Although there’s a separate thread, perhaps some folks here have missed it. The tactical wizard combat game Chaos Reborn is in its last few days, definitely needs that final boost if it’s going to make it. Julian Gollop has made the prototype publicly available to try out, the community is friendly, give it a shot.
Kickstarter:
Prototype:
http://chaos1.vm.bytemark.co.uk/ChaosReborn/client_web.html
Julian Gollop also appears on the latest Game Design Roundtable and talks about his career, Chaos & Chaos Reborn.
That’s an interesting interview, really helps to flesh out the metagame / strategic layer that Julian has in mind, which is something we haven’t seen yet. I really think it would have benefited the campaign to have fleshed this out a bit more in the description, perhaps with some screen mockups or at least some illustration in how it all ties together. Also, more detail on the differences between the single player design and the co-op / multiplayer battles.
Looks like the $120 tier includes a CD soundtrack, but the $50 tier includes the digital soundtrack.
Chaplin
2732
I just spotted this one at the last minute. Super Dungeon Explore: The Forgotten King (essentially SDE 2.0) is in its last days/hours. SDE is a chibi styled tactical dungeon miniature rumble where a team of heroes fight it out destroying monster spawners as they collect loot in preparation for the inevitable boss battle. The game is a dungeon romp with a heavy nod towards JRPG or Gauntlet styled video games (the monster player is the “consul” and hitting monsters can cause them to drop hearts, potions, or loot). I like the original SDE a fair bit, but a few things kept it from greatness. From reading the kickstarter rules previews, it looks like all my reservations are going away. New elements/ features are:
[ul]
[li]Resurrection options (no more massive downtime for the poor guy who gets whacked early)[/li][li]Streamlined (faster loot, meaner critters, no fiddly combat trackers, decaying spawners, etc all speed up the game)[/li][li]Exploration cards add the “crawl” back to add random events, story beats, traps, and a general sense of the unknown[/li][li]New “arcade” mode adds a secondary, fully cooperative mode where the monsters are card driven[/li][li]Backwards compatible (card updates will bring all the old SDE content up to SDE:FK rules including arcade cards)[/li][li]Card updates for existing releases will have an errata and balancing pass[/li][li]Besides just heroes and monsters, maps will have independent “creeps” creatures[/li][li]Finally(!!), 2 more map sets (a jungle/forest and a dungeon one)[/li][li]Content has hit a critical mass as now there will be “builds” not only for the hero party, but in the Consul’s choice of spawner war bands (lots of interesting synergy choices now), mini bosses, and bosses.[/li][li]Options to play mini bosses as heroes (and some heroes as mini bosses)[/li][/ul]
With these changes, SDE is seriously poised to move to the head of the class for my Hero Quest/ Descent type dungeon crawl board games.
Anyway, it looks like nothing is exclusive to the kickstarter, but you do get a heck of a lot of stuff for what will probably be the same price as the main box at retail. It has hit all but one of a truck load of stretch goals at $830k with 59 hours to go. Many of said stretch goals are included “loot” in the basic pledge (again, likely to be the same as retail for just a SDE:FK box).
Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King kickstarter page
I’m going to drop this in a couple places on this forum (this thread, and the Movies forum), because I’m not really sure where it belongs, not everyone reads every thread, and I really, really want to see it get made.
One of the things I saw at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon this weekend was the trailer/short film intro for The Dreamlands, a movie based on a few of the Dreamlands cycle of Dunsany-inspired short stories by HP Lovecraft. The production company that is trying to get it made is responsible for the excellent adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Color out of Space” (Die Farbe) a few years ago. I’d love to see this get made- people tend to ignore the Dreamlands stuff he wrote, and it’s always been some of my favorite. Some of the trailer really looks like they’re channeling Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall). Awesome.
hepcat
2734
I love the idea behind this one. Giving the blind a chance to play boardgames via overlays with braille and other mechanisms just sounds like such a cool thing.
Regarding the Outcast Reboot HD, I almost regret pledging after seeing this screenshot in update #5. Not impressed.
Mark_L
2736
I’m too late! Too laaaate :(
hepcat
2737
I play Super Dungeon Explore every year at Origins. It’s one of those games I should dislike, but end up laughing my ass off every time I play. I would’ve jumped on this if it weren’t for kickstarter overload on my part.
mok
2738
When there is money to give, there is always a way.
Chaplin
2739
I don’t know. I tried to get into Arcadia Quest (still no survey out), but they told me to wait for the gimpy box that has less than half of the KS exclusive primary game content. That is me paraphrasing their answer.
Vitirr
2740
The Weird Story of Waldemar the Warlock, a classic point and click adventure game with a nice look, made by old time fans of the genre and an original design that will allow players to experience two different stories with completely different plot lines, depending on player decision. It also have a short demo to let the player have a taste of what the game will look like (expect harder and more elaborated puzzles though).
They are currently struggling to get necessary 40000£ in Kickstarter, barely over 10000£ and 10 days to end. Minimum pledge is 13£ (about 21$) to get the game.
It looks great actually and can’t figure out how they haven’t manage to get more funds and attention, so if you’re interested spread the word.
thither
2741
Looks like Forsaken Fortress has crashed and burned. From the first link:
First thing I realized is that $121k is just not enough to make an open-world, base building game like this. We honestly didn’t know how much we would need because we have never done anything like this before. Because of that, artist Linlin(working on rewards now) and I, Haoran are the only devs left on this project, besides some generous helpers such as our great forum manager orange. So basically yes, we are pretty much bankrupted. We do have preserved the money for kickstarter rewards and the tiny income from paypal will ensure we get the rewards done no problem. But as for as the project goes, the progress will be much, much slower than last year because we couldn’t afford to hire any more people. So in conclusion, the disaster was caused by too ambitious and too little planning and money.
[…]
That was just what is happening to the project, lack of resources, labor and everything(our own FF base is in a critical condition of lacking food, companion and surrounded by bandits). We jumped on the boat with so much passion and hard work, but maybe a little lack of experience. After all FF is our first project and it seems to be a really good idea. I really appreciate your donation and participation, without that FF is still on the paper. So if you like the game, fantastic, and if not, you still have supported the first experiment of this kind and if we did get a chance to make FF2, it would only be better base on all these experience gained. Well guys that was the truth and again you are welcome to express your thought, as long as its not racist and threatening. I will keep fixing what I can fix.
mok
2742
That is an interesting failure. I do not know the individuals involved, but it is interesting that they said they were NYC based, took ~110K, moved to China a while back, put out some sort of software this week, and declared they were done. They say they worked on it, and that may be so. it is also very possible the alpha is about a months work and the cash was pocketed.
I do see there were a few updates with some very Unity looking screen shots but still I wonder about the true effort - whether this was a project management miscalculation or a purposeful ruse. Has anyone seen the alpha they released this week? anyone follow this project?
Making games is a lot more work than people think.
LMN8R
2744
Every time I see someone state “That game shouldn’t cost <X> to make!”, I respond with something along the lines of “ok, tell me exactly how much you think it should cost, and exactly how you came to that number”.
Most of the time, it’s because they didn’t consider that people deserve to be paid, and paying people is expensive.
It’s why I loved Patrick Klepek’s article so much:
People have this weird idea that developers on a Kickstarter game shouldn’t get paid. As if everyone is just going to be an unpaid intern eating Ramen all the time.
geewhiz
2746
I think it is safer to invest in a Kickstarter where the dev income is included in the projections.
