Welcome to the third installment of my weekly Kickstarter Video Game Report! These normally come out at the end of the week, on or around Friday, but I’m leaving to go to Boston to show off our upcoming new game at PAX East so I’m writing this week’s installment early. Not to worry though – there’s lots of interesting stuff to report!
First up, the recap!
The Wasteland 2 kickstarter got a shot of adrendaline when they announced that Obsidian Entertainment & Chris Avellone (of Planescape: Torment fame) would help with the project if they reached $2.1 million. They’re currently at $1.9 million, quite a jump in just a few days. ARG Zombies and Takedown both made surprising comebacks and managed to reach their goals in the nick of time. The Banner Saga has slowed down, but it’s still very comfortably over its goal with $360k. My new pick for last week, Valdis Story is killing it with nearly $16k ($8k goal) and over 3 weeks left to go. And not surprisingly, the Vic Ireland/Monkey Paw Games kickstarter Class of Heroes 2 kickstarter isn’t doing so hot with only $59k of their $500k goal reached and their momentum almost completely gone.
One of the most interesting news for today is that Jane Jensen (Gabriel Knight) has started a new studio and is looking to fund their first games with a kickstarter. Donating not only gives you 1 or more of their releases this coming year, but also gives you a vote as to which of 3 projects they choose to tackle. Gabriel Knight is generally considered to be one of the finest point & click adventure games of all time so it’ll be interesting to watch her new studio’s progress.
In related news, other Sierra Online veterans have recently started a kickstarter to reboot the Leisure Suit Larry franchise with a remake of the first game. The kickstarter has only been up for a day or two and they’ve already raised over $150k of their $500k goal so this one looks like it’s probably getting funded.
I was a huge fan of the old Shadowrun SNES RPG and so it is with great excitement that I point you to this kickstarter to make a new Shadowrun RPG video game. It’s going to be turn-based, it’s going to implement a dialogue system similar to the SNES game “with a new twist or two” and the project is staffed by many Shadowrun veterans including the original creator. They’re only at $29k of their $400k goal so this one NEEDS your support. EDIT: I guess the Shadowrun kickstarter was still relatively new when I posted. A few hours later and they’re at $141k. Still should be supported though. 🙂
This week’s pick for smaller kickstarter to watch out for is Spriter. Although not actually a game, Spriter is software to create sprites for use in games. Looks like a quality project and at $22k+ of their $25k goal already with over 3 weeks to go, this one is likely to succeed.
That’s it for this week’s early installment! Stay tuned for next week! And if you’re going to be attending PAX East, be sure to stop by booth 678 and say hi!
EDIT: Breaking news! Richard Garfield (creator of Magic: The Gathering) just started a kickstarter for a GPS-based iOS game called Map Monsters. Modest goal of $40k.
Honestly Vic Irelands biggest issue was picking a game nobody wanted. If they had waited and tried for a game that they could release on both vita and ps3, that could share the same collectors edition so they could be listed in different tiers with a $20 difference entirely due to handheld vs console prices, then things would of been a lot different. Plenty of us old Working Design’s fans want collectors editions, but not of games we will likely never own the system to play. Vic almost broke my heart with his kickstarter. I just hope he tries again, and this time with a bit more thought.
As for Shadowrun, already backed and looking forward to it.
I’m really looking forward to Shadowrun RPG, though I don’t recall the SNES game. The Xbox game wasn’t totally horrible, but was definitely a disappointment.
i do feel bad for vic ireland as i was a huge working designs fan, but sadly he is a dinosaur and needs to realize that a physical piece of media is not going to entice gamers to collectively give him half a million dollars. If he were to promise a translation with that classic working designs charm in a purely digital release and the give away art books and other assorted collector goodies to different donation tiers then his project would likely have more success but from what i have read the digital release will not even have the same translation as the hard copy game he is proposing. Perhaps when this kickstarter fails, and it will, he will wake up to the reality that doing things the way his previous company did and expecting nostalgia from fans to do the rest just won’t cut it these days.
Shadowrun Kickstarter not doing well? I’m so in! Thanks for the report Robert!
Valdis story looked amazing, thanks for this update segment, I really like it, and WOAH SHADOWRUN RPG? (the snes game was excellent)