Goblinworks Licenses Unity Engine for Developing the Pathfinder Online MMO

GOBLINWORKS LICENSES UNITY ENGINE FOR DEVELOPING THE PATHFINDER ONLINE MMO

Studio Announces Sneak Peek Online Environment Experience and Pit Fight Battles Preview

Unity Engine Enables Highly Anticipated Mac OSX Version of the Game

REDMOND, WA (January 9, 2012): Goblinworks, Inc. is thrilled to announce today a licensing agreement with Unity Technologies that secures Unity as the engine behind the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) Pathfinder Online.

To celebrate the partnership with Unity, Goblinworks today launches a demo Environment Experience of the first level of Pathfinder Online’s Thornkeep dungeon, which lets players view the environment originally constructed for the Technology Demo, now run through the Unity Engine. The demo is viewable through a Unity web app in your browser at https://goblinworks.com/experience.html.

“We have been evaluating solutions in this space for more than a year,” says Ryan Dancey, CEO of Goblinworks. “For performance, code quality, reliability and flexibility, Unity rose to the top of our list. Unity also enables us to develop both a Windows and an OSX version in tandem. We couldn’t be happier to make this announcement today.”

Goblinworks also announces the first playable test-environment, a version of Pathfinder Online’s combat-testing software called Pit Fight, which will be available to players in Fall of 2013. Through Pit Fight, players will help the development team cull a wide range of combat data while getting a preview of combat in Pathfinder Online. Pit Fight will be a stand-alone, single-player experience.

Pit Fight will put the player through a number of gladiatorial battles, fought in the Bonepit Arena in Thornkeep, under the watchful eyes of the Hellknights. Players will be able to get a sneak preview of the Pathfinder Online combat design, and will help to shape its development through PVE conflict against various NPC opponents.

Initially, players will be using a limited number of prebuilt characters and specific scenarios but expanding over time to include other classes, customization and combat styles. Players will be able to test which aspects of combat they most enjoy, and plan their advancement path once Pathfinder Online launches.

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game builds on more than 10 years of system development and the largest open playtest in the history of tabletop gaming to create an unparalleled fantasy roleplaying experience. Players need only the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook to play, but Paizo Publishing produces a wide range of books and accessories to enhance your Pathfinder experience, from hardcover rules compendiums to complete campaigns to packets of beautiful full-color maps. For more information, please visit paizo.com.

Pathfinder Online is a hybrid sandbox/theme park-style massively multiplayer, online roleplaying game (MMORPG) where characters explore, develop, find adventure and dominate a wilderness frontier in a land of sword and sorcery. Pathfinder Online is currently being “crowd-forged” through Kickstarter, with 5 days left in the million-dollar pledge drive. Please visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1675907842/pathfinder-online-a-fantasy-sandbox-mmo and Goblinworks.com for more information.

About Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies is the creator of Unity, an intuitive and flexible development platform used to make wildly creative and intelligently interactive 3D and 2D content. The “author once, deploy everywhere” capability ensures developers can publish to all of the most popular platforms. Unity Technologies boasts a thriving community of 1,000,000 registered developers including large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists. Unity Technologies aggressively re-invests in its award-winning 3D development tools and democratization initiatives, such as the Asset Store digital content marketplace and Union game distribution service, in order to remain at the forefront of innovation. Unity Technologies is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea. For more information, visit: http://unity3d.com.

About Paizo Publishing

Paizo Publishing®, LLC is a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying games, accessories, board games, and novels. Paizo’s Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game, the result of the largest open playtest in the history of tabletop gaming, is currently the best-selling tabletop roleplaying game in hobby stores. Pathfinder Adventure Path is the most popular and best-selling monthly product in the tabletop RPG industry. Paizo.com is the leading online hobby retail store, offering tens of thousands of products from a variety of publishers to customers all over the world. In the ten years since its founding, Paizo Publishing has received more than 50 major awards and has grown to become one of the most influential companies in the hobby games industry.

About Goblinworks

Goblinworks is the developer and publisher of Pathfinder Online, a next-generation fantasy sandbox MMO. The company is located in the Seattle suburb of Redmond. It was founded in 2011 by a dedicated group of creative professionals with backgrounds in tabletop hobby gaming and online videogame development. Goblinworks is dedicated to creating a fun, immersive online gaming experience for the fantasy roleplaying enthusiast. Its goal is to deliver the best sword & sorcery massively multiplayer game on the market by starting with a carefully designed core of features and iterating on the content continuously after launch, with the input and feedback of the player community.