News

[earthboundtrev]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/we ... -hong-kong

The team that brought you the award-winning Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director’s Cut is back with an all new, full length standalone cyberpunk tactical cRPG set in Shadowrun's magically Awakened Hong Kong of 2056.

HONG KONG. A stable and prosperous port of call in a sea of chaos, warfare, and political turmoil. The Hong Kong Free Enterprise Zone is a land of contradictions - it is one of the most successful centers of business in the Sixth World, and home to one of the world’s most dangerous sprawl sites. A land of bright lights, gleaming towers, and restless spirits where life is cheap and everything is for sale.

The lure of a quick payday draws you from Seattle into the neon glow of Victoria Harbor… and into a corporate conspiracy nearly thirty years in the making. A terrifying threat looms on the horizon - a supernatural force that corrupts and consumes everything it touches. Dragged into the shadows of Kowloon City, you will need to forge new connections and gain "face" to survive.

Hong Kong contains fantastic elements for a new Shadowrun setting: an underworld of triads, tongs, and gangs to navigate, wild magic to harness, and bleeding edge cybertech to equip. Plus, Hong Kong’s culture is steeped in "guanxi" - a network of influence and relationships based upon a combination of social status, and prestige. All of these elements add up to a great new setting for running the shadows.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong has everything you expect from a Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun game: strong storytelling and sharp writing, lots of morally gray choices, a crew of memorable characters with distinct personalities, challenging tactical turn-based combat, a robust character creation system, and a one of a kind cyberpunk-meets-magic game setting that’s endured for over 25 years.

Our Backers voted for Hong Kong as the next city for us to bring to life and we’re excited to be working on it!

Your New Crew

Just as in Dragonfall, our Hong Kong story will feature a crew of flawed, dangerous runners with backstories that can only happen in the tech-meets-magic Shadowrun setting. (Check out the "Co-Funding Goals" Section below for another character we'd love to add!)

And, as introduced in Dragonfall, you'll be able to guide your crew's advancement by choosing special abilities on their Growth Tracks to complement the choices you make for your own character.

Gobbet is an ork street shaman and a follower of Rat. Her devotion to her totem has granted her unique abilities to control the battlefield, trapping her enemies behind barriers of coruscating magic and herding them with clouds of blistering poison.

Territoriality Track: Focuses on battlefield control by buffing Gobbet’s barrier spells (increasing damage, increasing the number of tiles affected) and planting AOE damage spells, such as Toxic Fog. She also gains the ability to destroy or consume summoned spirits, eliminating threats from enemy shamans.

Spiritualist Track: This track focuses on improving Gobbet’s control over summoned spirits. She can reduce the chance that they slip out of her control, and even seize control of hostile spirits summoned by her enemies. Progressing down this track turns Gobbet into a versatile and powerful summoner.

Wu is a veteran security expert with years of sprawl-site combat experience. He has the muscle and the weaponry to either beat his targets into submission or to break them outright, depending on the demands of the situation.

Crowd Control Track: Focuses on a variety of non-lethal attacks that inflict stun (-AP) effects. Progressing down this track unlocks a shock baton, tear gas grenades, and zip ties to subdue stunned enemies.

Lethal Force Track: Focuses on inflicting lethal ranged damage. Progressing down this track gives Wu attack abilities such as Mercy Kill, which does additional damage and has a higher to-hit percentage on targets who are close to death.

Is0bel is a dwarf decker with the tools and the expertise to clear her own way to a target mainframe. Trained for combat by a cabal of hacktivists, she’s as deadly in meat-space as she is in the Matrix.

Espionage Track: Increases Is0bel’s decking skills and her Mark Target ability. Progressing down this tree unlocks new custom programs/abilities for use in the Matrix, as well as custom Expert System Programs (ESPs).

Sabotage Track: Is0bel carries a sniper rifle for meat-space skirmishes. Her arsenal also includes proximity mines that she can use to create traps for her enemies. This track increases and adds to the effects caused by these weapons, unlocking higher-yield explosives and Flechettes that strip armor from enemies.

With your generous support, we're adding Racter to your crew!

Racter is a highly specialized roboticist-turned-rigger who fights with the aid of “Koschei,” his custom walker-form drone. He also carries an engineering toolkit that he can use to repair Koschei and enhance its abilities during combat.

Mangler Track: Makes Koschei into a melee-ranged wrecking machine. Progressing down this track unlocks movement boosts for the drone and bolts close combat weapons onto its chassis, such as rotary saws and clawed feet. These attachments unlock new close combat attacks for the drone.

Predator Track: Turns Koschei into a walking artillery piece. Progressing down this track bolts new ranged weapons to the drone, such as an auto-shotgun or a grenade launcher.

Any more crew members coming?

Could be...

Shadowrun: Hong Kong contains all the features of Shadowrun Returns and builds upon the engine and gameplay upgrades we added to Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut (including the ability to save your game anywhere).

A Classic, Story-Driven cRPG: The Shadowrun series hearkens back to the golden age of computer RPG’s with a novel-like branching narrative full of sharp prose and deep character development. Immerse yourself in a smart 12+ hour non-linear story with a diverse cast of all-too-(meta)human characters. (Some funding goals will add more hours of gameplay.)

A One-of-a-Kind Cyberpunk Setting: Experience the unique “Tech meets Magic” dystopian future of Shadowrun, a fan-favorite game setting that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Command Your Team: Lead a small team of shadowrunners - each with their own outlook, motivations, and backstory. The members of your team are designed to play contrasting roles during missions. Guide your team members as they progress in each of their unique roles, choosing between different focus options to grant them new items and abilities.

Gripping, Turn-Based Tactical Combat: When you’re running the shadows, every turn matters. Choose your actions wisely - move to better cover, charge into melee, or lob a fireball into a crowd of enemies. With over 200 weapons and spells at your disposal, every turn is filled with meaningful choices.

Skill-Based Character Progression: Choose a starting character archetype and build from there! Street Samurai and Physical Adepts use advanced combat skills to dominate the battlefield, Shamans and Mages summon powerful allies and cast deadly spells, while Riggers and Deckers provide critical technological support, projecting their consciousness directly into drones and computer systems. Shadowrun’s classless skill system allows you to grow your character in any direction you choose.

Powerful Game Editor: Create Your Own Stories! With the Shadowrun Editor, everyone is empowered to create and share their own stories and campaigns. No advanced coding or art skills are required to create content using the SRR Editor. Our new Hong Kong setting will add tons of new weapons, spells, characters along with oodles of new tiles to the long list of editor assets from Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut!

Soundtrack

The music for Shadowrun: Hong Kong will be composed by fan-favorite Jon Everist, composer of the award-winning Shadowrun: Dragonfall -Director's Cut. Here's an example of Jon's work:

PC Only Release

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is being developed for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems only. We have elected to focus all our efforts on PC in order to deliver the best game we can without the current processing and memory limitations of tablets. This focus allows us to have higher-fidelity visuals, larger map sizes, and more stuff on screen.

Because we want to do more.

We're totally committed to making Shadowrun: Hong Kong and we're already several months into development. The project is budgeted, fully staffed, and on-schedule for a mid-2015 release. We also have a story we're really excited about. At our current budget, it's going to be 12+ hours long and at the quality level of Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut.

But this is Harebrained Schemes and, as always, we have more ideas than we have budget.

That's where you come in.

By backing the project, you'll increase our production budget and get more features, more improvements, and more game. Take a look at the funding goals below to see all the stuff we want to add.

Now, we could always talk to traditional publishing partners, but we’re pretty independent-minded around here and we only want to serve one master - our audience.

We're gonna ship a great game and it can be even greater with your help. Our last adventure together was a blast and we think the results speak for themselves. So help co-fund our third Shadowrun game, Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and let's make the best Shadowrun game yet!

Here's an initial list of stuff we'd love to add to Shadowrun: Hong Kong. With your generous support, this list will continue to grow!

$100,000 - Enhanced Player Controls! In addition to all the new Tech, Magic, Weapons, Consumables, Creatures, and Enemies we're already planning, if we reach our initial funding goal, we’ll add a bunch of interface upgrades. These include the ability to decide which team member picks up an item in free-move mode, item swapping between party members, a player-initiated turn-mode toggle so you can position your team before you enter combat, and a spread-range indicator for shotguns and sweeping melee attacks.

$150,000 - Animatic Scene Transitions! These are short animated slide shows with voice narration that play at key points in the story - the opening, end of Act 1, end of Act 2, and at the end.

$200,000 - Racter joins your team of runners! Racter is a Russian rigger with a wry smile who relates better to his custom drone than he does to people. We'll tell you about Racter's unique gameplay abilities and player-influenced upgrade paths when we get closer to unlocking him.

$250,000 - More Animatic endings! If we hit this goal, we'll be able to create multiple animatic endings for the story to reflect the choices you make in the game.

$300,000 - Gobbet's personal side mission! Dive deep into the backstory of your team's resident Rat shaman. Gobbet's absurdist philosophy and impulsive nature have led her on a twisting path through life. In her personal mission, you'll get the chance to walk that path with her and see for yourself where Rat takes you.

???

We know from experience that fulfilling lots of physical rewards is a big, distracting, and expensive undertaking and we want your funding to go into making a quality game - not into shipping a bunch of tchotchkes. Remember, the people making your game are also the ones making and sending your stuff! So, we created a bunch of cool digital rewards and TWO sweet physical rewards. We hope you like them and we hope you support us.

All rewards starting at the Chummer ($15) level come with at least one copy of Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

Created over 25 years ago, Shadowrun remains one of the most original and cherished role-playing settings. The game world’s origin story mashes-up the dystopian Cyberpunk future of Blade Runner with the high fantasy creatures and races of The Lords of the Rings in an organic way that produces iconic characters, environments, and situations.

Here's how it works:

According to the Mayan Calendar (and lots of tabloids), the world should have ended on December 21, 2012. It’s part a 5,200 year cycle of death and rebirth that, in Shadowrun, actually charts the ebb and flow of magic from the Earth. So, on 12/21/12 magic returned to end our world, and wreak holy havoc while starting the next. Aboriginal cultures, who maintained their mystical traditions, are the first to feel the return of magic and use their newfound power to reshape the political, financial, and physical world around them. As the magic increases, Elf and Dwarf babies are born to very surprised parents who carry the right combination of long-dormant genes. But all of these events pale in comparison to the horror of "goblinization", which painfully reshapes the teenage bodies of those unlucky enough to carry dominant Ork or Troll genes. And then the first Great Dragon rises from its 5,200 yearlong hibernation and circles over Tokyo, signaling that the world has truly AWAKENED.

Fast forward two generations, to a world transformed not only by the growth of magic but by the acceleration of cyber technology—a continual effort to improve upon the gifts that nature gave humanity; by the inevitable maturation of the World Wide Web into the Matrix—a network directly accessible by the human brain; and by the near elimination of governments as they are replaced megacorporations—monolithic entities who see only customers, not citizens.

And moving through the dark shadows cast by the gleaming towers of the corps, are Shadowrunners – disposable assets and corporate pawns scratching out a living using a combination of technology, magic, and street smarts. Shadowrunners live between the cracks and operate outside the law, doing the dirty work that corporate wage-slaves won’t soil their hands with and occasionally acting as the only protection the citizenry can turn to.

Welcome to the world of Shadowrun, where man meets magic and machine.