KickTraq

The Untitled Game, better known as TUG, is one of the many recent titles that have earned a small crowdfunding fortune by shouting the word "sandbox" as loud as the internet will allow. The game's initial Kickstarter campaign raised $293,000; launching on Steam's Early Access marketplace helped Nerd Kingdom rake in an unspecified amount of additional dollars. The studio had a bold plan for an open-world, innovative crafting MMORPG, and it appeared as though players were ready to pay for it. (Read More)

TUG is an open world video game that was funded on Kickstarter and has gone through it's fair share of ups and down. (Read More)

TUG (The Untitled Game) is a open-world, sandbox RPG. The game is being developed by Nerd Kingdom, a team of social scientists, economists, artists, and developers exploring new frontiers in technology and design. Their goal? To create an ever-evolving player experience based on their ongoing sociological and behavioral science research of player interactions within virtual worlds. The game is currently available in Steam Early Access, where players can play a pre-alpha version of the game for $9.99. (Read More)

TUG has hit Steam Early Access, and all correctly-tiered backers will be receiving their Steam code (or DRM-free download code) promptly! (Read More)

We’re definitely living in a golden age of Kickstarter/crowdfunding video games, and whether this will see bountiful harvests or deflated failures or lukewarm efforts is the purview of the future. (Read More)

Developer of the Kickstarter-funded sandbox MMO The Untitled Game, Nerd Kingdom, has announced a new update regarding the status of the game's alpha and beta, and it's a bit of good news and a bit of not-so-good news. The not-so-good news is that the developers have "decided to push back calling the game's current state a 'beta' and keep it in the alpha phase." The good news, though, is that many of the systems the devs were hoping to implement are ready to go live, and "[the devs have] had a chance to refine many things for this next major milestone." (Read More)

Hello Kingdom! In this episode: TUG’s news for the week, our final Kickstarter day, a summary of the week's updates, new goodies, reward tier add-ons, our upcoming PayPal campaign, PLUS another Alpha/Beta gift, player death, and stretch goals!!!... (Read More)

In designing the death system for TUG, we wanted to avoid a lot of the standard cliches: corpse runs, revival systems that essentially function as a free ride back to the respawn point near town, or a completely unforgiving permadeath. We wanted to... (Read More)

Wow guys! Thank you SO much for all the help and hard work getting this project out. You guys are really what makes Nerd Kingdom what it is, and your support is what validates everything we are trying to accomplish. We know that what we are doing and... (Read More)

In this episode: a look at some cool goodies coming your way in alpha/beta access tiers, an announcement about some exciting post-Kickstarter plans, as well as a re-cap of good stuffs you already are entitled to!!! COOL NEW DIGITAL GOODS FOR YOU!!!... (Read More)

It seems like game designers have been struggling with reward systems a great deal over the last several years. The standard solution is to patch some achievements onto the game (often after the fact), give them some clever names, and hope that this... (Read More)

“Critter” is an affectionate name for the animals in TUG. Critters come in all shapes and sizes and are uniquely varied to exist in each biome found throughout the world. A critter can fall into one of three categories: Predator, which is any... (Read More)

Hello Kingdom! In this episode: TUG’s news for the week, Seed care, Seed diversity, crafting, servers, and companions! TUG News Round-Up OVER THE PAST WEEK: We have reached 74% of our goal with 6 days left in our campaign. Many many thanks to all... (Read More)

Everybody needs friends, and in TUG you’ll find a whole stable of companions! You will, of course, be playing with your real friends as a community of Seeds, but what about those times you are on your own, or need a helping hand? That’s where... (Read More)

The other day, I was perusing the forums for a prominent, AAA game developer that will remain unnamed. A thread appeared on the topic of why many of the female characters in the game had revealing, "sexy" armor, while their male counterparts did not.... (Read More)

TUG is your game, play it how you like! We are all too accustomed to “what ifs?” After all, that is why this project was started! “What if this wasn’t so violent? What if this weapon sucked less? What if this was more of a challenge? What if... (Read More)

Let’s discuss crafting in TUG and what that means in terms of working on and off a grid. Most pattern-designed crafting systems work on some form of grid, allowing players to shape resources in a recognizable pattern for the object they are... (Read More)

Performing actions and perfecting skills can improve your Seed’s overall abilities, but you won’t be able to see all of those abilities floating conveniently in space above your Seed’s head! Instead, in TUG, we’ll be using much more visual... (Read More)

Hello Kingdom! In this episode: TUG’s news for the week, community spirit, societies, and new tiers! Oh my! TUG News Round-UpOVER THE PAST WEEK: We’re excited to have reached 55% of our goal with two weeks still left in our campaign, steady as... (Read More)

In this episode: Some more new reward tiers!!! We’ve noticed that you all scooped up our SUPER RARE ASTEROID GOLEMS at the $195 rewards tier, so we’ve opened up some more at group price points! In addition, many of you asked for an improved gift... (Read More)

In many multiplayer games, we are accustomed to creating clans or guilds, or we’re forced into factions in artificial and, in many cases, meaningless ways. I personally have grown weary of the “JOIN MY GUILD” spams in my frequent online... (Read More)

Games and entertainment as a whole have utilized and relied on traditional music soundtracks forever. Even the phrase “silent movie” is a misnomer; though the film strips themselves could not produce sound, music was always played live alongside... (Read More)

Not only is the voxel engine built on a data driven foundation, but almost every element of the design phase of TUG, including social structures and market interaction, will be guided by recursively assessing player feedback, habits, behaviors, and... (Read More)

We’ve been listening to your comments and internalizing your feedback to be responsive to your needs as backers, and we wanted to give you what you asked for!!! We have added THREE NEW TIERS: 1) $30 NEW!!! DIGITAL ONLY BETA ACCESS!!! -- You’ll... (Read More)

Hello Kingdom! In this episode: TUG’s news for the week, one of TUG’s many secrets possibly unearthed, and a new video highlighting TUG’s design! TUG News Round-UpFIRST WEEK: It’s been awesome! We’re over a third of the way to our goal... (Read More)

Hello Kingdom! In this episode:  your tech update suggestions, and our tier/rewards revisions -- because we’ve been listening to you! Technical Updates and FeaturesWe want to thank everyone for being so interested and excited about TUG and for... (Read More)

Have you read the description of what Nerd Kingdom is yet? If you haven’t, go ahead and take a quick look, I’ll wait for you. You get it? Excellent. You might have noticed that the word "collaboration" is placed right there at the start of the... (Read More)

In many games, when crafting an item, it plays out something like this: you get a specific list of materials, collect (or buy) said materials, drag them from your inventory to some kind of crafting interface, click a button, and BOOM you have the... (Read More)

In TUG, the design philosophy is to keep game logic as close to real life logic as possible. This is critical in keeping with player immersion, but even more importantly, this design approach gives us the ability to offer true consequences for the... (Read More)

Companions are often some of the coolest and most memorable elements in the games we love. Whether it be the mysterious being bent on devouring your soul forced into servitude, the feral beast brought into submission with the offering of a tasty... (Read More)

In approaching the narrative design for TUG, we decided from the outset that we didn’t want this game to have a traditional linear narrative. It is a true sandbox at its heart; there is no “campaign” and no “ending,” and no branching... (Read More)

In a single player world -- let’s use Fable for example -- there is a lot of focus on the design of the narrative, on the world itself, on event scripting, and on TONS of statistical balancing adjustments that happen manually behind closed doors... (Read More)

TUG is not your average fantasy, sandbox RPG and the dev team at Nerd Kingdom is not necessarily made up of your average game makers. TUG is a game that weighs heavily on social sciences and what the dev team calls "visual association." Made up of academic scientists, game developers and modders, Nerd Kingdom attempts to bring an unprecedented level of realistic, visual feedback to the player in TUG. (Read More)

From our entire team, within our Kingdom of Nerds, we are so excited and grateful for all the support, enthusiasm, amazing discussions (both here and in other communities), and ideas. We are listening to them all, and replying as quickly as we can,... (Read More)

Indie developer Nerd Kingdom has taken to the popular crowd-funding website Kickstarter in hopes of garnering support for their upcoming title TUG. Offering an interesting twist on the open-world sandbox-RPG genre that titles like Minecraft or Terraria made popular, TUG is described as a "massive procedurally-generated world to explore, full of mystery and danger." What exactly TUG offers though is up to you, with a large incentive on the player developing the world through in-game participation. (Read More)

There's no doubting Minecraft's phenomenal success, but I've often wondered how much of that is down to the actual game. You know, the part that begins that first day you have to scramble to survive, and ends the time you see/build your first giant dick, when it's become more of a giant LEGO kit than a terrifying survival simulation. (Read More)

If you're the sort of sandbox aficionado who's more into crafting and exploration than griefing, then this post is for you. Brand-new to Kickstarter today is an MMO called, well, The Untitled Game, or TUG for short. Inspired by the likes of Minecraft, Zelda, and EVE Online, TUG promises an immersion-driven, "massive procedurally generated world to explore" along with such features as combat, crafting, building, an organic UI, modding tools, hidden civilizations, animal taming, "logic engineering," day/season cycles, realistic weights, support for roleplayers, and no DRM. Like rival Shroud of the Avatar, TUG will be playable solo, on a private server, and on the official MMO server. (Read More)