Kickstarting and Screaming

Oh my god that’s like the epitome of Kickstarter campaigns you should be wary of.

Are they kidding with this? Their “legendary team” is:

  • An Astrophysicist who knows nothing about making games
  • A “head of story” who’s known for comic books and…knows nothing about making games
  • A team of concept artists who…don’t claim to know anything about actually making games

And then they acknowledge this:

The funding goal via our Kickstarter campaign will not cover the financial requirements to develop Space Odyssey.

The team behind Space Odyssey initiated the conceptualization process of the game through self-funding, then sought outside funding that’s earmarked towards development.

It’s basically no different from all of the kids of message boards who claim to have great “ideas” yet don’t know anything about why game development is such an impossible undertaking.

No one in game developing is lacking ideas. What’s lacking are enough knowledgeable people who know how to say “no” to projects like this.

Bah, they have until Dec 2018 to deliver. No problem. ;>

Can modern computer data storage contain a realistic simulation of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s ego, though?

It seems the actual game developers connected to Space Odyssey are Big Red Button Entertainment, creators of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

How dare you sir. That man is a national treasure AND WILL NOT ACCEPT ANYTHING OTHERWISE.

INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

He sure is. Just ask him! #NoCarlSagan

(Kidding. I like the visibility he gives science. But his approach sometimes feels a bit self-promotional. But hey, he’s having fun and doing good, so…)

I miss Carl Sagan terribly.

Update for Darkest Night 2E backers: their new fulfillment window is December 2017.

After all the trouble they’ve had with this game, I can’t imagine VPG will be doing miniatures in the future.

Level 99 Games launched a reprint/2E campaign for Argent: The Consortium yesterday. Worker-placement game themed around teachers at totally-not-Hogwarts competing to be the new chancellor. The new edition includes errata and redesigned miniatures with base rings.

The campaign includes a new mini-expansion at all reward levels $10 and up, upgrade options for existing owners, and the game itself for $60. Barring anything bad happening in the next five weeks, I’ll be in for a copy, since I’ve enjoyed Level 99’s other work and Argent sounds great.

Also in board games, The Stonebound Saga (formerly Land of Zion - they determined too many people were seeing religious allusions that weren’t really there and changed the name for this relaunch) is finally doing well this time around, and has five days left. $39 plus shipping for a turn-based tactics game that uses character cards instead of miniatures. Counting stretch goals currently reached, the game will include a whopping 51 characters to draft your team from.

Argent is probably my favorite worker placement game. I went in for the mini-expansion and upgrade pack, myself.

I talked myself out of Argent a couple of years ago, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it a second time.

A few cool new RPG Kickstarters in progress:
Spellbound Kingdoms: Arcana, the first sourcebook for Spellbound Kingdoms. Not familiar with Spellbound Kingdoms? Neither was I, but after reading the following review I am sold as fuck.
http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/nifara/spellbound-kingdoms/
Highlights include caring about things enough literally making you immortal (and this applies for villains too), combat styles (including magical) that you navigate around as a map of varied and increasingly powerful maneuvers, being raised by wolves or being a type of troll that first turned up dismembered and shipped in a bunch of mysterious shipping crates being common backgrounds, and an engineer class where you can build giant ziggurats and animated statue armies as class features.

The Spire from Grant Howitt (designer of games like Goblin Quest and Honey Heist, as well as a co-designer on the current edition of Paranoia), a game about dark elves carrying out revolutionary acts of terror and subterfuge against the oppressive high elf regime in a massive vertical city.

Plus as you advance, so does your rebellion, and so new character abilities come with a rapidly destabilizing society, which is pretty damn cool.

And finally, Legacy: Life in the Ruins 2E. A Powered by the Apocalypse game about guiding a dynasty through exploration, rebuilding and survival in the ruins of the world before. This is a revised edition that will add polish and a bunch of additional campaign frames and such. I’m a sucker for a wide spectrum of PBTA concepts because I love the system and people have done a lot of creative and cool stuff with it, but this is one of my favorite ideas, for sure. (Caveat - I haven’t actually played it. Like the other two, just hooked by the hooks, y’know?)

Time for me to pimp the Empire Deluxe Combined Edition Kickstarter. it already has more pledges than the latest Doom had with their kickstarter!

(Yeah, ok so Doom did not have one…)

Backed.

Backed too. I played so much Empire as a wee lad.

Yeah, it was one of the gateways into strategy games for me back in the day.

Does Empire still matter in a world with Advanced Tactics Gold?

IT ALWAYS MATTERS GET OUT…