#yogventures

I took a while to come around to this even though it’s actually been available for months now because I was hearing weird rumors and not getting where they were coming from.

So yeah. You can play Yogventures. That dead Yogscast Kickstarter game is... “playable.”

Here’s the link to download Yogventures.

(I take no responsibility for what this program does to your machine, I can only say that I tested it and it doesn’t seem malicious.)

Some brave soul named u/redakdal has been harboring this and occasionally tugging at Lewis’ pants to get him to... well, his request isn’t really clear. It seems like he just wants closure. He’s said he’s more than willing to take the game down if Lewis asks, and that he just wants... to know what Lewis wants, I guess.

Anyway. Let’s do something fun: an old-fashioned Let’s Play.

Before we get into it I want to sort of... frame this. I want you to come at it from a certain way. The feeling about Yogventures when it was pitched in 2012 was that it was a really arrogant “We can out-Notch-Notch” project. A lot of people had a sense of confidence that Minecraft was missing critical features. Even a year after this project was pitched the Yogscast were still feeling arrogant enough to demand those features in music form.

 Yogventures was the “solution.” It was going to be the Fortnite to Notch’s PUBG.

There were a lot of Minecraft rip-off already released when Yogventures was pitched, so they had their work cut out for them. Remake Minecraft, and make it better, and don’t make it worse.

...Let’s Play Yogventures!

Oh my god!!!

Why does it boot like this?!

I know it looks like I’m just hammering space to skip the menu but I’m not. It just does this.

The main menu, blasting classic Kevin Macleod, asks you if you want to “Login,” “Register,” or “Quit,” which is reminiscent of how Minecraft has its own login system to verify your copy of the game. It seems as though we should be stuck here, given there is no way to talk to a server and log in, but you can just submit garbage information and it’ll let you past the strange low-res font into Singleplayer.

But before letting us in, it asks for a “Seed.” Just like Minecraft.

Now, for context, because we’re about to see what Yogventures looked like in Beta, I want us all to remember what the Alpha looked like, as seen in the pitch video.

In the pitch video they’re very big on the lack of cubeyness. Everything looks like a $0.50 Unreal XBLA game.

So it’s very surprising when you start the game and...

Oh!

It looks like fucking shit.

I mean yeah, anytime you look at voxels they have a certain “natural beauty,” but this kind of random untamed shape is pretty useless especially when we always spawn at bedrock.

I wonder if the character models are cubes too? Luckily with some aggressive camera jimmying I can get a look at my face...

I appear to be Simon.. with my gut busting out of plate armor and more hair than Simon has ever had stabbing through my helmet.

F3 cycles through some more Kevin MacLeod tracks, and “Gay Activity,” a song they don’t own and never owned.

P... obviously, spawns a “Frog.”

Oh Kris Vale, you gave it the old Dreamworks try. Sure animation was the only asset you were bringing to this project... but you sure... you did it.

To be fair Simon’s jumping animation, pinwheeling arms and all, isn’t bad, but given the game allows you to fly I’m not sure why I would ever use it.

If I stand still and let the frog slap Simon to death, his soul ragdolls right out of his body and lies there until I drag him unwillingly back into existence.

Unfortunately, I am very slow. The frog is also very slow which means that if I spawn a frog we both have to shuffle along the bedrock at a blistering 0.5 mph.

I can bring up an item menu and pull out a bomb with 2. The bombs do nothing. The physics of throwing them feels unusually nice, but then they land and don’t bounce and despawn after a moment and all the fun goes away.

“Mining,” such as it is - the process of deleting blocks from the environment - feels like shit. The game hitches badly like it’s only just able to tolerate your interference with the map. It’s nice that you can hold CTRL and click anywhere to delete and place blocks you’re not close to, I will give it that.

I suffer through mining upwards into the strange stone clouds and am suddenly unleashed upon the earth.

Oh... aboveground is smooth voxels? We were doing cubes before but now it’s all real trees and rounded hills? Okay...

Admittedly, aboveground it looks okay. The trees look hella Runescape, and after traveling in a straight line it became pretty clear that there is only one landscape, but it doesn’t look broken from here.

And... that’s kind of it. You end up doing what you do in any other sandbox game which is fly into the sky and test the draw distance

(competent)

but that’s all they managed. I mean... Winterkewl admitted the pitch video wasn’t made using a “real” version of the game - it wasn’t using voxels yet, it was just a vertical slice so you could see what it would look like if it was. After the Kickstarter, Vale did manage to make the game we saw in the pitch. But then he didn’t make a single other thing. He spent $567,665 to make something Simon and Lewis were finished demonstrating in less than 4 minutes.

So... in searching for meaning... I think it’s pretty clear why /u/redakdal can’t get in touch with Lewis. If people knew that this was all Kris Vale was able to come up with they would not be happy.

For fun, let’s look at the pitch checklist before we wrap it up:

Beautiful, randomly-generated game worlds that are different every time you start a new Yogventure

“Beautiful” is a stretch, but yes, seeds do function.

Fully shapeable terrain - with the ability for players to raise a mountain range or create a vast ocean; you can effortlessly shape your world however you imagine it

It’s a son of a bitch to do that, but sure, if I had a month it’s possible.

A wealth of novel building materials, creatures, NPCs and items

Well, there are only frogs. And these are the items in the game right now.

It doesn’t really cut it, especially when none of the items have unique properties.

A rich underground to mine and explore - bristling with rare outcroppings of gems and crystals, hidden tombs and dark underground terrors that drop rare weapons and loot

There’s no loot. There are blocks that appear to have crystals in them, but they’re just sitting there.

A fully-fleshed out crafting system

No crafting.

An in-game physics engine that will even effect the blocks you place in your creations

No. I think the bomb definitely had physics, but none of the blocks do.

The ability to customise your own unique avatar or play as one of your favourite Yogscast characters

You can play as Simon, or a wizard.

Easy-to-use in-game modding API including in-game scripting

/u/redakdal has been wearing his hands to the bone just trying to rip the game, so not quite.

And these last two are just for lolz:

Ability for modders to have a chance to get their work added to the game

Regularly released video updates from the developers including the latest feature additions  

One final note:

Slopes Game Room - The Story of Yogventures

Backers of Failed Yogventures Kickstarter Get EverQuest Next Landmark for Free

Backers of the failed Kickstarter for Yogventures, a game from the popular YouTube channel Yogscast, have received free copies of EverQuest Next Landmark.

This is in addition to the free codes backers already received for another crafting and survival game shortly after Yogbentures was canceled, TUG, and Yogcast says that they’re planning to give backers even more in the coming weeks.

Even if you…

via Kotaku

Yogventures, an ambitious video game project helmed by a group of YouTubers called The Yogscast, raised over $567,000 back in 2012 to make what they called "the game you've always wanted."