Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter launched

Hey, you! Do you want a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment? I am, of course, only asking for rhetorical effect: you do. You'll need to pay for it, though. inXile Entertainment today launched its crowdfunding campaign to make Torment: Tides of Numenera, a thematic and tonal follow-up set in the Numenera universe--itself a Kickstarter success. inXile needs $900,000 to make the RPG for PC, Mac and Linux, so get pledging.

It's not a sequel to Torment and won't feature any characters, but does aim to similarly deliver a deep story in a strange and wonderful setting, with "real consequences." Where PST asked "What can change the nature of a man?", Tides of Numenera ponders "What does one life matter?"

Pledging at least $25 (or $20 if you're early) to the Kickstarter campaign will get you a copy of the game when it's finished, which is estimated to be in December 2014.

As ever, rewards increase as you give more. Tiers of note include a boxed copy of the game at $65, beta testing access at $75, a fancy boxed copy with a cloth map and loads of extras for $95, designing an NPC for $1,000, and loads of fancy things if you have a squillion dollars.

Planescape: Torment lead designer Chris Avellone has heartily endorsed the project. Avellone calls inXile boss Brian Fargo "the reason that Planescape: Torment even exists in the first place," for backing it when he was head of publisher Interplay. He also called out Tides of Numenera writer Colin McComb, who was a designer on Planescape, saying "the game would've been of a much lower quality bar had he not been there and contributed."

inXile has also rounded up a load of other Planescape veterans, including Torment composer Mark Morgan, scripter and designer Adam Heine, and Numemenera creator Monte Cook, who worked on the original Planescape tabletop RPG setting.

This is inXile's second Kickstarter, following the wildly successful Wasteland 2. That campaign raked in $3.04 million to make a sequel to the classic RPG. It's looking pretty good. inXile says the Wasteland 2 team and Tides of Numenera are quite separate, so development of either won't impact the other.