How long is the game? Amount of hours in gameplay?

[Jaws]

I am thinking about buying this game, but I won't bother if it's really short (1-3 hours).

[Dreamfall71 (AJ)]

You can get around 10 hours out of Book One, 5-6 hours on your first go, then another 3 on the second one.

[Eye]

As AJ.R has said, just the first episode alone should take you more than 3 hours. Then there are 4 more to come, all included in the price. Red Thread can't/won't put a figure on the total length of the game as it will vary due to factors such as how much exploration you do, but I think it's safe to say that for the vast majority of people the playtime will be longer than they'd have in other episodic adventure games such as The Walking Dead.

[Jaws]

Walking Dead was really bad. It gave the illusion of choice, but had no actual replay value. Can just hope this will be a little better. I enjoyed the two previous games a lot.

[tomimt]

I haven't gone it through the second time yet, but someone said that depending on your choices you get a couple of different characters and puzzles even in the first chapter. So choices do have a bigger impact here than in TWD.

Also this should be the shortest episode on the game, so solely based on my 6 hour first run, the game should end up somewhere around 20 hours.

[Darkdanjal]

Or you wait longer for it to be complete and you can experience it once again as "the longest journey" :P but that is not easy;-)

[Redronn]

It's about twice as long as an episode of TWD from what I've read.

Originally posted by -Jaws-:

Walking Dead was really bad. It gave the illusion of choice, but had no actual replay value. Can just hope this will be a little better. I enjoyed the two previous games a lot.

Yep. I would prefer if they just made the episodes longer and you had less choices, instead of making a bunch of different scenes based on who's alive, which most people are never going to see, because the game isn't replayable enough. It doesn't even need any replayability, so they should just forget about that completely.

Some people would say: "But oh, it's so much more tense and exciting because of the choices"
But that's not really because of the choices, it's because of the writing in general.

[OptoNick]

First playthrough - 8 hours
Second playthrough with other choices - 5 hours

[Uncle Cloud]

Steam says I finished it in 2.8 hours. Not sure how people managed 5+ hours in a single playthrough, unless I picked all the shortest branches of the story.

[Darbot]

Looking around at everything I took a little over 4 hours. I did get stuck looking for someone for about 15 minutes though.

[Spark]

Four hours for this chapter, 4 more to come. So should be about 15-20 hours all up.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Originally posted by Uncle Cloud:

Steam says I finished it in 2.8 hours. Not sure how people managed 5+ hours in a single playthrough, unless I picked all the shortest branches of the story.

It took me about 4 hours, and I felt I was meticulous in looking at everything and really observing all the details. Surprised a bit at the 7 hour comments. The game overall, may take roughly that much if you do 2 playthroughs with different choices.

[Red Thread Games]

Originally posted by Vamphaery:

7 hours on my first playthrough.

That said, what IS here is awesome. Great writing, great music, great dialogue, great atmosphere, great tone (all in my opinion of course.) The experience is quite gripping and immersive. And it FEELS like TLJ and Dreamfall. There's just nowhere near enough of it. Given we originally backed a complete game, and then not only is it episodic, but the first episode is SO brief and devoid of content (relatively speaking,) it really engenders a sense of, "What were they doing all that time?"

Wait, you say you spent seven hours on your first play-through of the first episode…and you think that's short?

Most episodic games range from 45 minutes to a couple of hours per episode. I think we're way above & beyond that — even if the game is 'just' 3-4 hours, which is where a lot of people have landed, we feel this is pretty good for Book One of five.

Not just that, but we also have completely divergent paths through Europolis, with unique gameplay, which encourages replay.

We won't argue with people's feelings and everyone's entitled to be disappointed — that's expected! — but we do feel very strongly about the fact that we've delivered a LOT of game and we will keep delivering. And we haven't asked for a whole lot of money, given the potential length of the game. $30/€30 (at most) is pretty fair for a game of this size and complexity.

Also, the budget we've had has gone not just towards Book One but also subsequent books. Book Two is in beta now, and Book Three is well underway.

[[HGS] Narameh]

I on the other hand don't understand how people get throught this in 2-4 hours. I'm 3 hours in, spreading the experience out over multiple days, and although I have tried to avoid spoilers, I have the idea that I am not even halfway through. Then again, I do sometimes just stand in a spot looking around for minutes at a time, listen to every random conversation I come across, and even follow the bloody advert bots around to listen to what they are saying. I'm basically more about exploration than playing the game, the actual playing kinda happens by accident when I am done exporing :P.

As for europolis feeling hollow, I haven't seen much of it yet, but knowing RTG the story will ramp up very, very slowly, giving you nice little hints and set ups, which then suddenly all tie together to make for a spectacular plot. Places will reveal their interior eventually, I am sure. I quite enjoy that nothing much happens yet, the slowness and deliberateness of writing makes this series so wonderful to me. And all the funny inner dialogue/flavour text. Don't forget those :). There is actual time to go through things in this game, the story gets to unflod immaculately slowly, and not everything has to be packed into constant action because otherwise *gasp* they might lose the attention of the 1337hax0rz. I suppose that is where the time and money went to, too. Writing like that doesn't happen overnight. This isn't some generic world-in-danger-kill-bad-guy-level-your-guns-brainless-handholder-shooter.

I personally am not going to do a second playthrough before all episodes exist. I'm going to crawl around the game, sniffing every stuffy corner and going with my gut on all choices. Let's see how that plays out and try other choices after I have seen my course of choice play out the first time. That way, I get to be delighted again because it is such a long time since I have seen that particular part of the game ^^.

[Jaws]

Originally posted by Red Thread Games:

Originally posted by Vamphaery:

7 hours on my first playthrough.

That said, what IS here is awesome. Great writing, great music, great dialogue, great atmosphere, great tone (all in my opinion of course.) The experience is quite gripping and immersive. And it FEELS like TLJ and Dreamfall. There's just nowhere near enough of it. Given we originally backed a complete game, and then not only is it episodic, but the first episode is SO brief and devoid of content (relatively speaking,) it really engenders a sense of, "What were they doing all that time?"

Wait, you say you spent seven hours on your first play-through of the first episode…and you think that's short?

Most episodic games range from 45 minutes to a couple of hours per episode. I think we're way above & beyond that — even if the game is 'just' 3-4 hours, which is where a lot of people have landed, we feel this is pretty good for Book One of five.

Not just that, but we also have completely divergent paths through Europolis, with unique gameplay, which encourages replay.

We won't argue with people's feelings and everyone's entitled to be disappointed — that's expected! — but we do feel very strongly about the fact that we've delivered a LOT of game and we will keep delivering. And we haven't asked for a whole lot of money, given the potential length of the game. $30/€30 (at most) is pretty fair for a game of this size and complexity.

Also, the budget we've had has gone not just towards Book One but also subsequent books. Book Two is in beta now, and Book Three is well underway.

If you get 5 episodes for 30€, that is very good value. I thought every episode would have to be bought. I usually don't buy games unless I can put in 50 hours+, and was sceptical to this because of other episodic games. But 7 hours is really good. Dreamfall was around 10 hours, and TLJ around 15. So if all the "books" are around 7 hours, it's quite surprising and impressive. 60$ for 40+ hour game is something I find reasonable.

You don't expect tons of hours from a point and click, although I've certainly played a lot of them to bits. Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones (old ones), Phantasmagoria 1 and 2 and of course the TLJ games gave me a lot of fun and were quite some timesinks. Recently we've seen other good games like Book of Unwritten Tales and Jack Keane 2 (haven't finished this one though). Still, they have been few and far between for a long time now, so it's nice to see this type of game being created with an amount of love. :)

[Astra Starr]

Originally posted by Red Thread Games:

Originally posted by Vamphaery:

7 hours on my first playthrough.

That said, what IS here is awesome. Great writing, great music, great dialogue, great atmosphere, great tone (all in my opinion of course.) The experience is quite gripping and immersive. And it FEELS like TLJ and Dreamfall. There's just nowhere near enough of it. Given we originally backed a complete game, and then not only is it episodic, but the first episode is SO brief and devoid of content (relatively speaking,) it really engenders a sense of, "What were they doing all that time?"

Wait, you say you spent seven hours on your first play-through of the first episode…and you think that's short?

Most episodic games range from 45 minutes to a couple of hours per episode. I think we're way above & beyond that — even if the game is 'just' 3-4 hours, which is where a lot of people have landed, we feel this is pretty good for Book One of five.

Not just that, but we also have completely divergent paths through Europolis, with unique gameplay, which encourages replay.

We won't argue with people's feelings and everyone's entitled to be disappointed — that's expected! — but we do feel very strongly about the fact that we've delivered a LOT of game and we will keep delivering. And we haven't asked for a whole lot of money, given the potential length of the game. $30/€30 (at most) is pretty fair for a game of this size and complexity.

Also, the budget we've had has gone not just towards Book One but also subsequent books. Book Two is in beta now, and Book Three is well underway.

I think the main concerns are
A: We don't know when we are getting the next part (5 years from TLJ to DF and then another 7 so we are primed to be wary).

B: We don't know if we are going to have to pay again? How many time will we be paying and for how much content? I expected to pay $50 for a 50+ hour game. How many more installments should be expect? Cost? and time?