Torment: Tides of Numenera Post-funding Update #32: New Website, Lore

A new post-funding update for Torment: Tides of Numenera has gone live. It includes quite a few interesting bits of lore, and the announcement of a revamp of the game’s website, which also includes a completely redesigned backing portal for the game which makes use of inXile points instead of dollars. My first impression is that it’s needlessly confusing, but inXile cites the possibility of giving its points additional points for activities that don’t fall under the spending umbrella:

More generally, the new backer system means you will now be able to manage your pledge in great detail. We have changed our system into one that tracks your contributions as inXile Points (XP or just Points). The more Points you have, the higher your Level within our system; the higher your Level, the more possible Rewards are available that you can buy with Points. As an existing backer, you will start with 100 Points for every $1 you donated, with your reward choice matched to the one closest to your total pledge. That is, each $.01 USD = 1 Point.

This may sound a little daunting at first but it does not impact the value or rewards of your pledge in any way. You will get the rewards that you pledged for during the Kickstarter campaign; the value of your pledge is unchanged.

What this system does is give us the ability to reward our backers for activities other than (or in addition to) pledging money, though we’re not using this capability yet. Currently, the concept of Level is only used to gate rewards that already had prerequisites (e.g., certain add-ons were restricted to certain Tiers). If, in managing your pledge, you find anything inaccurate about it, please contact our customer support and we’ll figure out what’s amiss and fix it for you. Again, if anything you see doesn’t match what we said during the Kickstarter, it is simply a mistake tell us and we will fix it.

Speaking of which, if you’re a backer and put some money down to get an add-on, you should select it from the backer portal quickly, as the deadline falls on October 16th.

I’d also be remiss not to mention that this is also the deadline for a new stretch goal for the project. In case $4.75m of total funding are reached before October 16th, the Torment team will commit to introduce another Bloom area in the game, called the Gullet:

Deep in the guts of the Bloom is a jumble of fleshy veins and cavities, known to natives as the Gullet. It surrounds a foul organic stew, containing the minds and memories of those devoured by the Bloom. The pulsing of a titanic heart reverberates from somewhere below. if you find yourself trapped here, the sound will drive you mad.

Few reach this place by intention. Most are eaten by a Maw and emerge in the Gullet, half-digested, to spend the final days of their lives in screaming agony. Transdimensional echoes of the Bloom’s victims wander through the tunnels, lost and insane. Bizarre creatures, bred by the Bloom in its guts, burst from their wombs to hunt. Forgotten machines and artifacts lie half-submerged in Bloom-flesh, plucked from distant worlds of the past or future.

The only way out of the Gullet is down. to follow the sounds of the Bloom’s beating heart and descend to a place where the Bloom’s consciousness is at its most malignant and aware.

This area would add a ton to the Bloom, particularly as it provides more adventure-type gameplay and will better balance out its pacing. But currently we think we’re already stretching our team with the areas we’ve already committed to. With our limited stretch goals, we’ll be looking to raise enough money to commit to adding the Gullet to the Bloom, by bolstering our environment art team to both make the Gullet and to benefit all other locations as well remember that all pledges support the game development and reaching the Stretch Goal in reality gives far more than just the Gullet.

There’s more in the full update, including an interesting summary of a conflict embedded into the game’s lore, called the Endless Battle, but this should cover everything strictly newsworthy.