Recently we posted an article detailing the return of InSomnia to Kickstarter. It was successfully funded back in July 2014 to the tune of $92,268 dollars. Now Studio MONO is back hoping to raise an additional $80,000 to finish production of their Fallout inspired RPG.
I was informed by the developers of a special demo that was available with their Kickstarter campaign and played it on our channel. I was also given a chance to conduct an interview with project lead Anatoliy Guyduk about progress on the game, and why he felt he needed to return to Kickstarter for further funding.
Keep in mind English is Mr. Guyduk’s first language, and these answers went through a translator.
Cliqist: What was your biggest inspiration for creating InSomnia?
Anatoliy Guyduk: Biggest influences are movies as Blade Runner, Akira, Metropolis, Dark City and Fallout 1 and 2 and good old school RPGs.
Cliqist: InSomnia similarities to old-school RPG’s like Fallout and Wasteland clear, but what would you say makes InSomnia stand out from those games?
Guyduk: Yes, those games you listed are the ones we were inspired by as well however InSomnia has its own unique world and gameplay. We have a dynamic and realistic real time combat system with very detailed close combat, among other things, that differs InSomnia from classic installations of Fallout etc.
Cliqist: You place a large emphasis on story in the Kickstarter pitch. How much influence will player decisions play in the game? Will these decisions be entirely dialog focused, or will how they play the game affect the story?
Guyduk: Most of the decisions the player can make, are going to be introduced through dialogs. However specific actions can also impact on the flow of the story. For example, at certain point the player will face a group of renegades who install explosives near the ship sector of military forces. You can attack them, instantly reducing causalities (if you will wait for too long they will just blow everything up), or sneak silently and disarm the bombs. The other way to solve this situation is through talking, but that won’t be easy. At most time the results of your decisions won’t be distinctively good or bad, so role playing a “good” character will be hard.
Cliqist: Depending on your budget and how big the story is this could be impossible, but is there any chance we’ll see full voice acting in InSomnia?
Guyduk: Currently this doesn’t look like a realistic scenario, unless we will be able to get a whole army of enthusiastic actors. Now, however, the plan is to voice only monologues in key story scenes. As an example – the monologue of Typer in Prologue and some of his comments regarding different situations and actions that happen around.
Cliqist: Why did you need to return to Kickstarter to seek further funding?
Guyduk: We exceeded our own budget, as the development of the game appeared to be a very expensive process and have invested lots of our own money to keep up with the proper tempo of the development. We have everyone we need in our team to work as effectively and efficiently as possible. So with the lack of money we’ll either need to slow down for uncertain amount of time (or potentially close the studio), either seek further funds at Kickstarter.
The thing we don’t want to happen is our project dying after all these years. We want to complete the game and show it to the world. So Kickstarter seemed like the best solution possible. We asked our previous backers for their support and was moved by the generosity and love we’ve seen for InSomnia.
Cliqist: Do you think the scope of the game expanded to far considering how much money you made in your previous Kickstarter campaign, and more so since your first campaign failed?
Guyduk: Our main goal essentially remained the same – create a quality RPG with unique style and realistic combat system. We didn’t expand the story itself, no, but it appeared that to implement everything we already created we required far more resources and time. We don’t want to publish something raw, unfinished and pretty much broken. So basically the scope itself remained virtually the same, however, the total play time increased. We want be able to tell the whole story, and not just some bits of it.
Cliqist: Why should someone who backed InSomnia previously back you again?
Guyduk: We are not asking anyone to do this, as we expect new people to join and rally support for our game; the ones who never heard about the project before. However, there are quite a few backers that have supported us twice, as they believe in our project just as we do, and we are very thankful to them. Kickstarter is a very transparent place, and we honestly report all the results we achieve, all the problems we face. We are always there to talk to people. This is our story of fighting the reality, the story of a no name studio which struggles for their project to survive. We listed all these facts in our new campaign, so backing us or not is totally up to people out there.
Cliqist: What’s your plan if this latest Kickstarter fails? What will become of the game?
Guyduk: Yes, we have plans for worst case scenario as well. We will continue to develop the game, but at a slower pace than it would be if we are successful with the Kickstarter. Our team is super-motivated and incredibly talented, so I have no doubt that we will overcome all the difficulties on our path to completing the game.
Cliqist: When will InSomnia be released?
Guyduk: Mostly it depends on funding. If it all goes well you can expect insomnia to hit GoG and Steam by the end of 2016.
There you have it. I was impressed with Guyduk’s honesty and openness about why they’re returning to Kickstarter. He thinks the team didn’t expand the scope too far, which has always been a problem for Kickstarter games, and they have contingency plans in case this Kickstarter doesn’t reach its goal.
Studio MONO sounds like they know what they’re doing, but we’ll see for ourselves when we finally get our hands on InSomnia. For our previous coverage of InSomnia, click this link, and if you want to watch my video in which I kept calling the game ‘Insomniac,’ check out our Youtube channel.
