The Automap has received a complete overhaul. It's not done yet, but it's much closer to done now and should be far more useful as a navigational tool.
The hotel lobby and hotel room levels have recevied a MAJOR design improvement and optimization pass. The result is frame rate increases of 3-4X in spots and superior player flow.
Based on feedback since the last update, a variety of improvements and bug fixes have been made across all systems. See the full release notes for specifics.
To help give an idea of how much of the Tower is available to explore right now, here's an image of the new Automap with all of Act 1 mapped out (minus labels to avoid spoilers).
Green = Standard interior sections.
Hard Yellow = Major door/entrance, connecting two areas.
Blue = Water/Flooded sections
Red = Vents/Industrial sections
Act 2 and future content update
The super secret feature we have been teasing is now being tested and is accessible to all Fig backers. If you'd like another copy of the game to give to a friend, backing us on Fig will grant you access to the backer-only versions of The Tower and hidden sections of the forum and iDGi Discord Community. It is also a key way to help us get the game done faster!
It is unclear just yet when we will be launching the "secret new feature" publicly, but stay tuned as developments are made. But rest assured, as soon as it's announced, it will be available to play.
Here is another glimpse at upcoming Act 2 content for you all. A snow filled office corridor, somewhere within the Churchill Tower. What is that in the distance?
Coming sooner than you might expect -- some updated V.O. in Act 1.
In general, we are shifting a bunch of Tower dev time into getting Act 1 into a more final state. So that means, final animations and VO.
As always, here are some of the key ways to contact us / give us feedback:
“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” – Christopher Reeve
First glimpse of Act 2...
We present...a flooded Parking garage with snow, construction nanites and a flying car. A Consortium Bishop presides over a body.
In other news - we're Close(tm) to unveiling our super secret feature -- (just working out the last of the kinks with it now....).
Kindly stay tuned...
Early Access Alpha 1.5 is here: Combat re-balanced + Demo updated + 212121
Greetings Seekers,
We have just made v1.5 live for you all. We’ve also updated the demo to include all of the latest fixes and polish. Click HERE to see a complete list of all the updates and fixes we’ve made to the game for you.
The biggest change/improvement revolves around combat balance - the early game is now much easier, giving new players more time and space to understand the game’s mechanics and systems. We aren’t declaring that the game is completely free of issues, but it is now quite stable and we’re continuing to fix and polish things as quickly as we’re able to.
Here is a complete list of the things iDGi is working on right now:
-Continued polish, fixing and improving all Act 1 content (i.e the game you all have access to now).
-Act 2 content development ongoing, screenshots coming soon!
-A secret partnership centered around a brand new feature for The Tower that no-one is expecting. Fig Backers will be learning about this first, but watch for a big official announcement in the coming weeks!
-A FREE Consortium choose-your-own-adventure digital prequel story is coming to Android and iOS devices! We haven’t truly announced it yet, but we’re quite close to a first release to our Fig Backers. A PC version will be coming to Steam sometime afterwards...
We have largely been silent over the past few months, and we apologize for any misconceptions that may be floating around out there as to WHY. Please always remember, this is a pure passion project for us, and we will never stop working on it until it’s done… even if it kills us, and we have to reincarnate ourselves!
That being fact, in true indie developer fashion, we are all juggling various life responsibilities and contracts along with working on The Tower, so we need to maximize the use of our time. There’s still a lot of game to get done here, and creatively we very much need to be able to work on the game in our own way, without any time pressure or outside influences.
So, we deeply appreciate all of your continued patience and understanding, even if we appear to go dark for long periods of time.
We hope you like the latest, more to come soon!
Sincerely,
Gregory and the iDGi team
212121
New development stream
Greetings seekers!
We are internally testing V1.5 now. It will be in your hands soon.
One of the things you can look forward to in this version is a major combat re-balancing.
This is coming from a lot of feedback we've received, and should make the early game much more fun and interesting for new players. It is also going to be more in-line with the narrative itself.
If you're interested in how combat balancing is done, check this out:
https://youtu.be/fa0Y4Jy-dZo
Until next time,
Gregory and the iDGi team
Achievements! Roadmap! Alpha v1.4 Holiday Cheers!
Seasons greetings Interdimensional travellers,
We have just pushed 1.4 live for everyone, just in time for the holidays.
Most of us have been deep into our various tasks for realizing the content for Act 2, but we’ve still racked up a solid list of fixes and improvements to the overall Act 1 experience based largely, once again, from all of your feedback and reports. So, thank-you!
Click HERE for a rundown on all of the stuff we’ve fixed as well as a disclosure of the known issues that we are still working to track down. The most notable addition is - Act 1 Steam achievements! There are now 50 achievements that help illustrate just how much story and content is in the game at this time.
The Tower is on sale during the current Winter Sale (21% off on the 21st!). We would like to make a note that this price during the 2017 Winter Sale will be the lowest price The Tower will be offered at for at least a year and probably longer.
A FEW WORDS FROM US...
We’re a tiny developer with a grand vision for what we want The Tower to become when it is finished. This is a work of passion, and its creation comes from a deep belief and vision for what is possible with interactive first-person gameplay, beyond just enabling hyper-addictive and visceral commercial money making products. More than just simple entertainment, we’re striving for The Tower to become a deeply immersive role-playing experience through which one’s imagination is fueled by an interactive ride that will differ for each and every person strapping themselves in.
We’ve recently come to the realization that the Consortium games are, when boiling it all down, about the evils of corporate homogenism and the steady and continued erasure of originality in commercial art and entertainment. In fact, the the entire story and the answers behind all of its mysteries all link to this theme.
By buying our game now, you are supporting our ability to fully realize this vision. Last year, before the Fig campaign, we had no game whatsoever. Instead, we put forth a vision we had for a game in the form of mocked up pre-production videos. A few thousand people reached into their wallets, literally fueling this project's existance.
So now that it’s playable, the reason for our Early Access foray is to find more gamers that want to see us realize all of the potential for a new kind of single-player narrative game, based on what we’ve managed to create so far.
THE ROADMAP
! SPOILER ALERT ! For those of you who want to be entirely surprised by where you get to go in the Tower and how the game will progress...you might want to avoid looking too closely at the chart linked below.
This chart roughly encapsulates the remaining level work that needs doing to complete the remainder of the game. The colors of the boxes indicate how much work has been done on them so far, and how close they are to being completed. Generally speaking, the darker the blue, the closer they are to completion.
The dark blue boxes are all Act 1, and are currently accessible in the game. Our next big push is to get all of those “almost playable” levels to Early Alpha so we can begin testing them! Act 3 consists of one big level - the Churchill Tower Power Facility, at the center of the Tower.
So, moving forward, our plan is really quite straightforward:
We will steadily continue to fix, improve and debug Act 1 gameplay based on ongoing feedback, while simultaneously bringing all of Act 2’s levels to a fully playable state.
Once Act 2 is playable, we will be inviting our Earliest Access Fig backers to dive in. After testing and fixing for awhile with just our closest backers, we will bring Act 2 online here on Steam for even greater testing. The base price will rise at this point, to $29.99.
Sometime in here we will do another round of voice over recordings for Act 1 and big chunks of Act 2. More robot voices will be replaced by final voices. Principal choreography will also finally begin, with a ton of finalized scenes ready for animations and final character models. Casting of all the remaining characters will be completed by this point.
Once Act 2 of the game is working here on Steam, we will continue to fix, improve and debug Act 1 and 2 (though Act 1 should be pretty solid by then!). As choreography is completed for Act 1 and 2 scenes, subsequent updates will include those. Meanwhile, after clearing out major Act 2 issues, will will be focussing on realizing the climax of the game, Act 3. Act 3 is about 10% or less of the total game. It’s the final environment, the final challenge, and it’s where everything culminates.
Once Act 3 is playable, we will once again invite our most loyal backers to dive in and start testing. This will continue on until reaching BETA.
Once the entire game’s story and gameplay are in place, we will then perform a final Voice Over recording pass, allowing for the completion of all of the game’s choreography.
Principal choreography is completed, and we officially enter BETA, resulting in a huge update here on Steam.
Once in BETA, we will be testing the now largely finished game. Final game balancing and bug fixing will occur, with zero new features being added. Once we’ve got the entire game in a solid spot with at least a few months of being in BETA...
The Game is done! Release V1.0, yay! The game’s price will jump up at this point to its final spot, at $34.99. Ongoing support will continue forth indefinitely from that point, and we have plans to give the community access to our dev tools and integrate the game with Steam Workshop.
In addition, throughout the entire process, we will be steadily polishing and improving the already established core mechanics based on all feedback that we receive.
As far as dates and deadlines are concerned, there are none. The official release date for V1.0 of The Tower is “When It’s Done”. But, as you can hopefully see, we have a concrete plan for the game being “done,” we just feel that quality trumps time restraints.
According to our original minimum budget plan, we have been taking on other jobs at this stage in order to be able to afford to keep developing the project. All this means is that we can't accurately predict WHEN we'll get the game done. However, the road ahead is about steadily and surely building the required content for the completed narrative based on our now well established mechanics and systems. We will get there.
It is a simple fact that the more sci-fi immersive sim fans that discover and buy our game, or back us on Fig to support us, the faster we’ll be able to move through the roadmap. Each and every purchase gives us more of an ability to progress faster through the above steps and to improve the final quality of the game.
Regardless, we encourage you to look no further than our own company’s history to see how stubborn and determined we are about realizing a Consortium game. Dedication is not something we lack!
Our first crowdfunding attempt back in 2012 for making the first CONSORTIUM (also now on Sale, and you can transfer saves made in it to The Tower for an even deeper story!) didn't work. But we persisted. Our attempt to raise our minimum budget for The Tower on Kickstarter also didn't work. We persisted. Realizing the dream of the Consortium universe is really the ultimate dream. It’s about the dream of us, as humans, being capable of creating a much better world than the one we currently inhabit. Of striving to be much better than we currently are.
We will leave 2017 with a slogan that we had on a banner on the wall of our Indie MegaBooth at Pax Prime 2014 when showcasing the first Consortium game:
“Consortium: The cradle of utopia -- The fragility of mankind”
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season, and here’s to a hopeful, prosperous and peaceful 2018 for all of us!
Cheers!!
-- Gregory and the iDGi team
p.s. 2121....21.
Mini update...
Seasons greetings interdimensional travellers!
This is the first annoucement we've made without a new version having just been uploaded.
The reason is simple - we're still working on the roadmap and getting things done for EA Alpha v1.4, including new Steam achievements! We very much want to try and make sure that v1.4 kills as many of the bugs and issues that currently exist in the game as possible, so we're not rushing this one. There's also been a slight delay on getting the achievements working.
Speaking of not rushing things... we know many of you are impatient for us to finish this game. However, it's going to take us as long as it takes. We're taking our time developing the remainder of the game. When we do drop the roadmap for you all, it won't include a schedule. We're not making this game on a schedule, we're realizing our vision of what we want the final game to become, and that's going to take as long as it takes.
Also, after EA Alpha v1.4 releases there will likely be a period where releases will appear to have fewer changes than you've become used to seeing. They will mostly be fixes and improvements to Act 1 based on continuing feedback from you all, but will eventually include new voice over for things like the hotel mercs, once their lines are finalized.
This is because our tiny team is going to be settling into largely only working on the remainder of the game's levels and content. This will eventually lead to series of a big "Act 2" update drops to all our "Earliest" access Fig backers, and then here. The rough timeframe for that to start happening is mid-late spring of next year.
In the meantime, there are more Steam achievements for Act 1 of The Tower than there are in the entire first Consortium game, and easily double if not quadruple the amount of total raw gameplay time.
A reminder - if you want to engage with us and Consortium fans, the best ways are via our iDGi Discord channel and forums
One final note: I've started twitch streaming again, and will probably continue to do more. The next time I start a stream I will be sure to post an announcement here on Steam!
Until next time!
Sincerely,
Gregory and iDGi team
Alpha v1.3 just went live...
Greetings stalwart seekers, travellers and interdimensional explorers:
More bugfixing, optimizing and polishing is to be had in the latest. A huge number of the fixes and updates were made possible because of YOUR playtesting reports and Discord messages, so thank-you!
There is now a definitive "ending" of sorts to the experience currently live on Steam. Find an iDGi-1 connection tunnel and walk to the end to trigger it. It's a little taste of things to come...
Also of note, an experimental "grab object" button to allow you to pick up physics objects.
To take a look at the complete list of changes, go HERE.
What to watch for in the next update
--Game completion roadmap: I realize we said we would have it ready by now, but unfortunately it's just not ready yet. We've been furiously working on it, however. It is getting close. We want to make sure that it is extremely accurate, so we're taking our time.
--One other thing you can look forward to in the next update - ~50 Steam achievements are in the process of being created and setup to be triggered in game! There's a LOT that can be done in the current game - more than we think most folks realize. The upcoming achievements will hopefully highlight this for everyone.
Contact us!
A reminder - the absolute best place to post any issues you may encounter in game is HERE.
There's also our Discord server if you wish to chat with us directly!
We absolutely love any and all feedback. Please drop by and say hi!
Well, it's back to the development caves for us.
Until next time,
Gregory and the iDGi crew
FREE DEMO now available...
Greetings everyone,
We have just released a playable demo for Consortium: The Tower on Steam. Included is the entire rooftop of the Churchill Tower. In a real-time first person environment you can fight, sneak, talk and explore (or any combination thereof).
We’re inviting anyone out there who might be interested in a hard-core, pure single-player role-playing experience that is nonlinear and highly replayable to check out our demo.
Anyone who purchases Consortium: The Tower or backs us on Fig and gains full access to the latest Alpha, you’ll be able to load any saved universe you created in the demo and continue your adventure seamlessly. You can also import saved universes from CONSORTIUM into the demo if you have them, but they are not necessary to enjoy the experience.
For those of you who already own our game, please consider helping us spread the word about this demo to friends and family who may be interested?
Also, for those with a twitter account - we would deeply appreciate you considering re-tweeting the following to help us spread the word?
The demo is finally locked and loaded, to be made live early tomorrow morning. (this is now 100% happening - no more delays).
We will post another announcement the moment this happens.
This version brings more updates and fixes (especially in the WaterHub area). But the thing we're most excited about is a brand new Agitation and Stealth HUD meters. We think they're more intuitive and are stylistically consistent with the rest of the Consortium HUD.
Give the latest a whirll and see for yourself, we hope you all agree!
"Completion Roadmap?” With the demo finally ready, we will be appling more time and effort to readying this for you all to see. Hopefully by the next update.
As always, please let us know what you think in the comments below, Steam forums, the i2DG1i forums or the Discord channel.
Back to the iDGi-1 development and control center for us!
-- Gregory and the iDGi team
Early Access ALPHA v1.2 is here!
Happy Friday 13th Seekers,
We just made Early Access ALPHA v1.2 live for everyone to play.
This version brings a ton more bug fixes, a great deal of which were fixed due to being discovered by many of you awesome people playing out there. Thank-you!!.
"Where's the demo"? Apologies for the delay (we kept finding issues we wanted to fix!), but we can now confidently announce that the demo is undergoing final internal testing, and will be made available early Monday morning. (October 16th).
"You mentioned a roadmap in the last update?" A completion roadmap is still coming soon. Plans got shifted around due to some real nasty bugs being found that made us up our timetable to get an updated build to you all much earlier than originally planned. In addition, prepping the demo has taken a lot of our time over the past week.
