Work is proceeding apace. All pledges will be fulfilled. Trying to get the last bugs/notes sorted out and testing a full walkthrough.

Organizing a printer and fulfillment agent for manuals and physical materials.

Thus ends the greatest crowd funding campaign in human history that did not actually meet any of it’s funding goals. I have been filled with renewed vigor by this failure to raise any significant sums of money and am more determined than ever to get Grimoire out as soon as I possibly can.

My original plan to flee with the money to a 3rd world country with weak extradition laws has fallen through after the local dictator has nationalized all foreign accounts. He was particularly outraged to discover my secret Grimoire deposit box only contained a free drink voucher for Chuck E. Cheese and some broken Pez dispensers.

In coming weeks we have three goals :

1. Finish game for release
2. Implement all consolidated pledges from both this and prior campaigns.
3. Start writing manual and hint guide with help of automated tools.
4. Put Grimoire up on Project Greenlight to see if we can get it distributed on Steam.
5. Seek other digital distribution channels for final product. We may consider GOG after the product has been on Steam for a while.

Thanks for all your support and rest assured the overthrow of the forces of decline and fail is close at hand. I am sure many of you know this is shaping up to be a great year for RPGs, possibly the best year they have had since 1992. It is fitting Grimoire will be released in the same year as sequels to classics like Wastelands, Planescape Torment, Might & Magic and many others.

Crowd funding has changed everything in the past 12 months and it has made two things obvious :

1. People like me whining constantly about decline were correct the past 17 years. It was an era of decline.
2. The way things are shaping up, constant decline may become a thing of the past with the creative power shifting into the hands of creators. Incline may once again become a dominant force in the universe. That means you will be able to regularly play computer games that are not a blow to the basic dignity of mankind.

I look forward to the coming years and I expect my fledgling company Golden Era Enterprise to become a real force in the future for quality creative output. I hope you are all going to get at least half of the enjoyment I have been promising from Grimoire when it is released and from the games I still have inside me trying to get out.

Once again, thank you for your support.

Jacob Marner asked (in regards to the new demo) …

“Also a question, if I start a game with the demo will I be able to continue with the same save game for the full game? And will it generally be possible to load a saved game if the demo/game is updated?”

When the full release version comes out, there will be new twists, easter eggs and secret areas added to the demo/superdemo that were not originally present. So rather than seeing it as an ordeal, you can approach it as a seasoned veteran out to see what you may have missed the first time around.

As an example, you will find two new secret regions in this demo that were not there prior. There will be more of the same in the final release and very interesting twists that were not present in the demo versions.

I have been working on a subplot with the Vanguard where the Entity appears regularly and pelts them with horrible deadly confections and sweet tarts that weigh several tons, crushing their outposts beneath a gruesome mound of cream toppings and bloated heaps of candied fruits. This is because the Entity’s travel guidebook says that the only interaction in the multiverse for travelers should be complementary gifts of candy to those you meet. The Entity figures they did not say anything about how much those treats should weigh. This will certainly be in the final release version but I have not finished it yet for it to appear in the superdemo. At present there is just a wanted poster for the Entity in the Village of Crowl that hints at this relationship with the Vanguard.

Please note that it is a good idea to UN-INSTALL any old versions of the demo before installing this new one.

Grimoire Version 1.31 is now available for download at:

http://www.filedropper.com/grimoiredemov131

Please report any problems with a description of how to reproduce them so we can fix them. This version has been tested on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 in 32/64 bit flavors with no bugs found in the public demo. Running pretty solid. Please keep in mind there are still many placeholder graphics in the game that will be replaced with better versions in the final release.

Tooltips were disabled in this version but they have been implemented, time was not available to test them thoroughly yet. They will certainly appear in the next version in some form.

Certain modifications to various parts of the demo and full game have resulted from feedback, one of the most notable is a means to recover dismissed party members in the game.