A new trailer has been released for Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey, a sequel to acclaimed adventure games Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and The Longest Journey. After having developed the first two games with Funcom, the series creator Ragnar Tørnquist founded independent studio Red Thread Games to finish The Longest Journey series with much of the original staff in place.
Without the support of a publisher to finance their project, the upcoming adventure game is in the final days of a very successful Kickstarter campaign that has reached upwards of one million dollars. Like many other video game-based campaigns on the crowd funding website, the project has included stretch goals past their initial target of $850,000. These funding achievements have committed the developer to offering Mac and Linux versions of the game, extra in-game content, and an interactive graphic novel to recap the story of the series thus far. As of this writing the campaign has just exceeded the $1,150,000 threshold which offers an improved soundtrack and in-game gallery. Stretch goals that have still yet to be reached include German and French translations with extra voice-overs, a mysteriously unannounced $1,500,000 target, and the final target of two million dollars to begin pre-production on The Longest Journey Home, a new game which would bring the series to its roots and conclude the story for the entire series that began with The Longest Journey. While there are only five days left of the Kickstarter campaign to almost double its current funding, Red Thread Games has said they will continue to aim for these goals through pledges on PayPal.
While Tørnquist’s dream of the “modern adventure” to bring the genre to the forefront of mainstream gaming culture was never quite realized, games such as Dreamfall Chapters are seeing a revival in the independent community as funding through individuals online has replaced the need for more business-minded publishers. It’s a very promising omen that respected designers such as Tørnquist, who has previously been busy with MMO The Secret World, see the potential of such opportunities. With the future possibility of The Longest Journey Home returning the series to 2D point-and-click adventure gameplay and concluding a storyline over a decade in the making, the integrity of such independent games has taken priority over being presented as mainstream. Still with a long way to go, Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey is slated for release in November 2014 on PC, Linux, and Mac, but you can vote for it now on Steam Greenlight.
