What happens when a Kickstarter campaign for a new game fails?
After Chris Taylor unceremoniously cancelled Gas-Powered Games’ “Wildman” fundraising effort, for example, his crippled, employee-less company was bought by Wargaming. Last week, two more promising Kickstarters failed to meet their goals: Ambient Studios’ “Death, Inc.” fell well short of its £300,000 goal, and Phosphor Games’ “Project Awakened” came a bit closer to raising the $500,000 it needed but still just missed out. Read More...
When we first covered “Torment: Tides of Numenera,” I tried to stress that this was a Big Deal: it’s inXile’s follow up to Black Isle’s “Planescape: Torment,” itself a foundational mid-90s RPG that changed the way the industry looked at narrative design and interaction. Don’t take my word for it, though: 23,000 different people contributed more than $1.1 million to “Numenera”’s Kickstarter campaign in less than eight hours, shattering the project’s initial $900,000 goal. Read More...
Another worthwhile-seeming game has wandered its way out of the backwaters and hinterlands of Kickstarter: Pixelscopic’s “Devler’s Drop” hit its $75,000 Kickstarter funding goal today, with six days to spare. Read More...
Watching Moonbot Studios’ Kickstarter campaign for “The Golem,” I can help get the impression that they’re punching above their weight: they need to raise a lot of money in the next few weeks. Read More...
Red Thread Games has revealed more of the world of “Dreamfall Chapters,” the third game in the cult classic series that includes “The Longest Journey” and “Dreamfall”: to celebrate surpassing the $1 million mark in the game’s Kickstarter campaign, fans and backers were treated to a look at Europolis. Read More...
In any case, “Dreamfall Chapters” takes place -- as it stands now -- in a sun-drenched forest of Riverwood, dotted by stone houses and campfires. “Keep in mind that this is still very early prototype footage, and as such does not reflect the final quality of the art, animations, frame-rate or [user interface],” Red Thread writes on its Kickstarter page. “The geography, trees, buildings and assets are also temporary, and will change a lot in the months ahead.”
“Riverwood is, after all, a magical, fairy-tale forest, and right now it's not looking particularly magical or fairy-taley,” the update continues.
Still, it’s nice to get a rough idea of how the game is going to work. The most interesting part is the non-intrusive interface, which was designed to fuse the specific, tactile feel of a point-and-click game with the openness of “Dreamfall Chapters’” worlds.
The playable prototype footage caps off a week of updates to the “Dreamfall Chapters” Kickstarter, the most significant of which are Red Thread’s stretch goals for the project: if the fund hits $90k, they’ll release Mac and Linux ports; at $1 million, they’ll start adding new features and locations.
I’ll admit that I’m not too familiar with “The Longest Journey,” but the Kickstarter for “Dreamfall Chapters” is rocketing towards Red Thread’s $850,000 goal, so somebody out there really digs on the action-adventure series. It’s not hard to see why -- just reading the Kickstarter summary of the series suggests a rich, detailed universe full of intrigue and mystery. I have no idea who Kian is, for example, but I do want to know why he’s being tried for treason.
Thankfully, both “The Longest Journey” and its sequel, “Dreamfall” are digitally available on Steam. “Dreamfall Chapters,” however, won’t be out until November of next year.
“The Golem” is a fascinating project in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign by Moonbot Studios, a Shreveport, Louisiana-based collective noted for their multimedia storytelling -- these are the guys that won an Oscar last year for their animated short, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” which was later turned into an iOS App. Read More...
Game designer and Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor has canceled his troubled Kickstarter campaign for “Wildman,” according to a video update.
“I’ve been working in the background to find other ways to keep Gas Powered Games running,” Taylor says in the video. The studio made a name for itself with the “Dungeon Siege” and “Supreme Commander” franchises, but recently laid off the bulk of its staff, citing a lack of funds to keep operating. Read More...
Introversion Software -- the indies behind real-time strategy gems like “Darwinia” and “Multiwinia” -- have announced that they’ve sold over $1 million worth of pre-orders for “Prison Architect,” their upcoming prison management sim.
Players who pre-order “Prison Architect” will gain access to the on-going alpha version of the game in addition to Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of the final release, similar to Klei’s own “Don’t Starve” campaign. Introversion have also included Kickstarter-esque reward tiers for players who give more than the $30.00 asking price. Notably, “Prison Architect”’s highest tier -- a $1000 donation to design one of the game’s unique wardens -- is sold out. Read More...
“Civilization V” designer Jon Shafer has successfully Kickstarted the first game from his recently-founded indie studio, Conifer Games -- less than a week after setting the funding campaign in motion, “At the Gates” has raised the $40,000 needed to finish the game. Kickstarter funding is probably a pretty rough sketch for fan enthusiasm, but it’s clear that Shafer has struck a nerve with fans of strategy games.
“At the Gates” is a strategy game set during the fall of the Roman Empire. It borrows some tropes from the “Civilization” series -- Shafer explains, for example, that it will include “goody huts” to encourage exploration -- but it also looks to innovate, especially with regard to resource management and combat, both of which are affected by the changing seasons. Fields dry out in the summer, and rivers freeze over in the winter, and keeping your cities and troops fed will be a huge concern. Read More...
