We are the developers of Death Inc. - A game where you play a 17th century Grim Reaper and give everyone the bubonic plague. AUA!

Have you got a composer in mind for the soundtrack?

We've had a bunch of offers and we've got a few options in mind, but we haven't settled with anyone yet.

Did you think about making units stand out more ? Since in the prototype it's hard to tell which ones are infected humans and which ones are infected archers. Considering the control scheme you end up drawing loads of paths in different places in order to even find the group you want to control.

Are you planning to make the game even if Kickstarter campaign fails ?

Did you think about making the setting count more and not to be generic medieval towns and villages? The same goes for the characters to slain. Right now it feels very generic and aimless. It would be interesting to provide some context (even in form of different art).

How do you plan to differentiate the missions?

How do you plan to solve the problem with infected roaming free and following the path of movement at the same time? In prototype it was really frustrating gather them all into a group again after they run freely to attack villagers.

Did you think about making the game more emergent rather than simple progression elements with now one proper way to finish the level. (from what it seems from the gameplay videos and prototype level)

Did you think about even replying to people writing to you offering help with the project for free with kind "thanks, but we're not interested" to not make them feel like complete morons for offering their experience and free time in order to make project better for free and not even getting any kind refusal or simple thanks?

Just to initially respond to your last point: Did we miss you? We've tried very hard to respond to every message and email we've got. I'm very sorry if you feel that you were slighted by us, it would have been an oversight rather than deliberate negligence.

Ok, serious question this time: Should the Kickstarter campaign not get funded, do you think you'll try crowdfunding again (perhaps Indiegogo) or will you try to find investors? Or perhaps a combination of both?

There are a bunch of options we can pursue - if the Kickstarter fails it's definitely not the nail in the coffin (aha!) for Death Inc.

17th century? Why not back in the 14th century when the plague hit its pinnacle?

Tim will hopefully answer this one more fully, but I believe his answer will be along the lines of "because the world was prettier in 17th century". The colours are nicer, the style more flamboyant...

And narratively, there was this resurgence of the plague in the 17th century. Why did that happen? It was because our protagonist Grim T. Livingstone came on the scene, of course.

You mentioned multiplayer in your KS page. How do you see this working? One guy with the reaper and the other with the livings? Competing reapers?

Good question! There's three immediate options that we're investigating:

• Reaper vs Humans

• Reaper vs reaper

• Co-op reaping

It's a bit early to tell which will will work best just yet.

Any of you guys played Grim Fandango? The comic definitely struck a nostalgia chord...

Ha! That's a coincidence, but Grim Fandango is one of my favourite games ever.

Is this your teams first game or have you done others?

Well Death Inc. is our first publicly announced game. We've got an ace tablet game that is actually finished but we're holding off on talking about that until the Kickstarter is over, so we don't cross the streams.

Never cross the streams.

Will there be any easter eggs?

Yeah! We've already put some of the backer names in the game which is fun, and there's a nice "tower building" bug mechanic which could be used as a siege weapon...

The game is supposed to be a lighthearted thing anyway so I'm sure there'll be plenty of things to find.

I played a bit of the demo just now since the link was posted and it really does seem like quite a bit of fun. I guess I wonder if there will be any mechanic in the full version to direct when different movements happen? I like the idea of strategically placing and moving flanks of the undead or whatever they are, but it seems complicated when you have to sequentially draw out the path for each grouping.

Good idea. Might work well - we'll give it a think. AFAIK you can't queue up timed orders in other RTS games (but I could well be wrong?), so it might make a really interesting addition.

I wish I had money to support all the great Kickstarter projects. Too bad I'm broke.

I wish you did too!

Boxers of briefs?

Troubadours of trunks

A serious answer for you bagheadinc: boxers.

of briefs?

Not sure if you guys are looking for constructive criticism or not, but I just gotta chime in and say that I think "Death, Inc." is a pretty weak name. Personally, if I didn't know about the very cool premise of this game, I probably wouldn't even click on the title in the Steam store (or wherever).

That's fair enough - it's good to know.

This might be an odd question but..

Is there a possibility to support you via Paypal? (I think kickstarter only supports amazon payments, which requires a credit card - afaik)

Not an odd question! Yeah we will do once we get a little closer to the goal.

You're right about Amazon but you can use a debit card as well as a credit card. Problem with PayPal is that it doesn't actually help us succeed at the kickstarter, just adds to it - so if it means people who would pledge via Kickstarter use paypal instead, we miss out

Can we have beta codes?

You can back us on Kickstarter for the level that gives you beta access, then yes :)

Another one from me. Did you think about bringing some villains to the table?

I'm thinking of something like in this animated short "Lady and the Reaper" in which he was trying to kill an old lady and some handsome doctor was trying to revive her.

Is there an idea to bring some characters who will cure the infection like priests or clerics ? Or some other npc that will try actively to disturb your advances instead of just being a passive villager that reacts back to being attacked by infected guys?

To answer your question about villains: Yes! Your nemesis in the game is the evil King Of England (he's not explicitly named yet because we're giving someone the chance to claim that as a Kickstarter reward). It's a bit tricky because we don't want the player to be intrinsically evil, and it would be good for the player to feel like they were doing something actually good. So really, Grim is rescuing the poor peasants from their suffering under the bootheel of the King.

Regarding other units: We've barely scratched the surface in terms of the unit types that will be in the game. There will be Plague Doctors, priests / monks, lots of other things. And yes, there will be a more active enemy presence in the full game, of course.

Will it be available for Wii and/or PC? How much might it cost? How similar is it to Pandemic?

• Definitely PC (Windows, Mac, Linux). Wii U is something we're considering if there's enough support for it. It would likely come up as a stretch goal if we get that far, purely to cover the costs of the platform specific things and the Wii U devkits.

• It will cost around £15/$20 I think.

• Pandemic the board game? I don't think it's very similar.

EDIT: formatting

After playing the demo: Is there a way to erase paint I've drawn? If not, any plans to do so? More than once, I found myself thinking "Oh shit. That's not what I wanted.", but off my little plague-beasts trucked.

A right-click drag to erase would be sufficient, I think.

(Also, please make this iPad-playable. The tablet is about the only way I get time to game these days)

There isn't yet but it's one of the most requested features we've had, so I'm sure it'll be doable in some form.

How do you feel about people constantly asking the question "Would you rather fight one duck-sized horse, or one hundred horse-sized ducks?" in AMA's? What do you think it tells us about reddit culture, as compared to society as a whole?

I think the imbalance between the two potential opponents is a fitting metaphor for reddit culture vs society as a whole.

Why the death theme? Don't you think that's been over-done already?

In all honesty, no I don't think it's been overdone - at least not in the way we're doing it. It seemed like the appropriate theme and setting to combine to do the game we wanted to do.

If we'd gone with straight up "post apocalyptic zombies" then I would agree it's been overdone, but I don't think "17th century bubonic plage with a grim reaper" is a particularly crowded theme.

Thank you for your reply. I was talking about death-themed games in general.

I'm not a gamer, so maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't get the whole fascination with games centered around killing people.

You can't do it in real life. Video games are about escapism, doing things that you wouldn't normally do, experiencing things. The simplest form of escapism is death or some sort of action scenario, its exciting and gets your blood rushing. Whether its played out or not, well, it really just depends on how you are doing it, the themes, the rules, how removed you are from the experience. It can be downright enjoyable at times.

Hope this helps! :)

The 'killing people' bit of the game actually raises really interesting questions. So the setting is the 17th century, a pretty bleak time for the poor. And we've got this evil king who's making it worse.

And the way we've styled it is that actually the peasants miserable like that and when they get the plague they're all dancing around and they get to go out in a blaze of glory. It's not meant to be taken too seriously or literally.

Hiya :) Now this is a really small chance but by any chance are you guys offering placements for uni students? I'm asking because I am a 2nd year computer animation student looking for placements, who lives in Farnham (woo, go Farnham) when I'm not at uni.

And because it is rude to ask a question in an AMA, what is your favorite part of the gameplay so far?

Hi! We're not in a position to offer placements right now, but that may change in the future - watch our website / facebook page for updates on that one.

Favourite gameplay: For me I like using my archers to draw big soldiers out one by one (e.g. at the end around the nobleman) and have my cunning villagers waiting round the corner.

Haha sounds awesome :) I'll be keeping an eye on the game!

have you tried the demo? Then you can try it for yourself! www.deathincgame.com/demo/

Did you get the game idea from Pandemic?

No - this question has already been asked and answered further down.

Hey, I live not too far from Guildford. Mind giving me a job when I finish college soon?

I suppose it depends on what you do and whether you're amazing at it.

Will a certain infamous cheat code make its way into the game to unlock some sort awesomeness?

maybe idkfa to give you all the diseases

fun game. it took me awhile to figure out pink trail is everyone, green trail is melee/regular humans, yellow is archers, blue is soldiers. something to indicate who is who would be very nice. the soldiers stand out due to size alone but the archers and regular infected are hard to discern. maybe give the archers yellow hats or something. a unit counter would be really great too. a number next to the specific unit's command would be really great. it's a quick way to see how much of each unit you have.

i kept loosing like 75% of my army when i went up a hill to the northwest of the starting location. they just walked into the hill and disappeared.

fun game, i look forward to seeing much more of it in the future. i played the demo like 20 times already.

Yeah there's a bug with the hill in the northwest... don't go there.

Thanks for the feedback - we're going to be updating the silhouettes / colouring of the units to make them easier to tell apart.

Lots of things will change between now and October (planned release) don't worry!

It looks like you will not reach your Kickstarter goal. What is the plan for the project moving forward if you do not get the financing via Kickstarter?

We'll find a way to move the project forward with other financing models. We've had a lot of interest from various parties.

Looks fantastic. I'm gonna download it later

Hooray, thanks! Hope you enjoy it.

Just played. I really liked it!

thank you!

So now that the Sony presentation is over, you're free to announce that Death Inc will be a PS4 launch title, right? Eh? Eh? Right? :P

Hah! No.

Was it difficult to not answer the question of "What's great about kickstarter" with "we get paid"?

That's certainly true. The other answer is "there's no-one telling you what to do (except for the x thousand backers)", and it's actually incredibly liberating to be able to talk about the game as openly as we have been (which is generally impossible under traditional 3rd party publisher agreements)

How many history buffs have come out of the woodwork to tell you that you're being insensitive?

Not enough, sadly.