Kommunity Kickstarter Katchup Kollektiv: 2013 - September 2017

LarsWestergren 2016-08-24 10:02:46 UTC #1181

I’m fine, thanks for asking, I’m just avoiding looking at Kickstarters for a while to save some money.

Internet 2016-08-24 20:03:26 UTC #1182

Yeah, I was there all summer.

Logo 2016-08-29 17:47:20 UTC #1183

I’ve played Ruin of the Reckless (have access to the alpha builds & now backed the kickstarter). It’s quite fun, I wish I had more experience in the associated genre (somehow I haven’t played Nuclear Throne or Hyper Light Drifter yet), but it’s got a really nice pacing to the combat and some really interesting game design around the items & upgrades. You level up by gaining XP for killing enemies and clearing the floor and each level unlocks an orb slot that you fill by finding orbs around the dungeon. But the orbs can be killed by attacks and you can’t swap them out so there’s a mix of adaptation & planning you need to do with the orbs to get a good build going.

It’s also a pretty low risk backing, the game is already in a state where it’s playable, but lacking the full depth of content it should have, the kickstarter is already backed, and there’s dozens of hours of streamers playing it available (I believe the kickstarter links to a lot of it) so you can get a good sense of the game before backing it.

Internet 2016-09-04 12:38:06 UTC #1184

I’ve been playing Dino Run recently, and so I went to see if Dino Run 2 ever went anywhere after failing to meet its goals. It didn’t but there was a very interesting blog post by one of the creators. He’s pretty cynical about kickstarter because they took years to make a game they asked $11k for. But they launched their own “crowdfunding” campaign on their website to add more to Dino run.

Basically, it turned into you buy the game, they keep the money, and if it reached a milestone they would add new features to the game. They raised $18k this way, and added three features. However, when the game was released on steam, they went and reinvested the steam profits and added more features they wanted to put in anyways. That seems like a bit of a mixed success. Really it’s less crowdfunding, and more pwyw with guaranteed reinvestment of sales.

I think the idea of milestone based crowdfunding is a solid one; but I don’t think a campaign with unlimited time is the best way to go about this. At best you’re just selling the game; at worst, you have some money that’s in permanent escrow, or half of the funders have cancelled credit cards by the time the milestone is reached. D:OS 2 and Shadowrun Hong Kong seemed like they were better examples of this model.

Anyways, here’s some New (to me) games:
Russian Subway Dogs: I dig the music and aesthetic.
Broken Reality: This is going to be a brilliant or awful exploration of the internet. I can’t decide.
The Forest Beyond: A stop-motion game for young kids that has great stop-motion animation.
The Rabbit and the Owl: A puzzle-platformer about two characters in separate but interacting dimensions that are trying to reconnect.
Cat Story: An exploration platformer that seems to have a good grasp on pixel art.

davey 2016-09-05 13:03:24 UTC #1185

Right now I’m playing Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire. I didn’t back it because during the KS it was described as an episodic release but they have since announced it can be considered a stand-alone title. Anyway, it’s a pretty good TB tactical game.

Anyone played Legends of Eisenwald? I’m backing Eisenwald: Blood of November, which is a standalone expansion made in an improved version of LoE engine. It’s going to be a sandbox style Turn-based strategy / RPG. Early bird tier is still open, so it is only $7 to get a digital copy.

Wenz 2016-09-05 13:18:32 UTC #1186

Anyone tried it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ret-Jw8T8A

Baines 2016-09-05 15:27:37 UTC #1187

The Dino Run DX page didn’t describe a campaign with either permanent escrow or the option to cancel payment before milestones were met.

Dino Run DX said that you were billed immediately, and immediately received a current copy of the game and would receive any future additions. The only promise of refunds was if the devs failed to deliver on a milestone after it was reached, and they were at the time certain that they’d prepared amply for reaching each milestone, so there was no need to hold money in escrow. It became their money when it was paid to buy the game. Any money coming up short of the next milestone was still their money, not some refundable trust that they were simply holding onto until they “earned” it.

At least that is what the campaign page appears to describe.

Internet 2016-09-10 13:15:42 UTC #1188

@Baines, that was what I meant by at best they’re selling the game. They don’t need a campaign to sell the game and upgrade.

New games. Rad Rodgers a lush platformer inspired by Commander Keen. It looks aesthetically similar to Gianna Sisters.
Griff the Winged Lion wants to be a PS1 platformer and it really looks like one.

LarsWestergren 2016-09-10 17:01:50 UTC #1189

Damnit, I looked again.
**
New**

Woven: Solve Puzzles by Reknitting Your Character. Cute. €7,383 pledged of €85,000 goal, 27 days to go.

Hypnospace Outlaw, as already mentioned on RPS frontpage by Graham. By the maker of Dropsy. This one looks sweet. $9,339 pledged of $28,000 goal, 24 days to go

Hero’s Song. ARPG on IndieGoGo. $50 774 of $200 000 goal, flexible funding.

Ongoing

Russian Subway Dogs, as mentioned by Internet above. From the makers of They Bleed Pixels. Simple graphics, but looks like fun gameplay. Inspired by those dogs you may have heard about that live in the Moscow subway and have learned to take the trains from station to station. $19,498 pledged of $50,000 goal, 11 days to go

Old

Too many to mention. Halcyon 6 just got released, has gotten really good reviews and sold well, same for Obduction. Tahira got good reviews, don’t know if it sold well.

Lots of trailers and positive buzz for Torment: Tides of Numenera and Yoka-Laylee, but they are probably still some way off.

**Non PC games
**
Invisible Sun by Monte Cook games, those of Numenera and The Strange. Another gameplay system and universe. Some similarities to White Wolf’s Mage, but seems to try to dial up the weirdness factor a lot. Expensive tiers, clearly for the adult gamer with disposable income who wants a collectible. If I wasn’t busy with work and a Coursera course, I would join in all the ARG numerology stuff hunting for clues and secrets, looks fun. I backed this but I don’t know if I will ever have time to play it. $446 295 pledged of $210 653 goal, 6 days to go

This Kieron Gillen guy you may have heard of did a Kickstarter for a comic, Über. The KS is finished, but you can preorder.

grinn 2016-09-11 09:21:39 UTC #1190

Hey guys, I’m running a Kickstarter for Vengeance a board game take on revenge movies with Hotline Miami inspired mechanics. I know this is a digital based forum but figured some of you might like it since it’s made by a team hailing from the video games industry. Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyboards/vengeance-2

LarsWestergren 2016-09-27 18:53:40 UTC #1191

New

Astronaut: The Best. “King of Dragon Passe” meets “Long Live The Queen”. “Turn underdog losers into presentable space heroes using lies, dark magic, and/or hard work”. Supported by the Failbetter Games Initiative. This one looks cool, I hope RPS write about it. $6,925 pledged of $26,000 goal, 24 days to go

NITE Team 4. Military hacking, as featured on the RPS frontpage. Claims to be based on real NSA documents, and real hacking techniques. Expands on the Black Watchmen universe. $8,416 pledged of $30,000 goal, 39 days to go

Tiny Metal. A turn based tactics game by a Japanese team, inspired by the beloved Advance Wars on the Nintendo. $20,202 pledged of $50,000 goal, 21 days to go

Ongoing

Hypnospace Outlaw. 80s-90s cyberpunk, where you play an Enforcer hunting cyberspace for Hypnospace Outlaws. Nice concept and art, by the makers of successful Kickstarter Dropsy. $23,907 pledged of $28,000 goal, 7 days to go

Woven. Beautiful and child-friendly 3D point&click adventure where you customise your “stuffed animal” avatar with different parts etc to solve puzzles and get by obstacles. Needs some more momentum or it won’t make it. €24,173 pledged of €85,000 goal, 10 days to go

Upcoming

A Kickstarter for the sequel to Sunless Sea, a which like Fallen London which is beloved for it’s writing, but doesn’t have as many fans for the gameplay. They hope to fix that this time. The KS is coming in February.

EPICTHEFAIL 2016-09-27 19:01:26 UTC #1192

I.C.U. Basically a Twitch game in the vein of that streamer mode thing from Party Hard, where stream viewers use voting and funbucks to mess with the person they’re spectating who is playing through totally-not-Slender. Appropriate, really. Notable in that the guy behind it is veteran Youtuber Criken, whom I have been following for quite some time, and the concept itself is a pretty cool one. Not revolutionary by any means (indeed Criken prototyped it with a Twitch game of Left 4 Dead 2 where viewers “bought” various in-game events with “currency” earned by watching streams, almost exactly the same as ICU) but a refinement of the concept with everything integrated into a single system rather than hacked together, and something that, as a consumer of YT content and occasionally of livestreams I am very interested in. Half-way to its funding goal already after about half a day, pretty safe to say this one’s going to make it.

LarsWestergren 2016-09-28 06:46:17 UTC #1193

New

Code 7 - A Next-Gen Text Adventure. An early episode mentioned a year ago on RPS. Imagine System Shock 1 or 2, but as a text adventure where you play a hacker who actually hack computers instead of shooting stuff. €5,049 pledged of €15,000 goal, 29 days to go

Backdrop - behind the curtain. Really nice looking RPG where you play puppets on a stage, and putting on different masks changes your dialogue and powers. Perhaps aiming a bit too high though, €6,678 pledged of €175,000 goal, 27 days to go

Vigilantes. “A crime themed, turn based tactical RPG.” Check this out of you liked Fallout 1 or 2, Age of Decadence, Wasteland, Jagged Alliance, XCOM et al. I like they don’t go usual fantasy or sci-fi route. A 2 hour demo available. €656 pledged of €5,000 goal, 39 days to go

Voyage of Fortune’s Star — a 7th Sea cRPG. A very successful tabletop Kickstarter game now tries to go digital. Swashbuckling pirates is a nice setting, but I hope they are more original in the writing than with the worldbuilding. Like in Dragon Age 1, the nations are just Europe basically, barely disguised. Even the map looks like someone took a map of western Europe and pulled a bit on it with the Photoshop liquify tool. $48,260 pledged of $200,000 goal, 25 days to go

True Messiah. Deck building rather than a PC game, but by Craig Stern who did the Telepath Tactics Kickstarter. $5,618 pledged of $32,600 goal, 29
days to go

Upcoming

Wasteland 3. Yes!

Internet 2016-09-28 23:49:52 UTC #1194

All of those look good!

LarsWestergren 2016-09-30 08:13:51 UTC #1195

Some big news, Fig has gotten their filings approved, so now they are confident about starting up campaigns again.

There is also this Fig campaign:

Make Sail - a physics construction adventure where you assemble ships and sail them with realistics physics. There are giant beasts but they only talk about outracing them, no fightin. So, another survival crafting game, but it looks really nice. From the team behindElegy for a Dead Worldand Girls Like Robots. $19,705 of $50,000 goal, 33 days left.

Ongoing

Code 7, the fully voiced hacking text adventure, one third there. €5,527 pledged of €15,000 goal, 27 days to go

Hypnospace Outlaw just got 100% funded, which is nice.

Vigilantes the crime themed tactical RPG is 20% there, I hope more people see it.

Nite Team 4 the military hacking RPG is 60% there.

Astronaut: The Best, the Princess Maker style adventure game with the 50s-60s cartoon style and great soundtrack has $7,606 pledged of $26,000 goal, 21 days to go. I really want this one, it sounds like I would really like the gameplay of Princess-Maker style games, but anime princesses just isn’t my thing.

Backdrop - Behind the Curtain. The stylish “the world is a stage, and we are all actors” adventure/RPG. Needs major media/Youtuber attention if it is going to have a chance of making it. €19,789 pledged of €175,000 goal, 25 days to go

LarsWestergren 2016-10-04 18:43:58 UTC #1196

After a sedate summer there are suddenly lots of new Kickstarters…

**New

**Butt sniffing pugs. You may recognize this from a couple of game conferences, with the unorthodox “dog butt” controller peripheral that you had to jam your face into. Apparently you can play it just fine with mouse + keyboard too, and it looks like an extraordinarily charming adventure exploring puzzle game for all ages with great art. You play two pugs in Central Bark. $11,101 pledged of $60,000 goal, 30 days to go

Queer Quest - all in a gay’s work. A queer-as-fuck point and clit adventure game inspired by the classics like Monkey Island. Nice art, I hope the puzzles are good. I also hope there are SOME jokes and themes that don’t revolve around LBQT culture or it might get a bit repetetive. But either way, I’ll take it. $2,981 pledged of $50,000 goal, 29 days to go

Dwarrows - An Adventure & Town-Builder Game. A Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon-like with a dash of Zelda and maybe Minecraft? Nice graphics, but can it stand out in a fairly crowded field? $7,438 pledged of $12,000 goal, 25 days to go

**Ongoing
**
Make Sail. Physics construction + exploration game. $34,285 of $50,000 goal

Astronaut: The Best. Princess maker meets King of Dragon Pass with a 50s cartoon aestethic. $9,458 pledged of $26,000 goal, 17 days to go

Vigilantes - the turn based tactical crime RPG. approaching 50%, €1,806 pledged of €5,000 goal, 33 days to go

Code 7- the fully voiced text adventure game, almost 50% there, €6,980 pledged of €15,000 goal, 22 days to go

Hypnospace Outlaw has 6 hours left and just reached the stretchgoal of having Hot Dad doing the sountrack as Alice reported. $34,241 pledged of $28,000 goal

NITE Team 7 is over 70% there - $21,551 pledged of $30,000 goal, 32 days to go

Upcoming

Wasteland 3, in 20 hours.

**Others
**
The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti which failed its Kickstarter a while back is happily still getting made.

Illimat the boardgame by Keith Barker (Eberron, Gloom) and illustrations by Carson Ellis. Just started, will likely be huge thanks to shoutouts by Patric Rothfuss and others. $21,569 pledged of $42,812 goal, 30 days to go

Gus_Smedstad 2016-10-04 18:58:58 UTC #1197

While this sort of thing interests me, I have trouble taking computer games with a budget this low seriously. If $5,600 is the only thing keeping someone from developing a game, why aren’t they just funding it out of their own pocket? If they’re so strapped that they need that money to keep food on the table in the meantime, how likely is it that they’ll finish it before running through that small sum? It’s not a lot of money, and usually games with decent production values cost a lot more than that to develop, whether you measure it in wages or in man-hours.

I paid into Mighty Tactical Shooter, for example, which had a goal of rather more than this (£10,000). It’s been 2 years, 1.5 years past the promised delivery date, it’s despite regular updates, it’s still not ready.

LarsWestergren 2016-10-05 16:14:20 UTC #1198

I’m also extra sceptical of really low budget campaigns, but the $5000 might not be the difference between it being made and not (if it is, it is a really really high risk project as you say) but perhaps to help the developers get hardware or software that make the development easier for them.

New

Wasteland 3 is up. Already halfway there, not too shabby. Those of us who invested in earlier titles in Fig got a sneak preview 5 days ago or so with the option to invest, so the lion part of the money into the campaign so far is from that. But I think they have gotten at least $250 000 or so in pledges the first hour since it opened for everyone.

EPICTHEFAIL 2016-10-05 17:57:34 UTC #1199

EPICTHEFAIL:

I.C.U. Basically a Twitch game in the vein of that streamer mode thing from Party Hard, where stream viewers use voting and funbucks to mess with the person they’re spectating who is playing through totally-not-Slender. Appropriate, really. Notable in that the guy behind it is veteran Youtuber Criken, whom I have been following for quite some time, and the concept itself is a pretty cool one. Not revolutionary by any means (indeed Criken prototyped it with a Twitch game of Left 4 Dead 2 where viewers “bought” various in-game events with “currency” earned by watching streams, almost exactly the same as ICU) but a refinement of the concept with everything integrated into a single system rather than hacked together, and something that, as a consumer of YT content and occasionally of livestreams I am very interested in. Half-way to its funding goal already after about half a day, pretty safe to say this one’s going to make it.

Update on ICU, it got funded after a day. It’s up to $77k now and unlocking stretch goals. Now comes the hard part, which is actually making the game. I can’t recall a single Youtuber-made/backed game that actually got released, as opposed to either collapsing or being quietly abandoned.

Anthile 2016-10-05 19:02:48 UTC #1200

It should probably be noted that the estimated release date for Wasteland 3 is Q4 2019. While one might congratulate them for their realism, you’re not going to see much for your investment any time soon.