It’s been a while since we updated the website, so we just wanted to bring you all up to speed with where we are.

The failure of the Kickstarter campaign turned out to have several positives. It greatly raised awareness of our project, and in particular brought us to the attention of Oxford University Innovation, a start-up incubator programme owned by the university.

OUI have provided us extensive support to help us raise the finance we need to progress the project further. After several months’ work with them, we are now actively pitching for investment, and hope to have good news for you very soon.

We’ll also be pushing some of the work we’ve been doing to the website, so you’ll get to see the latest branding and concept art we’ve developed.

Watch this space for new updates very soon!

The immediate aftermath of the Kickstarter was a strange sense of calm. Succeed or fail, it is a relief once the worry and uncertainty are over.

In the aftermath, we’ve been looking back at what went right and what went wrong, and planning what we do next. These are our current thoughts.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Launching the Kickstarter campaign at all was in itself a success.

All year, our focus has been getting our Kickstarter campaign out, as this January dev blog shows.

Despite a false start, we got there in the end, and it was a great satisfaction pressing the button that launched our month-long campaign.

Lots of cool things happened during that month. Kickstarter acclaimed us as a “Project We Love”. Richard Garriott, one of our game design heroes, publicly backed our campaign. The feedback we received from other backers was overwhelmingly positive too.

We put ourselves in the shop window, had our vision validated, and connected with lots of really cool people. There are still plenty of reasons to feel optimistic we can make this project happen.

WHAT WENT WRONG

As it was our first campaign, there were a fair few “Kickstarter noob” errors which caught us unawares. There was a last minute scramble to find the launch button (only the Kickstarter owner sees this), an issue with getting analytics IDs working ( another owner issue, our thanks to Kickstarter’s Anya Combs for helping us resolve it), and our Planetary Saviour plan was weakened when we hit an unexpected limit on reward size (£8k, rather than the £50k we wanted).

Our funding goal was pretty high compared to other campaigns, despite being an accurate reflection of the minimum funds we needed.

Likewise, our campaign was quite light in terms of artwork and gameplay. Kickstarter has become a place where nearly-finished games go for polishing and awareness. For us, looking to raise funds to start development proper, it was hard to compete.

It’s also become increasingly hard in recent years to fund video games on Kickstarter. This article here gives an excellent insight into how the platform is changing.

We’re not ruling out returning to Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform in future, but for now we’ll be focusing on other routes forward.

WHAT WE DO NEXT

We cannot take this project forward without investment. We need more people, and more time, if we’re to build the unique and valuable game we envisage.

Our next port of call will be traditional investors. We’re sure that there are people out there who would be prepared to take a stake in the project; we just need to find them.

The work we’ve done for Kickstarter shares many similarities to what investors expect to see, and right now we’re pulling together a presentation to share with interested parties.

We have a shortlist of people to contact; if you know anyone you think might also be interested, please drop us a line at info@soothsayergames.com

The curtain has just dropped on our Kickstarter campaign, and sadly we did not hit our goal. The next couple of weeks, we’ll be analysing where we went wrong, and planning what we to do next.

Meanwhile, we want to thank all those whose pledges supported us and made us feel this project is worthwhile.

As a mark of our appreciation, we’d like to offer all pledgers a Steam key for Fate of the World: Tipping Point, and inclusion in the game credits should we find another way to bring the sequel to completion.

To participate, we invite you to message us in Kickstarter from your pledging account, giving us your email address and your name as it should appear in the credits.

We will also use these details to keep you up to date with any further project developments.

Once again, we offer our deepest thanks to all of you who have pledged, shared posts, made introductions, offered advice, and given compliments. You have helped us build a great awareness of the project, and inspired its progress.

Matt and Klaude

Soothsayer Games

There’s just over 12 hours until the end of our Kickstarter campaign, and though the odds of success look slim, we remain optimistic.

Our original climate change game, Fate of the World, reached hundreds of thousands of people. We aim to make a sequel that is more widely accessible, digs deeper and deals with new facets of climate change, and can reach millions of people.

Alongside our Kickstarter we have been pursuing other routes to funding, and want to stress that every pledge counts! Even if we do not reach our target, it helps build confidence in the project – both for the team working on it, and any future collaborators or investors.

To visit the Kickstarter page, click here.

Please share and pledge, and whatever happens, get active about climate change

If there’s anything you’d like to discuss with us, you can always find us on Twitter at @fateoftheworld, on Facebook, or join the discussion in our  FOTW Online Facebook Group.

Once the dust settles, we’ll be back with a full report on our past experiences and recent plans.

Until then, thanks for your support!

Klaude and Matt

Soothsayer Games

There’s less than three days now until our Kickstarter ends, and we’re doing everything we can in that time to make it a success.

We’re spreading awareness of the game as far wide as we can… which is why’re making the original game as affordable as possible in the upcoming Halloween sale on Steam.

Fate of the World will be 90% off all versions for the duration of the Steam sale. If you or your friends have the game on your wishlists, now’s the time to buy it!

Try it, and if you like it come and make a pledge on our Kickstarter to make the sequel happen

We want as many people as possible to try the game out before our Kickstarter ends in 72 hours’ time. It will only take around a thousand people wanting to see our next geopolitical survival indie game to make this project happen.

Anything you can do to build awareness and support in that time will be of huge value. There’s nothing more we want to do than make Fate of the World Online a positive contribution to the climate change discussion.

We’re now 48 hours into our Kickstarter campaign. If you haven’t seen the page yet, you can click here to visit it.

Early signs have been good: we’re a whisker away from being 5% funded at the time of writing. We’ve also been selected by Kickstarter themselves as a “Project We Love”, which is really positive news.

There’s still a long way to go, though, and we’ll need every bit of help and support we can get to succeed in our goals.

Backing us with a pledge is of course the most direct way to support us, but just as valuable is helping us to spread awareness of the game and the campaign.

Every share, mention, like, retweet, and compliment helps us build confidence and momentum in our campaign, and will allow us to deliver you a truly special game about climate change and its impact on humanity.

There are 31 more days before our campaign ends, and we’ll be working hard on every single one of them to ensure we succeed.

Any thoughts, tips, or insights you have to share with us during that time will be gratefully received.

Feel free to contact us at info@soothsayergames.com, or come find us on social media: we’re active on Twitter, Facebook, and our Discussion Group.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Klaude and Matt

Soothsayer Games

It’s just over a week until our Kickstarter campaign launches, and the excitement at Soothsayer is mounting.

Most of the necessary work is already complete, but there are still a few campaign materials that need finalising… not to mention a very long list of PR and administrative tasks to be done. Overall, though, the mood is positive and optimistic, and we can’t wait to get going.

In the meantime, we thought we’d take a quick break to share with you something rather special: the first view of our Climate Conference mini-game, which is the main new game feature we’re adding to FOTWO.

As with our previous reveals, we stress that we’re showing you the first-pass working version; many improvements are planned once the Kickstarter has finished. This is the worst it will ever look.

But, with that said: behold the Conference Screen!

There’s quite a lot of different things going on here, so we’ll break it down piece-by-piece for you.

First of all, you’ll notice that the screen-bordering Arch element we talked about last week is still very much present. It’s designed to be a constant reminder to you of Earth’s atmospheric situation, and what you’ve pledged to do about it.

Beneath that is the current conference name, and where it is located. For now, all the conferences represent the UNFCCC Conference of Parties, but we’re also exploring using this mechanic to handle other types of diplomatic function as well.

Each conference has a specific location and date; in the current game cycle, these occur every five years (i.e. once every five game turns).

Each conference has a set number of agenda points to discuss: players can vote on the issues they want raised as a side-task in the normal game turn. These agenda points are listed in the bar on the left-hand side of the screen.

Each agenda point must be discussed and voted on by the conference attendees within a set number of rounds. For a motion to pass, a quorum of votes must be achieved – usually, unanimous consent is required.

Attendees discuss the motion using what we call the “argument panel”, which lives at the bottom of the screen. It represents the current wording of the motion, and can have one or more clauses which can be amended by attendees. In the example below, we see that the motion is to agree a maximum global temperature raise, much like that agreed in Paris in 2015.

Clearly, though, this is not to the liking of the active player, and they are considering changing it. Going down to 1.5 degrees would be an ambitious target, but one which requires much more stringent emissions limits… is this a motion that the group could accept? Or would they rather risk the health of the atmosphere over that of their economy?

Maybe your fellow leaders might be persuaded if you were to put some cash on the table. The “add” and “deduct” buttons allow you to offer aid to other attendees. They can also be used to request a donation, if you find other players’ proposals rather unenticing.

Every time the terms of the deal are changed, all participants gets to vote on the new wording. The active player is indicated by a red marker (seen above in an early state: it’s intended to have a timer incorporated, showing how long you have before you automatically pass the round to the next player).

As you see, we currently plan on 7 attendees. Of these, the first five from left to right are intended to be the “Player” characters , while the Umbrella group and the G-77 are voting blocs that together account for all the other countries in the world.

The remaining elements are the basic game controls: the Commit button transmits your proposal to the rest of the table, while the Home button allows you to visit your domestic interface if you need to check up on any information.

Finally, there is the chat/log window, which records a full event history of the proceedings, as well as being the place you can text chat with other players.

Overall, our goal was to build a tool that could handle multiple-party diplomacy in a way that permitted complex negotiations, but was also swift to resolve. So far, we’re pretty pleased with how it’s worked out.

With that all said, it’s time for us to get back to our Kickstarter duties, to make sure as many people as possible know it’s happening.

Similarly, if there’s anyone you know who you think might be interested in what we’re doing, please do let them know what our plans are: to create a game that’s the most effective and enjoyable way to understand climate change.

We’ll be back with another dev blog later on in the week, where we’ll be showing you some of the work we’ve been doing on the Event screen. In the meantime, you can always find us on Twitter at @fateoftheworld, or join the discussion in our  FOTW Online Facebook Group.

Oh, and remember: newsletter subscribers always get the reveals first, so be sure to sign up if you haven’t already – just use the widget on the right of this screen.

Thanks for reading!

Klaude & Matt,

Soothsayer Games.

This dev blog, the big news is that our revised Kickstarter campaign will be going live on the 26th September 2017.

This is just over two weeks away, and we’ll be revealing more and more of our plans as we get closer to the start date.

As we revealed on Facebook earlier this week, we’re aiming to raise a minimum of £60,000. This will be sufficient to create the first playable version of the game, which is the first step on our journey to make the best game ever made about climate change.

Once the campaign goes live, we’ll only have four weeks to hit our funding target…. so your support during that time will be critical to our success.

Backing the Kickstarter personally is the obvious way to help us – whatever size donation you can make is greatly appreciated, and we have a host of different rewards to show you our gratitude.

Beyond that, anything you can do to make people aware of our campaign is extremely helpful. Retweeting or sharing links to the Kickstarter page, or mentioning the campaign to someone you think might be interested, will all greatly assist us reaching our funding goal, and continuing development.

It’s a really exciting time for everyone at Soothsayer, the culmination of over two years’ hard work, and hopefully the start of a completely new phase for the Fate of the World project.

Also this dev blog, we’re revealing the first full screenshot from Fate of the World.

As we’ve said before, this is all work-in-progress, there are lots of placeholders, and the worst it’s ever going to look…. but with that said, here’s what the game’s main display is currently looking like:

The goal of this screen is bring all the most important information about your nation into one place, so you can quickly assess and compare its economic, environmental, industrial, technological, and political situations.

Let’s take a closer look at the Main Dashboard’s component parts. First of all, there’s the element we call the Arch:

The Arch is intended to be a near-constant element, always reminding you of the global atmospheric situation.

The two vertical bars are the “thermometers”, showing atmospheric parts per million of CO2E on the left, and average global temperature on the right. They’re much like the ones seen in the End of Turn screen

The marks you can see on each bar are the goals you’ve pledged to observe, with their numerical value displayed on the horizontal bar above. Here, we see that the USA has joined a pledge to achieve no greater than a 2 degree temperature increase, which requires global emissions not exceed 510 gigatons.

Below the arch, there are six panels, each summarising a specific topic of national interest:

Each of these panels is buttonised, meaning that you can tap/click on them to reveal a sub-screen where the summarised information is broken out into full detail.

The top panel shows your core game stats: what nation you’re playing; how polically stable it is (your game ends if your nation ceases to function as such); whether your populace are more politically motivated by the economy or the environment; how much money you’ve got to spend on your initiatives; the maximum emissions level you’ve pledged to observe; and a score reflecting how well you’re playing.

Below that is the Economic panel, while to the right is the Demographic. Both of those we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, and on the dev blog here and here.

Bottom left is the Environmental panel, showing you the most important ecological metrics. How abundant and healthy wildlife is in your country and its surrounding waters; how stressed your fresh water cycle is; how much viable land there is for farming or reforestation; and how many waste products your economy is releasing into it.

On the right of the screen, we’ve already talked about the Fuel Use panel here. Beside it is the Technology panel, which shows your nation’s relative sophistication in five areas of science.

Finally, at the bottom of the screen are the game controls:

The “Back” button is used to bring you out of the various sub-screens, while End Turn commits your current policies for play, advancing the game one year.

Between those controls are the Policy buttons. Each one brings up a specific menu of policy cards to address a particular area of government.

The colour scheme is very similar to the original FOTW deck colours: yellow is energy/industry, green is environmental, red is public welfare. There’s also a completely new deck: gold cards will focus specifically on policies affecting wealth and finance.

That’s about all we have for you right now, but we’ll be back with another newsletter next week. Meanwhile, if you want to keep tabs on what we’re at, come find us on Twitter at @fateoftheworld, or join the discussion in our  FOTW Online Facebook Group.

Hope to see you there!

Klaude & Matt,

Soothsayer Games.

This dev blog, we’re sharing the latest batch of screenshots from the new game, following the first reveal back in August.

These screenshots all featured first in our newsletter, which went out last Friday – so if you want to be at the front of the queue for the latest FOTWO news, be sure to sign up using the red widget on the right.

As we’ve mentioned before, what we’re showing right now is very much “first working version” – there’s a lot more work to be done and improvements to be made.

To do all the things we want, though, we’re going to need help – why is why we’ll be launching our Kickstarter campaign very soon!

Back to today’s business: the first element we’re showing today is what we call Fuel Use. It shows you all your nation’s fossil fuel needs aggregated together, in both numerical and bar chart form.

As with the Economy panel, it gives you an at-a-glance understanding of the situation, allowing you to plan your environmental and economic strategies accordingly.

The Fuel Use panel underwent a very interesting change this week. Until a couple of days ago, it looked like this:

You’ll notice that the name was different (Energy Mix), as were the energy generated, and the proportional mix was very different. Why was this?

The fact is, this panel used to show just electricity generation, hence the different name. The USA (whose game data this is) generates only a very tiny amount of electricity using oil, with the bulk coming from natural gas and coal. Transportation, however, uses pretty much nothing but oil – and these stats were being recorded elsewhere. The reason? It’s the way we did things last time round, as this screenshot of the old game shows:

Looking at the energy stats, you would never think that oil consumption was the biggest fossil fuel issue. By including transport uses in the Fuel Use panel, it becomes very clear where the issues lie, and which fossil fuel usages need addressing most urgently.

Moving on, the next screenshot is of the Demographics panel, which is all about the people who live in your nation.

The Population number is self-explanatory, while the row of meeples (stick men) gives you a proportional breakdown of your society by activity.

White meeples are your Dependent population (the old, the young, the sick) who rely on the support of others.

The blue meeples are people who work in the Public Sector, black meeples are people working in the Private Sector, and purple meeples are unemployed people of workforce age.

We anticipate all of these things being of great significance in the years ahead, especially as robots, AIs, and automation enter the workplace.

Moving onto the second row, HDI (Human Development Index) featured in the last game, and is a reflection of your nation’s health, education, and welfare systems.

The GINI co-efficient is reflection of how equal or unequal the distribution of wealth is in your nation. 1 is the maximum value (total inequality), so 0.81 is pretty high here.

The line of dollar icons gives a visual representation of why this is. The black dollars represent the wealth of the richest 10% of your citizens. The white dollars (barely visible at the left-hand edge) represent the poorest 50%. The blue dollars are the middle 40%. Scarily, these proportions are very close to real life.

In terms of appearance, there’s still a lot to be done. The icons are very much first pass, as is the colour scheme – but overall we think the panel is doing a good job of showing a lot of very relevant information in a clear and understandable manner.

That’s about all we have time for now. We’ll be back next week with another newsletter, where the remaining elements of the Main Dashboard will be revealed.

In the meantime, you can join in the design conversations taking place on our FOTW Online Facebook Group, or let us know what you think on Twitter at @fateoftheworld

Hope to see you there!

Klaude & Matt,

Soothsayer Games.

At the time of writing, we’re watching distressing scenes coming in from Houston. Hurricane Harvey has brought over four feet of rainfall (1.2 metres) to America’s fourth-largest city, causing extensive floods that have already killed at least one person, and rendered thousands more homeless.

Already it is the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Texas, with reports that it could get even worse, should the storm return again.

Was global warming implicated in the severity of this disaster? Climate scientist Michael Mann certainly thinks so, and explains why in detail here.

All the science suggests that incidents like this are going to become more common, and more severe, as the climate of our planet heats up. The conditions humanity has grown accustomed to for thousands of years will see dramatic change, and may never return to their original state.

It’s this knowledge which keeps us working away on the sequel, as we try to comprehend all the complexities of this situation, and then model them in a way that makes them easily understandable to a wide audience. These matters are so important to all of humanity, it’s critical that we can educate ourselves and others about them. It’s true that we want to make a really good game too… but it would be hard not to if we can capture even a fraction of our vicious predicament.

Development-wise, progress towards the Kickstarter launch is good. The first gameplay tranche is pretty much complete now, and we’ll be recording gameplay footage later this week, for use in our campaign video.

We’ll also be releasing the next screenshot of the new game this week. Once again, newsletter subscribers will get the news first, so please do subscribe if you want to stay abreast of what’s happening.

We’ll be around on Facebook and Twitter all week, where we’ll be sharing updates,, insights and other items of interest. Hope to see you there!

Klaude and Matt
Soothsayer Games