Alstein
3687
A non-gaming Western anime KS that looks pretty interesting. Going to wait and see how well it does before backing though.
Idol Minds (the game studio where I am lucky to work with many wonderful people) has recently begun a Kickstarter!
The game is called Shutterbug. It is a nature macrophotography game which you old skool gamers might recognize as inspired a bit by Pokemon Snap! You get down deep into your backyard lawn or a rainforest floor, search out rare insects and other small critters, and try to snap photographs of them. You get points for capturing them in interesting poses or for following simple rules of good photo composition.
The game is planned for PC and Mac with stretch goals for mobile devices. We have built a basic playable prototype already. The team is extremely experienced and knows how to make games. As you can tell, our goal is ambitious but honest about what it takes to make a game with high quality art and solid gameplay design.
Of course it would be fantastic if any of you wanted to back the project. Also, because we feel like there’s a chance some people who would really be interested in the game might not stumble upon a video game kickstarter, if you know someone it might appeal to I would really appreciate you spreading the word. Finally, any feedback on the Kickstarter (hopefully the video is not too porny) would help us tune our message.
Cool idea and the campaign is a nice tidy package with two (2!) succinct and helpful videos. However, it seems to me $400k is awfully steep for something with such niche appeal. I appreciate that Idol Minds needs the amount they need to actually make the game, but I can’t imagine this is going to fund. :(
-Tom
I think there’s a market for it, but unfortunately I’m not sure that it’s the same market as people who use Kickstarter. My wife loves very casual tourism simulators like Endless Ocean or Afrika.
geggis
3691
So I was going to create a dedicated thread for this because it’s such a clever and unprecedented idea with a lot of potential, but I figured here would be as a good a place as any. It’s nearly funded already but figured some folks around here might be interested too.
Rather than try and explain it myself, here’s an overview:
Enter the world of Eco, where you must collaborate to a build civilization in a finite shared world, using resources from a fully simulated ecosystem where your every action affects the lives of countless species. Will you and your fellow citizens collaborate successfully, creating laws to guide the actions of the group, finding a balance that takes resources from the ecosystem without damaging it? Or will the world be destroyed by short-sighted choices that pollute the environment in exchange for immediate resource gains? Or, do players act too slowly, and the world is consumed by a disaster that could have been avoided if you developed the right technology? In Eco, you must find a balance as a group if the world is to survive.
The possibilities are fascinating and I really hope they can pull it off. They’ve had a working prototype in classrooms but now they’re hoping to develop it further into something far more ambitious and ultimately exciting and involving.
Oh, and it’s by Strange Loop Games, the devs who made the excellent Vessel, a really smart and underrated puzzle game involving automatons and liquid physics.
JoshL
3693
Vessel was awesome. I’m not sure if Eco is my kind of game, but I’m tempted to back it just on the strength of their resume.
Russ Pitts, who cofounded Polygon and did a lot of their best long form pieces, and who was previously the EIC of The Escapist, among a ton of other things, is doing a Kickstarter for a documentary series on game makers:
Universim, which was successfully Kickstarted back in May 2014, is asking for more money. Not from crowd-funding. They are seeking angel investment from someone on Fundable.
The funding on Kickstarter guaranteed that we would be able to deliver all of the features we promised in the final game. Everything is working out as we envisioned, but we know that we could be doing so much more. Firstly, we are still operating internationally as somewhat of a virtual company. Our plans have always been to open a physical, centralised studio once The Universim was released in a finished state. We realise now that starting a physical studio sooner will boost development speed significantly and allow us to work together full-time in the same office building. Not only that, we would also be able to hire additional team members to do some more heavy lifting.
My friend Patrick Leder is Kickstarting an asymmetric strategy boardgame with a fantasy theme called Trove: The Crystal Caverns: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2074786394/trove-the-crystal-caverns
It is his second Kickstarter and (hopefully) third published game. The two previous games were a cute little game called Five Fingered Severance about trying to fill up on ill-gotten loot and goof off as much as possible before quitting your convenience store job, competing with the other staff; and a light trick taking card game with a Halloween theme called Trick or Treat (this was the first Kickstarted game). I appreciated both but they were a little too lightweight for my personal preferences. Trove, though, is a bit meatier and seems from the three playtest games I participated in to have a lot of nice subtleties of strategy.
Basically, there is a Knight, who has health, equipment, and quests - she feels something like a traditional RPG hero, and her goal is to find and slay the Dragon. There are Goblins, who come in three different tribes with different focuses, and use numbers, monsters and magic to sneak around in the shadows and ambush the Knight, with the goal of killing her. There is the Dragon, who starts asleep and gradually wakes up by achieving various goals (like eating Goblins), becoming a whirlwind of activity and destruction. Its goal is to escape the cavern. And there is the Cave itself, which can manipulate the structure of the playfield, lays out treasures (which all three other players benefit from in different ways), and is the one that picks events to deal out to the Knight when one is called for. The Cave’s goal is to delay all of the other players’ victories by manipulating their positions until they can take out the structural supports of the cavern and collapse the whole thing, killing everyone. Everyone’s role has a bunch of cool toys to play with, everyone’s victory is tough, and the asymmetry is just lovely. It’s $45. I think it’s worth it, and I think it’d be right up some of your alleys.
(Also, I’ve not been able to see the game with the full artwork, since it was all playtest materials, but the artist is great from the little I’ve seen.)
Wow, thanks so much for mentioning this, malk. I clicked on the link before finishing your post and then backed the game before even getting halfway down the page. That looks absolutely brilliant.
-Tom
mok
3698
Wonder if he is going to end up with trademark problems.
If you know him you might want to tell him he probably will need to change his name before he goes to market, though the mark is specific to online gaming - which is interesting. Usually the umbrella is much wider.
And I thought I was done with boardgame kickstarters after High Frontier…
Backed.
Trove sounds really interesting. Definitely keeping this on my radar.
(responding to the post below) Part of what makes the game interesting to me is the asymmetry. Plus the fact that one of the players is a … Cave! That’s intriguing enough to hook me (and the game looks like it will deliver on the promise, too, which helps quite a bit).
If the trademark is that specific, surely he’s all right? I dunno.
And I’m glad to see I was right about this being of interest here. :)
Yeah thanks for posting that Malkav11! That looks like a perfect game for the family as an alternative to our Munchkin nights. Backed!
mok
3703
That’s my point, I dunno either, but is it one of these things you would like to find out? ;>
For me that is an indicator there could be trouble. It is not that specific, one can argue any mobile app is online. One does not need the hassle of dealing with cease and desist letters. I doubt if the title is really that important. It definitely looks like a sequel to a known product by the way it is framed. and Trove is relatively new IP - and they have taken the time to register the name - I would be wary.
I would just ping him on it.
I think it’s worth addressing, certainly, but a board game seems pretty definitively not an online game. AFAIK there is no mobile app, and that would be well beyond the scope of the project.
rowe33
3705
I actually backed this one already then I saw your post - game looks very cool!
mok
3706
Oh, then I was mistaken. I thought it was an app. Heh. Time for another quote:
