A couple of snippets today. First, Stuart Lloyd has posted up the first of four in-depth reviews of Fabled Lands on his Virtual Fantasies blog. Some interesting insights there even for those who are familiar with the FL series.And here's something to trumpet about: the Fabled Lands app from Megara Entertainment is proving a very big hit with iPhone and iPod Touch owners. The game is holding up there in around the #45 mark in RPG ratings on iTunes, and has been bobbing up close to the Top 100 in all adventure games.
This amazing success story means that Mikael Louys, Megara's Grand Fromage and all-around creative powerhouse, is able to pretty much guarantee release of the forthcoming apps for Cities of Gold & Glory and Over the Blood-Dark Sea. And if those do anything like as well as the first game, I think you'll be seeing the rest of the series before too long.
Incidentally, if you haven't yet got a copy of one of the Fabled Lands apps, iFanzine are giving away 20 copies (your choice as to iPad or iPhone version) so head over there posthaste and stake your claim.
Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteI hope that means in the future the “green light” for the printed versions: from 5 to 12
Thanks for the news!
Ikaros
Hi Ikaros, if there is a green light it will probably be for the apps first, then maybe for print editions collecting multiple books in one volume. But all just speculation at this stage - let's see if those iTunes sales hold up first!
ReplyDeleteMaybe if they do really really well they will put it on the android market.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be great if they did, Wanderer, although I think Megara's team are too focused on the iOS releases to do an Android version in the foreseeable future. If another developer out there wants to undertake a conversion, though, I'm sure Fabled Lands LLP and Megara would be interested in doing a deal.
ReplyDeleteWhen the rest of the series is greenlighted, will the existing page references be intact?
ReplyDeleteThat's great news, Dave. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the plug - it brought a lot of traffic my way. I've just posted the second part of my review on my blog. It is about the game system.
Many thanks again. I'm sure books 2 and 3 will sell as much as book 1. :).
"This amazing success story means that Mikael Louys, Megara's Grand Fromage and all-around creative powerhouse, is able to pretty much guarantee release of the forthcoming apps for Cities of Gold & Glory and Over the Blood-Dark Sea. And if those do anything like as well as the first game, I think you'll be seeing the rest of the series before too long."
ReplyDeleteBetter start writing those other 6 books then Dave!
How long would it take do you reckon to produce a new FL book (either digital or print)? I'm guessing just for the writing alone, with the high level of complexity in FL you must be talking a good couple of months of solid work?
I'd say it could soon be time for you and Jamie to cancel all holidays and lock yourselves away in a room to think about the Sea of Stilts, the Weeping Jungle and how you're going to get 700 odd sections out of the city of Dangor... a hidden map perhaps! Hope I haven't now ruined a surprise you had in store for that book?!
Colin, Dave mentioned that it would take 3 months to write each of the books and a bit longer for book 7, as he has to get back in the swing of things. Not to mention, the entire map topology and backstory is already layed out :-)
ReplyDeleteColin - well, when we say Dangor is "just" one city, that probably doesn't give away quite how big it is ;)
ReplyDeleteJamie and I used to figure on around 3-4 man-months to write a Fabled Lands book. They took longer than our other gamebooks because of the need to come up with so many story threads. Then there's testing, briefing the illustrators... No small task!
Mike - yes, having the maps already drawn does help! One option to get the books written faster would be to hire a team - something we've got used to in our time working in the videogames industry since the FL days. But that only makes it faster, it doesn't make it any cheaper.
ReplyDeleteI was just wondering Dave, is your favourite "fantasy" world one of your own (Legend, the world of Fabled Lands, etc.) or someone else's (Tekumel and the like)?
ReplyDeleteI did indeed wonder about the idea of Dangor being rather huge. If it's the size of say London with a big internal transport system and loads of cultures and districts then that could make for a very unique and interesting gamebook experience! Anyway, sorry, I'll stop trying to do your job for you now and killing your creative spark!
ReplyDeleteAs a slight aside, but in reference to your comment Dave about your work on video games, I just wanted to say that Deathtrap Dungeon is still to this day one of my favourite video games! I wish there were more games like that still around... I tend to find most games in that genre overly complicated these days, but that's just my personal preference.
Hamza, my favorite fantasy world is Tekumel by a very wide margin. After that I'd have to list Jack Vance's Lyonesse and Jamie's and my continent of Abraxas. I like Legend and the FL world too, of course!
ReplyDeleteColin - I never played Deathtrap Dungeon, though Jamie worked on it during our time at Eidos. My own fave game is Outcast, the only game I have played all the way through twice. Also have to mention: Max Payne, Grim Fandango, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Age of Empires 2, Alone in the Dark 1 and 2, Ecstatica, Half Life... A personal list there, as they all are.
A couple of earlier comments only just showed up, so I'll add: (1) Stuart, thank you for taking the time to give FL such a well-considered critique, we appreciate it, and (2) Mike, if the series continues it would certainly have to dovetail with earlier books, mos' def'.
Speaking of Tekumel, what cultures is it inspired by?
ReplyDeleteProfessor Barker has said that he drew on elements of South-east Asian, Arabic and Mayan cultures. But really Tekumel is unique. Apparently Raymond E Feist used it as the basis for the "Tsurani" civilization in one of his fantasy series, but his interpretation isn't even a pale reflection of the original.
ReplyDeleteGood selection of classic games there, Dave. Not many people remember Ecstatica. I presume modesty prevents you from mentioning your own sizable achievement with Warrior Kings? 8^)
ReplyDeleteYes, Jiminy, I do think Warrior Kings would have been even better than AoE2 in the original design, but it got so messed around with by various publishers that in the end it was only 80% as good as it might have been. A real shame - but hardly an uncommon story in the videogames industry, which is why after Elixir Studios shut down (taking with it Dreams, which really would have been exceptional) I moved over to writing comic books.
ReplyDeletei really would want to win that giveaway but i have no use for two FL apps in my iphone xD
ReplyDelete“then maybe for print editions collecting multiple books in one volume”
ReplyDeleteHi Dave! ¿That means 5-8 and 9-12 books? That’s a cool idea. (but I hope It’s doesn’t mean to buy again 1-4). Anyway, I love the one book “per book” edition, but if they come in bundle I will gladly buy them.
Ikaros
That's right Ikaros, I'm thinking that maybe four FL books could be bundled together in a single omnibus edition, so that people who already have 1-4 wouldn't need to buy again. Our thinking is that clearly gamebooks are now more successful as apps than as print books, but there will always be readers who prefer print books, so we would need to find a way to make those economically viable. Bundled editions might do the trick.
ReplyDeleteI've needed a new phone for a while; my dumbphone is user-unfriendly, scratched to hell, and unnecessarily expensive when I actually fork out for credit for the damn thing.
ReplyDeleteI've been somewhat dissuaded by the over-hype surrounding the iPhone so far... but a bunch of Fabled Lands applications is a DAMN convincing motive to get one...
Or... iPad 2? Just a thought :)
ReplyDeleteGreat news Dave, I was hoping the addition of the iPhone/iPod Touch version would make for this kind of leap in sales :)
ReplyDeleteHas there been any announcement/speculation on how the separate apps would talk to each other? My main concern is that repeatedly moving between, say, Sokara and Golnir will require reloading separate apps over and over. I'm sure a lot of thought has been put into this though!
I'd vaguely registered your references to Tekumel before now, and done some brief reading on it. I may have to dig deeper now though - having seen both your own endorsement as your favourite fantasy world, and Feist's as inspiration for Tsuranuanni (which I always imagined as a collision of Japanese and Aztec cultures, and really loved)!
Well, this is what Prof. Barker himself has to say about the setting:
ReplyDelete“What kind of a world, then is Tékumel? Socially and culturally, Tékumel is as complex—and as alien to modern thinking—as Byzantium, ancient Egypt, Tenochtitlan, or the India of the Mughals.”
From the little I know of the setting, and from the various descriptions of it I have heard, there doesn't seem to be much Japanese influence, mainly Mesoamerican, Arabian and Indian. I like the idea of the setting since some of the cultures it's said to be inspired by are usually overlooked by fantasy writers, as opposed to the European influence that Tolkienesque settings have.
Empire of the Petal Throne RPG (Tekumel) video review on YouTube in 3 parts here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khDTigtU8uU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ukaG8PMSos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmdujKV1FS0
I hadn't seen those YouTube reviews before. Interesting! Thanks, Jiminy.
ReplyDeleteHamza, you're right, there's no sign of any Japanese influence on Tekumel, though the major civilizations and languages are respect-based so Paul Mason once proposed that it would be a lot easier to get those nuances across with a group of Japanese players.
Raymond Feist kind of missed the point of a lot of Barker's ideas. (I heard that he claims he hired a researcher to create the Tsurani culture for him, and didn't realize she based it on Tekumel.) For example, he has them fighting with swords made of leather. In fact, Tekumel swords are made of chlen-hide, which is a kind of horny integument from a six-legged beast of burden (think ankylosaurus) which is peeled, treated with chemicals to make it soft, then baked to leave a material that is about as hard as bronze but a third the weight. Iron is rare and much in demand. Feist's Cho-Ja are Barker's Pe Choi, only more leadenly identified as "insects". More on this here:
http://games.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/tekumel/message/26168
Anyone who wants to experience the original Tekumel will find plenty of posts on it on this blog, eg:
http://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2010/11/its-fair-cop.html
Although we're discussing the cultures that may have inspired Barker, I ought to say that Tekumel doesn't feel like it's India or Arabia or Uxmal or any of those places. It's completely its own thing - a true "subcreation" as Tolkien put it, where the influences have been fully transmuted into a genuinely original and unique world.
Isn't it true that there's no cavalry and no mounts in the world of Tekumel? For some reason, that's an idea I have a hard time wrapping my head around!
ReplyDeleteTekumel is a planet around another star, Hamza. It was colonized by humans and other aliens in our future, and was part of a vast galactic meta-civilization up until the time a cosmic weapon sealed it off in a pocket universe consisting of just Tekumel and its sun, moons and sister planets. Civilizations collapsed, rose, collapsed again, and much technology was lost until now (some 20,000 years later) it exists only as "devices of the ancients".
ReplyDeleteThere are no horses in the known parts of Tekumel (known to player-characters, that is) though there are rumors of riding animals elsewhere on the planet - as you might expect, those are the goal of many an adventure! Chlen, which are used as beasts of burden, are great lumbering things that would be no use for transport. So you go on foot, or carried it a palanquin if you're rich enough, via a network of raised and fortified roadways called Sakbe that crosscross the Five Empires. (Think: Gt Wall of China.)
Anything else? Oh yeah, there are women adventurers but, unlike most fantasy authors, Barker has actually thought through how that could come about. The existence of natural herbal contraceptives means women can decide to be child-free. This has led to the tradition of Aridani, whereby any woman can declare herself equal in legal status to a man, in which case her clan expects her to provide for herself.
It's a fully realized world, that's the thing, based on Prof Barker's expert knowledge of anthropology, linguistics and religion. Other fantasy worlds like Feist's are babies playing with finger paints. Tekumel is the Sistine Chapel.
Based on your descriptions, I visualize Tekumel as a more detailed and imaginative version of the planet Pandora in the film Avatar.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of it that way before, but you're right. The thing about Tekumel is the unending sense of wonder. I've been playing Tekumel campaigns for many years now, and it still keeps on astonishing me.
ReplyDeleteAre there Tekumel books like the Fabled Lands books? Or is it an rpg style thing like D&D? It sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteWill we have to wait until books 7 and 8 are written before we see the reprints of "The Court of Hidden Faces" and "Lords of the Rising Sun"? How long do the apps take to develop?
ReplyDeleteWanderer, the answer is both. Adventures on Tekumel is a series of solo gamebooks. Then you can take that character and play in the full-on RPG.
ReplyDeleteMike, that would be one way to help make print gamebooks commercially viable. I'd only be guessing at the turnaround time to develop one of the FL apps, though it has speeded up now Megara have an engine built. If I say 4-5 months, I'm sure Mikael will set me straight.
There I was looking forward to collecting all the books, or at least the first six, in the same format. Now it seems I won't even be able to obtain both books five and six with their original covers because of this 'omnibus' idea. It leaves me wondering why I bothered with buying the first four in print when I'm left with a series that is in a manner less complete than the original set!
ReplyDeleteIndeed, I am disappointed by this as well. Truely, I was hoping for each game-book in nice form as they come out and now they might be in collected set? I really do not like that :(
ReplyDelete"It leaves me wondering why I bothered with buying the first four in print"
ReplyDeleteBecause you wanted them and they're great books?
Dave and Jamie are looking at ways print copies of the gamebooks can be made available even though app versions are more economically viable. Quibbling about the number of pages is uncharitable and pointless: the choice is 'release them in a financially viable format' or 'don't release them.'
Hell, bind 'em in nettles and carve 'em on tree-bark for all I care. Completing the series - in whatever format - years after we all thought it was dead and buried would be an inch off a miracle.