Cyber Knights: a cyberpunk RPG

PAX East Day #1 Report
about 6 years ago – Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 02:20:12 AM

Knights,

We’re writing in from the road, after our first day showing off Cyber Knights at PAX East. Thursday is a bit slow but everything is ramping up for a huge weekend. The timing is perfect as we have just entered the final week of the Flashpoint Kickstarter. Not long from now we will close the doors on this crowdfunding process and begin the next chapter -- building the game and preparing the alpha! We couldn’t be more excited to work hand in hand with you, our backers, to develop something of which we can all be very proud.

The first week of a Kickstarter is an exciting rush and the last week of a campaign is the mad dash to the finish line. We’re going all out to hit these stretch goals for you and deliver the biggest, most expansive and most beautiful Cyber Knights we can. We’re pulling out all the stops, turning the void reactor to 105% and calling in all the favors we can with our Contacts -- including travelling to the heart of New Boston and attending PAX East with our friends from Kickstarter.

We are at PAX East 2020 in the Kickstarter Room (#103) above the main convention hall every day from 10 AM to 1 PM. We’ll be demonstrating a Cyber Knights build, talking to potential backers and seeking out our friends in the press to help support the campaign as we march towards the finish line. If you’ll be at the show, please come say hi! If you know anyone who has been on the fence about backing the project, show them Star Traders: Frontiers and remind them that the doors close, forever, on this Kickstarter Thursday March 5th, 9 PM EST.

Before we wrap up this short update, we’re excited to share another amazing Kickstarter that is going on right now!

As fans of the complex world of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, we were excited to learn that Owlcat Games' next ambitious title, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, would be on Kickstarter at the same time as Cyber Knights. We know that our community has a love for classic RPGs based on the depth and richness of pen and paper games, so we wanted to feature the newest Pathfinder Kickstarter. This exciting new title in the genre is breaking ground in dynamic gameplay and player agency ...

Power is alluring. But it is you who decides how to use it and where it will lead you. You may become a merciless lich and command armies of undead. Or a noble angel— a symbol of hope for those who follow you. There is always an option to succumb to the bloody desires and become a demon… And if you want to decline all celestial powers — you can walk the path of the Legend.

Those are only some of the Mythic Paths you can follow in Owlcat Games new Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. You’ll choose and embrace one of the many Mythic Paths to gain power and in turn shape the world with your deeds, lead an army pushing back the invasion of demons (yes, you can fight demons as a demon—moar power, any power!) and explore an intricate branching plot. Using the Pathfinder First Edition ruleset as its core, Wrath of the Righteous enables near endless possibilities for character creation and customization to find your own path to power.

Wrath of the Righteous is crushing through its stretch goal list and adding even more to the game at each turn. If you love classic RPGs, we encourage you to check out the project and help them unlock even more awesome. If they can keep climbing, it will be possible to have a fire breathing martial artist bear clad in magical armor. Do you want that? The answer is yes! And if they unlock mounted combat, you can ride that very bear into battle. Does that mean you are on fire? The answer is ... probably!

All joking aside, the project is awesome and the stretch goals are opening up epic new angles of play. Check it for yourself - it’s Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous!

Thanks for your support and we will send more news from PAX East tomorrow!

Andrew and Cory Trese

Trese Brothers Games

Stretch Goals: Final Days
about 6 years ago – Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 02:34:17 AM

Knights and Backers!

What a day! The momentum is starting to build for a big last week. With 8 days to go, we have crossed the Skyrise stretch goal at $150,000 and are now climbing toward the Skyrise Soundtrack expansion to support the new mission environment kit.

In tonight’s update, we’re going to review the Skyrise stretch goal we just hit as well as unveil the our stretch goals all the way up to $350,000 mark. Once across the $200,000 mark, the stretch goals spread out to almost every $25,000 as each one is a bigger chunk of content and work. While this may seem like a dreamer’s list, we don’t want to hold anything back in this campaign and have been asked by many backers to see the full vision, so let’s put all these cards on the table!

Without further delay, let’s talk about these new stretches! For a look at the rest of the stretch goals that we’ve hit or are still pending, check out Update #5 Stretch Goals: Skyrise + Hacking Mk2.

Skyrise Achieved! ($150,000)

First -- back in Update #5, we showed draft concept art for the space and design of a Skyrise mission environment. This morning, we burned across the $150,000 mark and we are excited to now show off the completed concept art for the Skyrise environment (above). These luxury residences are likely within an arcology or hundreds of stories above street level in one of the corporate towers. We are excited to move forward with this new and different environment. Not only will Skyrise open up new security system behavior, guard types and mission objectives, the design of these spaces will be functionality different than all other mission environments. Featuring grand entryways, tucked away security control rooms and clusters of smaller rooms and hallways, Skyrise will require different tactics and feel very different than the other 3 environments in the game. Now open for business -- Skyrise will invite you to kidnap valuable human targets, steal paydata, help dissatisfied corporate citizens defect or assassinate megacorp executives who have outlived their usefulness.

New Assassin Job + Cybercat Companion ($225K)

There were rumors about the cats and that they would have their day. And that day would be the day on which the campaign hits $225,000. If we can hit this stretch goal, we will introduce a completely new stealth Job to the game and a completely new type of enhanced animal companion. For those cat lovers who have been requesting it, the Assassin and their cybercat are for you!

A new animal companion would require new models, textures, a completely new feline animation rig done by our expert in animal animation, not to mention the new Assassin Job and companion rules to make sure the cybercat works and feels very differently than dogs and drones. Whew, that is a lot! The starting major differentiator for a cybercat’s is their surety in stealth as well as their singular one-to-one relationship with their human, where a single hunder may run a pack of multiple dogs.

Additional Cybercat Breed ($235K)

If we do all the work to create the new Assassin Job, add a completely new type of companion, design and model cybercats and build out their completely unique animal animation rig -- it would be a shame to only have one type of cat breed. If we can reach the $235,000 goal, we can add a second breed of cybercat to the game to give the Assassin another big branch of options in their feline companion. If we do unlock an additional cybercat breed, we will host a poll after the Kickstarter completes to pick the exact breed lineage. Feel free to post a comment with your suggestions of which cats should be considered.

Traps, Turrets and Trauma Kits Expansion ($250K)

This stretch goal would give us the ability to fund additional content and implementations for some popular add-ons and rules expansions. First, it will enable us to fund a set of interactive traps that your team can aquire, take on missions and use to disable, confuse, distract or incapacitate guards and enemy drones. These traps will take the form of craftable or purchasable in-game items that can be deployed directly onto the combat map during a mission.

Second, this stretch goal will let us extend the interactive map layer to also support turrets. These automated gun sentries will increase our options for corporate security, provide your squad new challenges to overcome and enrich the already vast options for pre-mission advantages and hackable devices. For example, we will add options to allow your team to ensure the resupply of turret fuel cells was defective or your hacker scrambled their programming the night before the operation.

Third, this stretch goal will let us expand the on-mission medical options by adding more variety and items like the trauma kit. When your beloved hacker gets shot up and you’re trying to prevent their cyberware from shorting out and blowing the whole operation, these items will be literal lifesavers. While Cyber Knights already supports several healing and combat enhancement item classes, this stretch goal will enable an additional category that can be applied in-game to unconscious or dying teammates.

Animation Expansion 2 (275K)

As with the first Animation Expansion stretch goal, we know that every animation will improve the game’s final level of polish and detail. Hitting the first Animation stretch goal granted us the budget to go beyond the basics needed for the safehouse and tactical combat map. This included fan favorites like petting the dog and mechanical advancements like picking up unconscious friends or dragging the bodies of slain enemies to less conspicuous places. Not only did that stretch goal add animations for the tactical map, but also gave us a budget to fund additional animations specifically to support the safehouse environment.

Like the first, the second Animation Expansion stretch goal would benefit both the combat and the safehouse. The animations in the second pack are more cosmetic in nature but are very expressive. This Expansion 2 would include animations to scan an area, notice a target or single out a hostile, and additional transitions where today we might rely on blending (such as, going from a crouch to a run). In addition, the Animation Expansion 2 would allow us to add facial expressions to all characters including frowns, smiles, suspicious eyebrows, winks and more. While these may sound like small pieces individually, combined they will deliver an immersive and visually diverse game experience.

Lowrise Environment ($300K)

The Skyrise 4th mission environment focuses on corporate residential and luxury living, far above the street level. The complementary Lowrise environment kit would focus on the seedy habtowers, slum flats and gang dens that make up the seedy underbelly of New Boston. This 5th mission environment would be in addition to the existing four: industrial, research/data lab, urban and skyrise.

The streets environment we already have will cover underground tunnel systems, open street fights, gang territory and dilapidated slum habtowers. However, with a limited scope, it will not be able to dive deep into the room-to-room excitement that you could find deep inside habtowers, criminal dens and gang hangouts. Sagging couches, piles of trash, rat’s nest of wires spewing from a street hacker’s command station and a hive-like room and door set would all open up a lot opportunities to create a very different tactical experience. In addition, we would gain additional budget to stylize these lowrise living environments and some of the street environments as well to specific gangs and organizations, adding more special graffiti tags and textures to make the ownership of legendary organizations like the Fennians, Blue Ox and Yakuza felt.

Like the Skyrise expansion pack before it, the Lowrise environment will include expanded mission types, mission objectives, pre-mission advantages and interactive map elements. These additional models and textures will not only benefit the combat map, but will also give us a whole new type of safehouse for your Knight!

Additional Domed City ($350K)

As far back as the original Cyber Knights classic game, we have fielded constant requests to take your Knight and your team beyond the dome of New Boston to other cities in the world. We’ve always loved this idea and included it early in the Cyber Knights: Flashpoint design as a way to massively expand the game storyline and basically create an alternate city, contact network and story campaign.

For the $350,000 stretch goal, we will open a transatlantic route to Neo-Prague. An additional domed city -- with history much older than New Boston -- would allow us to explore a very different feeling, culture and power structure than can be found in the UNA. While some of the global corporations of New Boston would also appear in Neo-Prague, this new city would add a huge list of new corps, crime syndicates, gangs, story characters and storylines.

As a potential huge expansion for the game, Neo-Prague would be developed specifically as an expansion pack (free for all players). We would not start work on this stretch goal until the game was released, launched and ported to all platforms. This would allow us to achieve this stretch goal, scope and plan for it without slowing down or blocking the main development of the game.

So Close “Savage 700”

Throughout the week, we have been constantly gaining on the Savage 700 goal. With the aim of doubling the size of the alpha team from Star Traders: Frontiers, we are now at 665/700 players! With only 35 more alpha team members we will unlock the Savage 700 and double the size of the Omega Style digital reward for everyone at the $60 reward and higher.

As we vie to reach these stretch goals and deepen the content and variety of the game, help us keep sharing the game. We’re building momentum for a strong finish, so let's do this together!

Thanks for your support,

Cory and Andrew Trese

Trese Brothers Games

3 Reasons to Hype and Share + PAXEast
about 6 years ago – Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 02:09:30 AM

Knights and Backers!

We want you to get hype! As we enter the final 10 days of this Kickstarter, we are working doubly hard to share the project far and wide and get everyone to join the alpha team. We want to extend a big Trese Brothers thanks to all of you who are helping us carry this campaign upwards by pledging, upgrading, telling a friend and sharing the Kickstarter on social media. If every current backer finds one new backer we’ll hit all these stretch goals. 

Tomorrow, as we near the Skyrise at $150,000 we will unveil the campaign’s stretch goals all the way up to $350,000. In the meantime, here are some ideas you can use to draw in your friends.

Unique Cyberpunk World and Narrative

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint takes place in one of the oldest cities on the eastern seaboard which has become a melting pot of influences, criminal elements and corporate power players. We’ve taken inspiration from our years of pen and paper RPGs as well as cyberpunk greats like Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson to craft a city steeped in history, alive with character and awash with neon.

The stories of Cyber Knights aren’t content to let you sit as an outsider to the risks and challenges of the contacts you are helping. While everyone might agree that being on a “need to know” basis would be better, it isn’t likely to last very long. Once you get involved, you’ll find yourself getting drawn in and having to make choices that won’t be easily forgotten or erased. Multiple stories and plots will run concurrently, and you’ll make choices about which jobs get your attention, and which calls go unanswered. Every playthrough will be unique as the game adapts to your team and choices.

Such Cyberpunk Style

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint allows you to customize your characters from the very start. You’ll configure your specific mix of character traits, visuals and skills to craft just the Knight you want leading your mercenary team. You’ll also get to customize the path through life that brought your character to the mean streets of New Boston, picking a background and narrative hook that explains the starting point for your character’s life as a Knight.

Every playthrough will adapt to your choices, both in character generation and during the game. You’ll be customizing your Knight, your squad and the New Boston Zone itself based on the moves you and your connections make in the endless power struggle of the street. Every playthrough can be carefully customized and your entire squadron’s load-out and armament is yours to control. Each mercenary on your team will be capable of storing different configurations of weapons, armor and gear so they are ready to rock and roll when you want to take them into different roles in a mission.

Very Cyberpunk Cyberware

As you take missions -- and bullets -- the harsh urban world of Cyber Knights will chip away at your team. In an effort to keep ahead of the curve and to compensate for injuries and nano-pollution, you’ll need the services of a street surgeon and a cyber clinic. Before long, your mercenaries will be a mish-mash of flesh, wires, chrome and nano-technology.

In Cyber Knights, body modifications go far beyond piercings and tattoos; your characters will change as you replace their parts to keep them alive, or just to keep them one step faster, one draw quicker than the competition. These cybernetic implants will grant your characters new skills, new abilities and sometimes new character quirks that illustrate their slow departure from humanity. Not only will the character’s stats and capabilities change, but so will their appearance as cybernetics will be rendered into your character’s model.

Lets us get the hype out by continuing to share our project with your groups and interested communities. If we all tell someone new we can keep the project going stronk to the very end!

Here are some ideas --

• Post the campaign to social media
• Post our interview with Rock, Paper Shotgun
• Share on your favorite forum
• If you’re an active member on a gaming community site, share it there (don’t spam!)
• Tell a friend who is going to PAX East about us or come visit us in the Kickstarter room, 10 AM to noon daily
• Blast the Soundcloud track "Neon Flicker" from your phone at 10 volume in public and when people ask you what the frag you are doing tell them about the Cyber Knights Kickstarter!

Thank you for your support and sharing the project far and wide!

Cory and Andrew Trese

Trese Brothers Games

Dragon Pledge Match Achieved!
about 6 years ago – Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 02:12:35 AM

Backers and Knights,

Wow! What we thought might take 24 hours, you achieved in just 3 hours! Before the Dragon could even gift his gold, we had spiked over $138K -- amazing.

MintDragon has sent in his confirmation screenshot but this isn't the end! We started the pledge drive at 3 PM Saturday, let's see how far we can take this in the 24 hour window to honor to the generous Dragon. What a he is champion! We're lucky to have him in our community for all these years as a player, moderator and friend. He's on our Discord all the time if you want to give him a shout and a round of applause (@MintDragon or use the command !dragon). 

So many backers upgraded their pledges for big and small amounts and the "May I Call You Dragon" Pledge Match was a success in a flash. In addition, we had a ton of new players join the alpha team so the "Savage 700" is now at 606/700! 

With about 21 hours to go from the pledge match start, there is still time to pledge up even if MintDragon won't be matching it. If you feel the cyberpunk feels, do it! Let's see how far we can take this in the Dragon's honor!

Once again, we want to say thank you to everyone in the community -- from the long-timers to the new blood. We're in the business of making great games with you and it is such a joy. 

Until tomorrow!

Andrew and Cory Trese

Trese Brothers Games

Dragon Pledge Match + News Simstreams
about 6 years ago – Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:16:09 PM

Backers and Knights!

We’ve got an exciting announcement to share today as we keep fighting our way up this mountain of stretch goals!

“May I Call you Dragon?” Pledge Match

One of our long-time players, moderators and community legend has offered to hold a Pledge Match drive. In the “May I Call you Dragon?” Pledge Match, our mysterious mint-flavored dragon will match every dollar pledged new to the campaign or upgraded to an existing pledge for the next 24 hours. The generous match offer extends up to $2,000 dollars of pledges, so if we find $2,000 of pledges or upgrades in the next 24 hours, MintDragon will drop another $2,000 on top!

The starting line is $135,000 so let the Pledge Match commence!! Remember, the funds to meet MintDragon’s Pledge Match could come from any size pledge -- even a $1 pledge is matched. With 3060 backers, if everyone bumped by one dollar we could make MintDragon match real fast. And that would make for one happy Dragon!

Going for 140K Again?

We wanted to address this directly, as lots of backers have questions. We’re very focused on transparency and constant communication throughout a Kickstarter’s entire lifecycle, so let’s talk about why we are making a third run at the $140K stretch goal.

We will keep this brief, but there has been some suspicious pledge activity on our Kickstarter starting last weekend. Two backers pledged large sums and jumped the campaign into the $130Ks on 2/15. Then, on 2/18 just as we were about to cross $140K, one of the big pledges was canceled. Over the next two days we built back up and crossed $140K mark and then immediately the second big pledge was canceled. While it was happening, we were simply suspicious and a bit confused. Looking back on it now, this seems extremely odd and just sad for whoever is putting in all that effort. In the future, we will report anything like this immediately to Kickstarter staff.

We know it's been a bit of whiplash to the community but we want to strongly say that it does not matter. Here is why -- first, with your help we are marching back to $140K and nothing is going to stop us. Second, we are making this game anyway, you’ve already helped fund us to 270%! And third, if you look at the Kicktraq chart for daily data, it is clear that every one of these 8 days has been very strong and in fact -- ignoring these funny pledges -- the two days with the cancels were the best days of the week.

When it comes to Kickstarter, good communication is a must. Now let’s get that Animation Expansion and pet some dogs!

New Boston News Stream

The “Month in a Knight’s Life” update and its big section of in-world narrative from a Knight’s perspective was so well received that we have decided to focus this update on a similar theme. We’ve pulled a ton of headlines and story hooks from the story prep work we’ve been doing for the game and compiled them into a month of news and media simstream headlines flowing across the New Boston matrix.

Cyber Knight’s setting in 2231 has given us a unique ability to dream beyond the standard near-term cyberpunk tropes. We’re extremely excited to share this world with you in all its madness, hype and beauty.

Of course, the news is focused on the big events and the disasters but -- what can we say, it's a mess out there in New Boston!

4/15/2231

Rising simstream star Cody Nari, who was reported missing two months ago, has been found in a residential tower in the Atlanta MetroDome. His cause of death has not been reported and rumors continue to swirl regarding an allegedly off-contract recording project Nari was said to be working on.

4/16/2231

The Jupiter Corp deep space shuttle Glacier 7 successfully docked at the Fadelight Constellation in orbit of earth, its first stop before starting its three month trip to the Mars colonies. Global performing sensation LTS visited with VIP fans on Fadelight. The band told reporters that they will be spending some of the journey in cryostasis and some working on their next holovid.

4/18/2231

A hypersonic flight bound for SFZ from New Boston went down over the Rocky Mountains with all 368 passengers. A United North American tactical recovery team is onsite investigating and a GTSB’s spokesperson indicated that UNA and GTSB were in close coordination with Navi Aerospace, the Jupiter Group subsidiary that manufacturers the NX-35 Spaceplane.

4/20/2231

The members of the synthmetal megagroup, Seven Banners Burning, have all arrived in New Boston for their upcoming seven nights of back-to-back shows at the BX HyperGarden. The controversy surrounding lead vocalist SnowFire’s comments about AI Liberation Front members arrested in New Boston has not hurt ticket sales.

Crane Technologies has once again refused to extradite the renowned scientist Berndaze Korbin, further straining tensions with the United North America’s prosecutors office. Crane Technologies continues to stick to its claim that Korbin is a Crane corporate class A citizen, regardless of the proof that she was acting as a foreign intelligence agent at her time of naturalization. The UNA lead prosecutor, Mark Blain, would not make a statement as to what further actions they may take against Crane Tech.

4/23/2231

An explosion during a routine test of a rocket booster on the Arotech Corp space launch platform in the Boston harbor reportedly left 12 dead and more than 40 injured. Arotech officials have not commented on how the incident may affect the upcoming launch of their first Mars colonizer. The company says they will conduct a full and thorough investigation.

4/27/2231

Jupiter Group has confirmed the reports of a contained meltdown at the Oneida NanoReactor on the shores of Lake Ontario. Jupiter Group’s assurances that no human habitation -- except the on-site work forces -- is within range of the fall out has done little to placate the public outcry. Public records show that the Oneida NanoReactor was an aging Gen 3 NR and had been scheduled to be phased out of operation 7 years ago in 2224. A UNNR hazard and recovery team has been dispatched to investigate the damage and evaluate the NanoReactor for reactivation.

McKellan Heavy Industries and Badenhawk Global officials met to formally set off the first explosive charges at the site for the new South Shore Dome extension. McKellan, who will be completing the dome construction on behalf of Badenhawk Global, has indicated that work will begin in earnest next week.

5/3/2231

A new wave of security vulnerabilities in the Sigma 6 security stack have been released online today by the anonymous hacker group Ginja. Matsumoto Global Technologies officials have not been available to comment at this time. Any facility still running the five year old security network is now at high risk of exploitation.

5/6/2231

Simstream star LivLarge has completed an assisted free fall from the Arotech Aro Constellation in orbit to the Earth’s surface for a recording setting distance of 256 miles. The grueling multi-week descent reported tested LivLarge’s physical and mental preparation to the max. Arotech Media has promised that the sim recording will be released on June 2nd. LivLarge is currently admitted to New Boston Bio and in stable condition.

5/8/2231

Terrorist agents from the Free Streets Compact have claimed responsibility for the detonation of the biological bomb outside of an Arotech Corp security checkpoint. City and security officials are calling on Ward 4 residents to turn in those responsible, calling the FSC attack a “hack-job by paid terrorists.”

5/13/2231

Injectors of SheerTech Revolution, the new biomedical body reinforcer by Badenhawk Global, has sold out on its first day. Pharmas across New Boston are clamoring for more product. A Badenhawk official press release states that the next transatlantic shipment is not expected to arrive until June 12th and that customers should never use less than 7 injections as indicated on the packaging.

A magnitude 3.5 radioactive nano-storm has been detected moving across Canada. Unless conditions change, the storm is scheduled to arrive by Wednesday. UNA health officials urge all residents of the outer Wards to secure their residences and stay indoors for at least 2 days. Shelters inside the New Boston Dome are already at capacity. The Boston harbor will be closed and all external construction and repair projects are suspended until the storm has passed.

Remember to power up your nano-scrubber and shutter the windows on your safehouse, Knight. A storm is coming.

Soundtrack!

We have posted one of the first full songs of the game’s original soundtrack on SoundCloud for everyone to enjoy. You can also hear more of the OST in any of the Cyber Knights video content that we’ve been sharing.

Savage 700 Update

We’re now steadily closing on the “Savage 700” bonus reward with 597 alpha team members. Remember if we can reach 700 members of the alpha team, we will double the size of the Omega Style Collection digital reward for everyone at the $60 and higher reward tier. Join up today and let’s get savage!

Twitch Schedule

We will be in New Boston ourselves next week for PAX East starting on Thursday. Before we head out to the show, will be streaming on Twitch at Tuesday at 4 PM EST. See you there to discuss the news :)

Thanks for your support as always!

Andrew and Cory Trese

Trese Brothers Games