Andromeda Acolytes Discord server and competitions

Playing Project Announcements
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The interminable road to the Andromeda Acolytes Kickstarter has become less interminable!

  • Today I opened the Discord server (Invite link: Andromeda Acolytes)
  • Between July 30 and August 2 I will run the Steam closed beta
  • On August 3 I begin the Kickstarter

On the Discord I’m hosting three weeks of text-adventuring competitions with Steam and itch prizes. Any and all humans are welcome and encouraged to join by logging on and joining a team – MC, Remotes or Phadra. Those who join can also get a key to the beta test. The server doubles as a text adventure boot camp, but with more fun and prizes and less hazing. Therefore, pre-familiarity with text adventures is not a prerequisite. Just a desire to adventure and try something new.

In this details section I’ll paste my press release so you can see how I’m presenting this to the non-IF world.

Summary

Sydney, Australia – July 11, 2022 – Heiress Software today announced that their upcoming sci-fi text adventure Andromeda Acolytes for PC, Mac and Linux, is going to a Steam beta test and then Kickstarter via a series of Discord competitions.

The Andromeda Acolytes Discord server is hosting three weeks of newbie-welcoming text-adventuring challenges across several games, with Steam and itch-io prizes up for grabs – all adventure, RPG or interactive fiction titles. Everyone in the Discord can collect a Steam key for the four-day Andromeda Acolytes closed beta, which will be followed immediately by the Kickstarter.

Wade Clarke of Heiress Software said he hopes to see lots of gamers who know nothing about text adventures showing up on the Discord. “Like with any genre of game, you first have to learn how to play it,” Wade explained. “I’ve set up varied and graduated competitions to make this fun and easy. In the 1980s, all computer gamers knew how to play text adventures. Once the genre stopped being a big commercial concern, that common knowledge faded, but the games never stopped evolving. If I want a wide base of testers and backers for Andromeda Acolytes, I need to build the skills of potential players. I hope a side effect is that they might get into the wider universe of interactive fiction.”

Join the comp action and sign up for the beta test by hopping onto the Discord server and picking a team – MC, Remotes or Phadra.

Wade’s video (visible in the Discord) demonstrating the Andromeda Acolytes Discord and how to play in the competitions can be viewed at this link: [Andromeda Acolytes Discord Introduction – How to play the competition games - YouTube]

About Andromeda Acolytes

In the Andromeda galaxy, humanity doesn’t know why it is on the planet Monarch or how it got there. When an underwater accident in Monarch Harbour awakens a strange power, four very different women are drawn into each other’s orbit, and into a race towards the mysteries of Monarch’s origins. Players take the role of all four heroines as they negotiate underwater mechs, AIs, abandoned cities, crime, friendship, suspense, horror, humour, an art exhibition, virtual realities and a tank. This is a prose gaming experience offering all the inner-world power of a novel plus the fine-grained world and puzzle engagement of gaming. The only graphics are in the automap.

Links & Media

Steam:
Andromeda Acolytes on Steam

Kickstarter pre-launch page:
Andromeda Acolytes. A State-of-the-Art Sci-fi Text Adventure by Wade Clarke — Kickstarter

Discord:
Andromeda Acolytes

Press Kit:
Andromeda Acolytes Press Kit

Media Contact:
Contact Wade at wade@heiresssoftware.com

To see some familiar faces on the server would be a treat. And probably a relief, too!

–For you social media folk, it will be a great help if you tell people in all relevant places about the Discord drive.

I am barely a Twitterer, but if you go to my Twitter page, the most recent Tweet can be retweeted/reframed:
https://twitter.com/aeriae

Or you can link Heiress Software, which has the plug on the landing page:

Or there is a reddit post in r/adventuregames:

Thanks,

-Wade

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This is an interesting idea and I wish you all the best with it. I have some questions, though.

  • How will you promote this to get adventure newbies to find it in the first place?

  • It sounds like there will be multiple competitions on the Discord. How many? Will they all be well-known text adventures or will you throw other forms into the mix?

  • When you “get a key to the beta test”, what exactly does that mean? Do you expect those people to beta test the game (that could be a lot of testers) or do you mean that they get early access to a beta version of the game? And what is the game that they get access to?

  • I don’t get the timeline. There is a Discord server running competitions, presumably to encourage people to ‘buy in’ to the ‘Andromeda Acolytes’ game. Then they get a beta, then you start a kickstarter. I would have thought that the kickstarter comes before the beta. Or do you already have a beta and the kickstarter is to fund further development? I just find the promotion and commercial side of this a bit confusing.

  • Is Andromeda Acolytes in the Andromeda series?

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Hey Garry,

I started with Reddit posts and press releases. Though the press release didn’t come out today, so I’ve written Games Press to find out what happened. I researched 20+ relevant-looking subreddits and ended up posting in seven that remained relevant and whose rules I won’t break by posting. For instance, I’m looking variously to indie gamers, adventure gamers, and people who like free stuff. Each kind of subreddit has restrictions. Some won’t accept betas. Some won’t accept any self-promotion. etc. I’ve also contacted some other sites, plus posted the kind of thing you’re reading here.

This is all answered in the Discord in extreme detail. But in short, four parser adventures, three reasonably well known in local circles, one completely unknown. Two with scoring, two without. I don’t reveal what each game is until its competition starts.

A Steam key, necessary to play the beta test of Andromeda Acolytes on Steam when the beta test is on. This is not a beta test with a primary motive of me finding lots of bugs in part of the game, though finding some rarer ones would be a happy side-effect.

If this was a game in a more popular genre, early access via beta is a bigger carrot in itself. Here it’s combined with other carrots.

Yes, I have a beta. The game is projected to be very big. The Kickstarter is to fund me to make it. Those details are explained in/on the Kickstarter video/page (which can’t be public 'til the launch).

-Wade

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Oh yeah, and

It is.

-Wade

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Just joined up as a remoter on the Discord.

Time…

1 Like