Dreamfall Chapters

It's been a couple of weeks since Red Thread Games thrilled adventure gamers all over the world by announcing they had picked up the licence from Funcom to create the third game in The Longest Journey saga. The Longest Journey, a 2D point-and-click adventure released in 1999, is one of my favourite games ever. The sequel, Dreamfall The Longest Journey, didn't hit the shelves until 2006 and although the story was great, the gameplay left something to be desired. The second game of the saga ended on a massive cliffhanger, leaving players with what felt like way too many unanswered questions.

Ragnar Tørnquist

The creator of the series, Ragnar Tørnquist, promised fans that there would be an end to the story and that questions would be answered, but when Funcom started focusing more on online games, like The Secret World, the future of The Longest Journey was uncertain at best.

Tørnquist never forgot his promise, however, so when his work on The Secret World was finished, he decided to set out on his own to finish the story he started over a decade ago. So he brought some very experienced people along from Funcom, some of whom had worked on TLJ and Dreamfall with him, and set up his new company, Red Thread Games.

The Red Thread Games crew

On their website, Red Thread Games has this to say about themselves:
"At Red Thread Games, we are passionate about games and interactive storytelling.Our goal is to make games where stories and characters are in focus, games with mature themes, diverse worlds and moral complexity. Games that don't underestimate our players. Games that treat players with respect.We believe that games are as powerful a storytelling medium as any other and should be treated as such, and that games should be emotionally engaging and challenging. We believe that games are art. We believe that games can have a soul. And it's our mission to find that soul."
That's a pretty powerful and ambitious mission statement, and one I respect them greatly for.

People are drawn to characters they can relate to, whether that's in a game, a movie, reality tv (hardly) or a book. When these characters actually make you feel for them and with them, the writer has succeeded in a task many struggle with. Although we might have fun playing games where we drive around in million dollar sports cars or cleverly flank an enemy outpost an catch them unawares, it's hard to imagine it being real. Most of us will never experience those things, but that's what is great about interactive media; it takes us to an alternate reality and we get to be someone else for a while. However, when a game manages to make you think the character you're playing might actually be you, it is truly special. April Ryan and Zoë Castillo, the main characters of The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, respectively, had an amazingly real quality about them. April, a young art student working as a waitress to pay the bills. Zoë, a university dropout with no sense of direction or purpose in life. Although their journeys through portals to another world filled with magic and strange creatures are a bit fantastical, there's always the authenticity of the characters to keep the player believing in the story.

The Longest Journey Home concept art

Being a new company with no reputation and limited funds available, Red Thread Games decided to look to crowdfunding to make Dreamfall Chapters. A whole lot of researching and studying other campaigns lead to RTG creating a very successful campaign of their own. Their target of raising $850,000 in a month was reached within a week, and as currently, with one week to go, over $1,150,000 has been pledged to the project. Every dollar over the target will now go to reach the stretch goals of the campaign, which entail anything from creating a bigger universe to German and French language support for the game. The more money they raise, the more stretch goals are revealed. On March 1, in an interview with Gamespot, Tørnquist unveiled the $2,000,000 stretch goal called The Longest Journey Home which is a separate game (in the same 2D, point-and-click style as the original TLJ) where April Ryan's story from the first game is finished. Although they're unlikely to reach two million dollars, it is wonderful news that they're even considering finishing April's story. In the interview with Gamestop, Tørnquist said that they will never give up on creating The Longest Journey Home, regardless of how much money is raised in this Kickstarter campaign, which is just awesome.

Hopefully they'll make as much money as possible so they can make the best game as possible. All the trailers and updates they've shared with the Kickstarter community look amazing and I'm so excited to see more of it.

If you want to help out, click here or below to make a pledge. Every little bit helps. (Project ends Sunday March 10, 7:04am EDT)