Sometime in the next 72 hours, unless something unforeseen slows us down, we’ll pull the trigger on a small kickstarter campaign.
The immediate goal, and the actual deliverable, is something we’re calling AbbeyCraft – a build of Redwall Abbey inside Minecraft and, at the lowest funding goal, distributed as an adventure map.
To be crystal clear: AbbeyCraft is NOT the adventure game we’ve been talking about. It’s just a small step along the way…but a way fun one.
As we mentioned in the previous post, the various descriptions of the abbey across 22 books cannot be reconciled in 3D space. One way or the other a few tweaks, bumps, and cuts will need to be made as we ramp up for an explorable space and we feel like Minecraft is an ideal tool for that work.
But more than just a middle-ware tool, we came to realize something that Minecraft and Redwall had in common – demographics.
We love video games – we really, really do.
But it would be foolish to loose sight of the fact that Redwall is first and foremost a series of books. The experience isn’t only a story, it’s a well-written story and Brian Jacques wielded his pen with mad ninja skills.
So what if we could let a bunch of Minecraft junkies, who may not have ever heard of Redwall, get introduced to a whole world that they are bound to love in Redwall? What if we could introduce a bunch of bookworms to the open world of Minecraft and video games in general? It’d be like one of those old-school Reeses commercials!
But Wait! There’s More!
Something else we realized about a Miecraft game, and more specifically a Redwall Minecraft server, was the opportunity to create a custom, and reasonably limited, channel by which we could easily communicate with the people most interested in the larger project, and in a way that reflected the ethos of both worlds. Inside a Minecraft server we will seed hints and clues, we’ll leak assets and announcements, and we’ll have the chance to solicit input from the hard-core fans who make the bridge between both worlds. It’ll be awesome!
A Note on Stretch Goals
We hope it’ll be obvious that the $11k Kickstarter will not be a budget reflective of the adventure game – this is just for a mean-time middleware project and frankly to gather some eyeballs.
That said, there is the outside chance that we’ll blow way past our goal and overfund by some ridonculous level. That kind of thing would undoubtedly make our jobs easier, save us a bunch of time, and insulate us from having to make unwelcome concessions to unreasonable publishers. The idea of raising 7 figures on Kickstarter is in no way out of the question, just ask Veronica Mars, but we always knew it’d be a longshot.
And yet…
I’ve been totally blown away by the level of engagement coming from the Redwall fan base. You people are awesome! So I can’t help but feel like if any group could make a long shot it’d be the men and women of this tribe so we may all just be surprised.
So when we hit our initial goal, don’t slow down. Redwallers can beat out Marsmellows any day of the week!
When will game production star and hopefully endt? And is the minecraft server going to be a roleplay or mmo rpg experience?
-Blaggut from The Redwall Forums
Hi Napoleon – production of The Warrior Reborn has already begun (a while back in fact) but we haven;’t released any dates for shipping it. We want to make sure we get it right and at the moment it’s more important that we don’t make any promises that we may not be able to keep.
As for AbbeyCraft, if we had our druthers one or more people in the fan community would take a degree of real ownership in the server to really flesh it out and moderate it. We could do that ourselves …but frankly we’re not the power-minecraft-users that kind of gig really deserves.
They are making Redwall Minecraft for now, then they are making the game.
How do you get involved in this? I just found the game yesterday and I’ve been looking for how to get involved. I’m willing to spend some money to help the game! If someone could point me in the right direction, that’d be awesome!
Hi @Adam – “get involved” is a broad target. 🙂
I suspect one or the other of these two links will give you what you’re after but if you had something bigger in mind, feel free to write.
Minecraft? Are you kidding?
I’m a backer, & was looking fwd to seeing what AbbeyCraft is all about. BUT, now do I have to buy Minecraft first???
Hi Michael,
Yes, owning a copy of the Minecraft client software is a pre-requisite for playing either the upcoming adventure map and to play on the server.
Are you guys partnered at all with the Miller Brothers and their Redwall movie project, or are you both completely separate groups working toward completely different ends?
Hi K, yes we’re working with The Miller Brothers on this. I met Chris several years ago and we’ve been looking for a chance to work on something together…this seems to be the right one.
From what I’ve gathered, Minecraft is being used to make a 3D model of the Abby so they can have an easier time making it in the real Redwall game later. Also:
“Something else we realized”…”was the opportunity to create a custom, and reasonably limited, channel by which we could easily communicate with the people most interested in the larger project,” …. “we’ll leak assets and announcements, and we’ll have the chance to solicit input from the hard-core fans who make the bridge between both worlds.”
It isn’t gonna be a Minecraft game: they’re going to make the Abby on a server so they know what they’re programming in the actual game, and they’re gonna use the server as a platform to give more information to us fans
Wait, wait, wait….is this going to be a minecraft redwall game??? Unless the RW Minecraft game is what you are meaning here: “this is just for a mean-time middle ware project and frankly to gather some eyeballs.” Because if this whole game is just going to be a minecraft game, well…..that would stink really bad. Just saying.