the inventory, map etc – a minor tweak, but helps a lot in making sure the player’s attention is on the screen they opened and in differentiating between the interactive and inactive areas.

Rutskarn has already started work on the second chapter after finishing Chapter one. We’ve already settled on the outline bar a few side-quests, and we look set to finish Chapter two on schedule. Mikk has a few minor items left for chapter one, after which he will start sketching out the city of Bhimra. You know what that means – I won’t have to reuse the same countryside screenshots over and over again! I don’t know about you, but I’m excited.

The Unrest Soundtrack, titled “Voices of Bhimra” is done!

The OST is ready to be distributed to all backers who pledged at $15 or more. It contains twelve tracks inspired by classical Indian music, and will be available in MP3, FLAC and OGG file formats. You can listen to the album here, and tell your music loving friends to buy it from our website!

HOWEVER, to give the soundtrack to you lovely backers, we must ask you to complete the Kickstarter rewards survey. Around 123 of you have not filled it at the time of writing, and I would really like it if you take the time to answer it and help us deliver the rewards to you correctly.

Finally, Our monthly development livestream featuring me, Rutskarn, Ian and Mikk will be live on Sunday, 18th August, 2013 at 5 PM GMT. Join us to see Unrest in motion, and ask us a bunch of questions about the game!

Pyrodactyl Games has a new status update for Unrest on the games kickstarter page.

Hello backers!

It has now been approximately one month since your generosity meant Rutskarn suddenly had a lot of money in his Del Taco budget. I have a lot of news to share with you, so let us start:

Programming

I have programmed collisions between n-sided polygons in the game. That was a key blocking feature - in fact, we had hired a programmer for this during the second week of Kickstarter itself, but that person bailed after three weeks of failure. Luckily, I had a breakthrough and able to rewrite collisions to add that feature in two days (yay!). Here are some screenshots that show the debug polygons and some collision stuff:

Writing

Rutskarn and I have successfully finalized the main quest draft of Chapter 1, and we are halfway through writing the sidequests. Hopefully, we will have Chapter 1 playable in near-final form (pending final art, writing, coding passes, of course) in less than three weeks, with Ian and Mac hard at work doing their scripting magic. Here's an excerpt from Rutskarn's dialogue for Chapter 1:

Radha: I like your wedding dress, Tanya.
Tanya: I don't know. Does it have to come with a cap of weird blue tentacles for my head?
Radha: Well, you are wearing a sari.

(NOTE: That is not actual dialogue from Chapter 1. Rutskarn claims no responsibility for this dialogue. His actual dialogue has at least three, usually five puns per sentence.)

Art

Mikk has finished drawing all of the Chapter 1 sprites and locations, pending a final art pass and minor corrections, which means he is ready to get cracking drawing the city and its locations for use in further chapters.

On top of that, we're happy to announce that the Humble Store will handle digital backer reward fulfillment and purchasing of new copies for Unrest! This includes both Kickstarter and Paypal backers. This also makes it easier to add keys for places like GoG or Steam down the line, and we don't have to host servers for digital downloads. You can check out the humble store widgets on our main page at http://pyrodactyl.com/unrest.

For those of you that don't remember my previous post Unrest was a story driven RPG set in ancient India seeking funding on kickstarter. The project was funded with most stretch goals met.

If anyone wants to help the project you can still do so on the games webpage. Here is a new art video and game recap to help you along if your interested.

Unrest is a story driven RPG set in ancient India in the midst of an uprising. Play as ordinary men and women struggling for safety, freedom, food for their children, and a chance at peace.

• Explore the drought and famine stricken streets of an ancient Indian city, where a fog of hunger and discontent shrouds the natural beauty of the land.
• Use the detailed conversation system to instill fear, command respect and gain the trust and friendship of others. Understand your enemies and make them see your side of the story.
• The narrative adapts to failure and death - instead of a game over screen, the plot continues and your fate becomes part of it. However, you can still save and load at any time if you want to.
• Make tough and interesting decisions in the lives of people untouched by destiny. The traditional hero’s quest of prophecy, power, and revenge forms a backdrop to your own struggles.
• Combat is brutal, decisive…and always avoidable. Bloodshed might be the easy way out in some situations, but has lasting consequences beyond those apparent on the surface.
• Hand drawn 2D art and soundtrack based on ancient Indian music to help you immerse yourself in the world.
• Full mod support lets you create your own worlds and adventures.
• Unrest will be available DRM-Free on multiple digital stores, without any DLC or micro-transactions. We promise.

Iron Man mode to make sure you deal with the consequences of your actions. (requested by the backers!)

As you know I'm always looking at new indie RPG's and kickstarters. This time I came across a game that might interest some members. The kickstarter is called Unrest, and is set in India.

Unrest is a story driven RPG set in ancient India in the midst of an uprising. Play as ordinary men and women struggling for safety, freedom, food for their children, and a chance at peace.

• Explore the drought and famine stricken streets of an ancient Indian city, where a fog of hunger and discontent shrouds the natural beauty of the land.
• Use the detailed conversation system to instill fear, command respect and gain the trust and friendship of others. Understand your enemies and make them see your side of the story.
• The narrative adapts to failure and death - instead of a game over screen, the plot continues and your fate becomes part of it. However, you can still save and load at any time if you want to.
• Make tough and interesting decisions in the lives of people untouched by destiny. The traditional hero’s quest of prophecy, power, and revenge forms a backdrop to your own struggles.
• Combat is brutal, decisive…and always avoidable. Bloodshed might be the easy way out in some situations, but has lasting consequences beyond those apparent on the surface.
• Hand drawn 2D art and soundtrack based on ancient Indian music to help you immerse yourself in the world.
• Full mod support lets you create your own worlds and adventures.
• Unrest will be available DRM-Free on multiple digital stores, without any DLC or micro-transactions. We promise.