Kommunity Kickstarter Katchup Kollektiv

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Kommunity Kickstarter Katchup Kollektiv: 2013 - September 2017

This thread is dedicated to Kickstarter projects and potentially other crowdfunding services as well. It’s about presenting and discussing projects to and with other people, and to ask backers question. Also appreciated are in-depth articles about projects and crowdfunding in general.

The Rules of the Road

• Do not advertise your own projects. This is primarily to prevent spam.
• Do not post projects with outrageous and unrealistic goals. I suppose it’s hard to tell in some cases but at least try to avoid it.
• Make sure to mention if a project uses flexible funding(=they get the accumulated money even if they fail to reach the goal).

Credit goes to Anthile. We come from here.

[Kiril]

Cultist Simulator: Behold Our End got funded for £82,033. $52,026 more than Alexis Kennedy asked for. Its funded and kickstarter finished.

Thea 2: The Shattering need a bit more, they are at £36,651 just £3,349 short of their £40,000 goal. As far as I remember their previous 2 kickstarters for Thea 1 failed to make the goal and they continued on and released the game, which was quite well received so I am not sure why they are struggling to get the £40k.

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[Arnvidr]

Lifeless Moon succeeded by a hair.

[Sarfrin]

Yeah, I was really pleased. It was only about 75% with one day to go.

[Kiril]

Thea 2 has been funded. 9 days still to go

[LarsWestergren]

Shakes & Fidget - an comic adventure game based on a comic. Kind of a make or break thing for the studio behind Book of Unwritten Tales apparently. €106,241 pledged of €250,000 goal, 15 days to go.

Du Lac & Fey: Dance Of Death. A narrative adventure game " in which Arthurian immortals Sir Lancelot Du Lac and Morgana Le Fey hunt Jack the Ripper" . Promising art, interesting premise and setting. £8,994 pledged of £40,000 goal, 39 days to go.

[LarsWestergren]

Several interesting campaigns going on currently, but no big ones.

Ongoing

Du Lac & Fey: Dance Of Death. Calling all adventure and steampunk fans. After an ok start momentum has slowed to a trickle. £12,907 pledged of £40,000 goal, 26 days to go

New

Raji: An Ancient Epic. By an indian team, with an unusual setting for games. and some really nice art and music drawing on SE Asia. “An action adventure game set in ancient India. A young girl is gifted with godlike powers to defend humanity against a demonic invasion”. Monster design drawing on local mythology. Part of the Square-Enix collective, they have a demo up on Steam. £13,231 pledged of £120,000 goal , 29 days to go

Spinnortality: a cyberpunk management game. Something like playing the evil corps from Android Netrunner or Deus Ex. Manipulate the media, fund unethical research, murder rivals, gain immortality and take over the world. Alexis Kennedy said that if he did a cyberpunk Cultist Simulator it might look something like this. Good enough for me! (Not wild about the name though, hope they can come up with something better). €526 pledged of €10,000, 29 days to go

Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor. A huge procedurally generated galaxy which you explore/fight in/mine with your drone ships which you assemble like lego. On the RPS fronpage thanks to Dominic Tarason. Already made it, CHF 31,451 pledged of CHF 20,000, 22 days to go

Summoners Fate. A tactical turn based + collectible card game/deck building RPG. $10,063 pledged of $10,000, 4 days to go.

Ended

Shakes & Fidget was cancelled early due to lack of momentum. Even adventure games have started to struggle on Kickstarter.

[LarsWestergren]

Alright, some good news.

New

Trüberbrook. A mystery/sci-fi point&click adventure game set in 1960s Cold War Germany. Handcrafted background with 3d characters with a stylish cartoony artstyle on top. Inspired by X-Files, Twin Peaks, Stranger Things etc. Looks promising. Already funded, €81,903 of €80,000 goal, 28 days to go

Obelus. “A tactical twin-stick shooter”. Pixel art action side-scroller with mech combat, a strong narrative (they claim) and cinematic cut-scenes. On Fig, so you can invest if you want. $23,072 of $50,000 goal, 22 days left.

Destination Primus Vita: Volume 1. A first person narrative adventure/puzzle game. Good art, a diverse character design. Each member of the crew will be the player character in an episode. I like the idea, but the risk is of course that the story will be unfinished if the games don’t sell or crowdfund well. Gameplay seems inspired partly by Telltale. Off to a decent start, CA$ 13,916 pledged of CA$ 50,000, 30 days remaining

Jamie Hyneman’s Virtual Reality Electric Shoes. The Mythbusters host is crowdfunding to do a 7th prototype of the shoes he hopes will solve the problem of movement in VR worlds. On Indie-GoGo, fixed funding (all or nothing, same as on Kickstarter). $8,224 USD of $50,000 goal, one month remaining.

Ongoing

Du Lac & Fey: Dance Of Death. 30% funded so there is a chance, but they need more momentum if they are going to make it. They have released demo footage. £13,835 pledged of £40,000 goal, 24 days to go.

Spinnortality: the cyberpunk management game has reached 30% at €2,929, 27 days to go.

[alms]

Replying from the archived thread, the only mention I could find of it:

Kommunity Kickstarter Katchup Kollektiv: 2013 - September 2017

Ancient Cities. City builder, starting at the neolithic age, with later eras as stretch goals. 36% funded with 7 days to go.

Anybody been following this? I just learned of its existence and, honestly, €100,000 with a delivery date of 2018, even if it’s a full year still, just seems unrealistic to me. IIRC Banished has been in development for some 4 years before launch, without even counting the work that went into it after that.

[Kiril]

It looks wonderful and super ambitious for a team of 4 but who knows. It was already showing off in game and engine stuff when it kickstarter, so its a years more development instead of just a year. I hope they deliver because it looks right up my alley. I am pretty sure they had a post here when there was a promotion forum. They are still active on twitter so I still have hope.

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The name isn’t exactly memorable, and I see myself looking at wishlist games and wondering “wait what the hell is that” so often. So maybe not the first time, after all.

I saw they set up an IndieGogo campaign, after the two weeks long flash on KS.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ancient-cities-extended-pc#/

This is the proposed time-line:

Closed Alpha Version in Jun 2018.
Closed Beta Version in Sep 2018.
Release in Dec 2018.

Has anybody ever been successful picking dates off a calendar like that, and meeting those deadlines? I’m skeptical one can go from “We think alpha is a development stage, not a product to sell.” to a polished game in 6 months.

No Early Access, either. I’m no game dev, but I saw many prominent indies take their own sweet time before taking the step out of it, and I don’t think they were being lazy or overly cautious.

[Gus_Smedstad]

No Early Access, either. I’m no game dev, but I saw many prominent indies take their own sweet time before taking the step out of it, and I don’t think they were being lazy or overly cautious.

Oh, I don’t know about that. It seems like a lot of Early Access games simply stall during Early Access, and never make it out. I don’t think they’re “overly cautious,” and not precisely “lazy,” but the developer just stops putting the work in. Either because they’re tired, or they never had a complete design, published early, and ran out of ideas before the game was done.

It’s hard to say for certain how bad Early Access has been for developers, since a lot of projects fell apart during before they were published without EA. But it does seem like EA is at least a _little_bit toxic, since the incentive for finishing a game drops off a bit if it looks like they’ve already made all the sales they’re every going to make and it’s still EA.

That’s what happened to Spacebase DF-9, for example.

Some developers can pull it off. Factorio was in Early Access for years before Early Access was a common term, and the Factorio team continues to put in the work. Zach of Zachtronics has released a couple of games as “Early Access” in a polish state that other developers would consider finished. And then added additional content (i.e. the two additional campaigns for Infinifactory).

[Kiril]

It’s hard to say for certain how bad Early Access has been for developers, since a lot of projects fell apart during before they were published without EA. But it does seem like EA is at least a _little_bit toxic, since the incentive for finishing a game drops off a bit if it looks like they’ve already made all the sales they’re every going to make and it’s still EA.

I would say its the exact opposite. Early Access has been a great hope for developers. Making games is expensive, like really expensive and EA gives indies the hope that they can get enough money to not have to work full time on something else to pay the bills, that game dev can be their life. For the vast majority its not. Games rarely sell hundreds of thousands of copies needed to pay full time wage to a small group of developers for the couple of years a game needs. These would normally die before the first published playtest ever surfaced, we can just witness them dying now. EA also came out at the same time as affordable high quality tools to make games, so many more people are taking the leap to make their games.

Also the incentive to finish a game doesn’t drop off in EA, its not there naturally. Do any kind of creative course, whether game dev, art or writing and one of the first things they will shout at you is to learn to finish. People don’t finish the book they are writing, they never polish off the painting. Something else always comes up. Same in EA, whether you are a big studio or a single indie you need someone pushing you to finish.

Thats the biggest hurdle in game development. Project management. Its an unsexy role, noone wants it but every game needs it.

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Oh, I don’t know about that.

I have no idea how my quote about “prominent indies” coming out of a lengthy stay in Early Access, got turned into a blanket statement about Early Access that makes no sense: not every Early Access game is a success story, in turn a sub-case of “not every game project is a success story”. Where’s the surprise?

That post was expressing skepticism that a seemingly inexperienced dev team can take their ambitious builder project from alpha to release in 6 months, whereas more trusted devs have felt the need to spend a longer time doing public testing.

[Gus_Smedstad]

I have no idea how my quote about “prominent indies” coming out of a lengthy stay in Early Access, got turned into a blanket statement about Early Access that makes no sense

Seriously? Do you have reading comprehension issues?

You made a blanket statement about Early Access, and I responded to that. How did you miss that, since I quoted said blanket statement?

I’ll clarify, since you somehow missed my point. You were saying that “prominent indies” stayed in Early Access for a long time because it was required, not “overly cautious.” My point was that wasn’t true. Lots of games, including ones from “prominent indies,” take a long time to get out of Early Access, or never leave Early Access, not because that time was required, but because the project lost momentum during EA.

I was responding to your blanket statement, not to the plausibility of the timeline for Ancient Cities. Will Ancient Cities miss their stated schedule? Almost certainly. But I wasn’t arguing about that, now was I?

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The examples you cited at the end of your posts were among the names I was referring to. Darkest Dungeon, Klei, and Starbound also come to mind.

Only an idiot would say all EA games are success stories ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[Gus_Smedstad]

Only an idiot would say all EA games are success stories ¯_(ツ)_/¯

And yet you found it necessary to claim that what I wrote about games that stall out during EA “made no sense.”

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That’s not it: everybody can see and appreciate plenty of projects never come to full fruition; the majority, as @Kiril keenly remarked (Sturgeon’s Law etc)

Making games is hard and takes longer than everybody expects, devs included: the best games to come out of Early Access spent a long time there(*), and for good reasons.

So, what made no sense to me, is how my skepticism about one studio’s time-line (look at the best in class and see how long it took them) could be turned into a mass endorsement of EA, as a place where no dev can do wrong. It felt like that paragraph was being taken out of context, and strong-armed into something altogether different.

(*) I agree with @Kiril, however, that what Early Access does, effectively, is making this process way more transparent and visible to the end user. Development taking place behind closed doors exposes us to a Survivor Bias effect, where we players know little or nothing of the cancelled projects.

Look at closed-doors success stories, though, and it’s no different; many indie success stories that followed more traditional trajectories, having investors, a publisher, nevertheless their release took many, many years.

[LarsWestergren]

50 minutes to help save K’Nossos a sci-fi point and click adventure game. They are very close, some £580 remaining (7%).