Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness Updates, $92,393 and Counting

Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness has five days left in its Kickstarter campaign, with most of its stretch goals already achieved. With $92,393 already pledged, the final goal is still locked behind a fairly reachable target of roughly $117k, and will add a new area and spellcaster class to the game if reached.

Several new campaign updates have gone up over the last few days. Update #11 announced social stretch goals promising party romances, pets, and a blacksmith NPC. Update #12 informed us the first two of those social goals have been reached. Update #13 talked a bit about the game’s unique greed mechanics. And Update #14 announced a new social stretch goal, a Mystic NPC. Most of the updates were fairly short, but here’s an excerpt from Update #13:

Fear is the obvious path into darkness, greed is the hidden path

In the Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness backstory, spreading greed is a new plot by dark gods to infiltrate, turn, and eventually wipe the world of mortals. Mortals have learned to cope with fear and evil, but have not learned to face their own weaknesses such as envy or greed. While fear from an external force makes people stick together, envy and greed silently divide and turn them against each other.

Greed is deeply rooted in the game lore, and is very special because it has a dual nature: it has a divine origin, but relies and feasts on the very nature of mortal beings. It exploits something that every mortal has had since their creation. It confronts us with our own dark side that has always existed, turning it against us. Mortals turned by greed become connected to the divine source (divine nature) of the curse, increasing its global strength. This corrupts even more mortals, resulting in a cycle of feedback to the evil divine source.

Greed does not mean you are evil

Being greedy does not mean you are evil, and you can be evil without being greedy.

NPCs affected by greed are not necessarily evil. If they hire you for a quest to retrieve an item because of their obsession and you complete the quest, you were good but contributed to the divine curse of greed, eventually making the kingdom even more chaotic. If you complete the quest but keep the item for yourself and even kill the innocent NPCs who hired you, you were evil and greedy. If you persuade them to change their mind about the quest in a branching dialogue, you were good and also fought against greed. And so on and so forth.

When you choose to be more generous and convince other NPCs (influencers) to do the same, then you attempt to break the feedback cycle to the evil divine source. While there is no way to break it completely, you can slow down the process, resulting in a “better”, different state of the world by the time you reach the last chapter of the game. And different state means different challenges and adventures.