Forum Overview :: Reviews :: There is the opposite extreme.

[quote name="Mischief Shmup Enthusiast"]I've been following the development blog for <A HREF="http://blog.wolfire.com/" TARGET="new">Overgrowth</A>, the sequel to Lugaru, for a while now. The developers opened preorders very early and every week release a new incremental alpha to preorder customers. Instead of going deep into debt and racing toward a release-day cash influx, Wolfire is subsisting on a steady trickle of preorder cash. This situation has allowed them a George Lucas-like freedom to truly release their masterpiece "when it's done." Lugaru, you may recall, is a game about kung-fu rabbits. I've read the blog off and on and while I would count myself as eagerly awaiting the game, sometimes the alpha videos drive me insane because the developers are faffing around with pointless details that will have a barely-noticeable effect on the final product's gameplay; like corpse-dragging ragdoll physics that accurately render the effect of soft tissue mass. There is no way this game is going to be finished by Christmas, they only have one enemy type in a partially-complete state at this point. It reminds me of that boring cutscene in Bayonetta where some some guy is making some boring speech and at one point absentmindedly spins this complex gyroscope whirlygig thing in his room. I find myself thinking about the man-hours required to design and texture and physically render this meaningless piece of set dressing that has nothing to do with the gameplay itself and will only be remembered by people it annoyed. The fiasco of Sword of the Stars 2 running out of money is indeed a tragedy, but sometimes it's good to have a release date lighting a fire under developers' asses so they don't spend all day working on a way to accurately render the degrading sheen of drying <strike>paint</strike> blood[/quote]