Chris Taylor Gets The Kickstarter Bug, Announces Wildman

Chris Taylor made a name for himself with real-time strategy (with Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander) and action-RPGs (with Dungeon Siege). He's now combining those genres in Wildman, an action-RPG with huge, RTS-scale battles, from Gas Powered Games. "What I'm trying to do here is take all the things I love about action-RPGs and bring in just enough real-time strategy that I kind of break up the pace, so that I can enjoy the best of both games," he promises. "The hero character that I develop in the action-RPG becomes the central hero character of the RTS game."



Taylor says this concept is something he's wanted to do since the 90s. "With Dungeon Siege 1.0, literally before the name Dungeon Siege was coined, real-time strategy fantasy roleplaying game was on the document. As time pressures and stuff bore down on us, we ended up sticking closer to the action-rpg model, and the multi-character party is where the RTS started and ended." Wildman is his chance to finally realize that idea, with a few new twists.

An Old Idea Made New

"You start off as an action RPG much like Dungeon Siege. It's kind of funny -- we've gone from farmboy/farmgirl to wildman/wildwoman. This character is early homosapien in a very very primitive world, fighting things that are also very primitive. It's also a single-player campaign that you play -- it's not like Demigod, which is kind of a bots game."


The big idea is that you start out as a Dungeon Siege-style action-RPG, adventuring and looting in the traditional manner. Then you come across an enemy stronghold and conquer it, and it becomes your base of operations. Then you scout out the surrounding area, gathering loot and money you use to rebuild the fortress, constructing RTS-style barracks and other structures to produce footmen, archers, mages, and siege weapons. Then you go and start a fight with the next enemy in your path.

One-Man MOBA

"If you come across an enemy outpost, like a tower, or like a party of patrolling characters, and you attack them, this is a declaration of war," says Taylor. "So now, the creeps begin spawning out of the next position they hold, and they start pouring out. And your creeps start pouring out of your stronghold." You join in the battle as your action-RPG character, not directly commanding your troops but deciding what forces to build and upgrade. When that enemy falls, you'll unlock new technologies and magic (such as shape-shifting) to use against the next fortress.


Remember, even though it sounds a bit like a single-player Demigod, Wildman isn't a MOBA -- in fact, at first, it'll be a strictly single-player experience, with co-op multiplayer coming post-launch in what Taylor calls Phase 2, with PvP potentially coming in Phase 3. "The numbers out there right now are pretty clear that 80 to 90 percent of people want a really solid single-player game, and a smaller percentage of them want to be able to play with friends in a comp-stomp." says Taylor. "It looks like about 10 percent of people actually want PvP... but if those numbers are wrong, we'll develop accordingly." That thinking seems to be along the same lines as the other recent action-RPGs, with both Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 concentrating on single-player and co-op at the expense of PvP.

Power to The Donors

What Taylor means by "develop accordingly" is that he's planning to incorporate a certain amount of democratic process into the development of Wildman, holding votes among Kickstarter backers to help make decisions on everything from the level of gore to the design of the female player character (which, if selected, will change the title screen to read Wildwoman). "We didn't think of Kickstarter as just a way to raise money. We see it as crowd funding, but we see it as a closer relationship with our fans. We see it as our fans getting to participate in the design," says Taylor, who looks forward to removing the guesswork from figuring out what his paying customers want from his games. Oh, and he also promises an innovative web-based level editor that'll allow players to create their own maps for Wildman and share them with others.


I've been waiting for Taylor to jump into the Kickstarter arena for a while now -- he and Gas Powered Games are part of the small club of truly independent game developers that includes prior Kickstarter darlings Obsidian (Project Eternity) and Double Fine (Double Fine Adventure), which are not owned by a big publisher and can have the potential to do some really cool stuff when they start working directly for us.

Where's Kings & Castles?

Lastly, Taylor anticipated a question that fans who've been following GPG are probably wondering: "Why aren't you doing a Kings & Castles Kickstarter? Because Kings & Castles is a big, big game. Our minimum ask would've been $3 million, and we'd be hoping for $6 million. Which would've been too tall an order. We don't know enough about how backers are feeling right now. We think Wild Man is a better game model to go with right now." That's a fair point -- Wildman's Kickstarter goal is $1.1 million, which is a healthy amount, but not astronomical next to recent successes like Project Eternity and Star Citizen. The phased development plan should allow GPG to crank out something that's playable and fun relatively soon, whereas Kings & Castles would take a lot longer and be harder to expand upon gradually.

Are you interested in Wildman? There's a little more info on the Wild Man Kickstarter page, where the minimum buy-in is $20.