Before I begin this week’s installment of Kickstarter news, let me thank everyone who stopped by our booth at PAX East last week. The whole convention was quite possibly the most work I’ve ever done in a 3 day period but it was rewarding to meet fans, reviewers, and other developers, and the response for our game was fantastic. Oh and the panel was amazing. Thank you.
Wasteland 2 is nearing the end of its road with 4 days left to go and $2.35 million raised. At $3 million, they’ll add free mod tools to the games so hopefully it’ll get a last minute boost. The Banner Saga is still going strong with $482k raised and a little over a week left. Valdis Story is up to $24k funding (300%+ their goal). Shadowrun Returns is doing fantastic with $858k raised ($400k goal) and 16 days left. The Leisure Suit Larry and Jane Jensen kickstarters are both at about half funding with a few weeks left to go. And Spriter is going strong and has passed its goal of $25k.
Class of Heroes and Map Monsters are both failing big-time. I’ve discussed Class of Heroes’ many faults in the past, but as for Map Monsters, my guess is that freemium is instant death to a kickstarter.
Republique is the big new kickstarter these days. Billed as a stealth survival game, it sounds quite cool. Only problem is that it’s only coming out on iOS. At $55k of their $500k goal and a month left to go, it has a chance – hopefully the lack of platforms doesn’t hurt them too much.
The popular Yogscast is getting turned into a video game called Yogventures. Looks to be a 3D open world game with nice cartoony graphics. It’s at $174k of its $250k goal so this one’s almost definitely getting done.
As far as kickstarters that bother me go, we have Echoes of Eternia. Lots of grand promises but a few pieces of concept art and a couple screenshots full of stock RPGMaker tiles doesn’t exactly prove that you have the ability to make an epic 30+ hour RPG complete with voice acting, especially when you’re a brand new studio. Comments like we’ll use part of the funding for “Legalities like Copyrights and Trademarks” makes me think they really don’t know what they’re doing. The project is already past its funding goal of $10k (at $15k right now) but I predict this is one project that won’t actually get finished… or if it does, it’ll be several years after the 1 year goal they have right now.
Star Command had one of the most successful video game kickstarters before Double Fine Adventures came in and changed everything. It sounded like quite a fun little game – basically a lighthearted non-licensed Star Trek sim. Now, there’s a teaser trailer:
I didn’t really see anything new that I wanted to recommend for this week so how about something that’s been up for a while? Team Notion is a cute beat-em-up that only has a few days left. They’re only at 50% of their modest $3k goal – why not give them a last-minute bump past their goal?
Hi Slidetoplay !
We launched a Kickstarter project for our video game Sword Of Justice developped by 4Flash (osx, ios, linux, win) . We would like you to take a look at it and help us by sharing it to your readers that may be interested in supporting the developpement of our game. If you could do a short news about it would be great. Also do not hesitate to ask any questions you would like about the project, we will gladly answer.
You can find out more about Sword Of Justice from our Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1379812006/sword-of-justice
Thank you in advance for your interest and support!
Best regards
4FLASHINTERACiVE /wave
And what happens if a project is funded and the author disappears with the money?
They’re helping the wrong underdogs then. 15$ is enough to discourage people from pledging to anything else ever again when they get burned by people who don’t know what they’re doing.
Known as taking a chance. People like to help underdogs. $15 bucks isn’t much to attempt to help an underdog, but as I learned recently, thanks to kickstarter, those $15 donations really begin to add up if you get too hooked though.
What amazes me is with all the old-school RPG out there already released, why would anyone backup a project they don’t know much about instead of just purchasing a game?
It’s sad that everyone in the comments for Echoes of Eternia are saying how great the game looks. When there’s nothing from the game being shown. They’re just wowed by the pretty concept art.
If a project fails to reach its goal, it doesn’t get any money (and none of the people who pledged money have to pay).
Always amazed at how easily people blindly donate to other people without any credentials.
Kickstarter has become the new best way to swindle people… *sigh*
This “Echoes of Eternia” has good art but other than that very little to distinguish it from the other RPG maker games out there (that said some RM games also have excellent art).
Anybody knows what happens if a project fails to reach its goal? Does it still keep the money made?
I’m with you on Echoes of Eternia. It’s clearly a team of enthusiastic anime and RPG fans with no game-making experience who seem to put a lot of emphasis on voice acting. They’re in way over their heads in terms of scope and will absolutely not live up to their grand designs. There’s no way they’ll turn out a professional-quality title in a year. I feel bad for their investors.
It will be interesting to see how Kickstarter evolves this year. Will it be able to sustain current momentum via the “Kicking it Forward”? Will we see an ever increasing glut of opportunists like you pointed out? One huge complaint I have (and it may be just due to ignorance) with Kickstarter is the volume of projects make it difficult to see what is available. A search function that allowed you to look at category tags like Youtube would be beneficial. IE type in “Role Playing Game” and you get 36 results but not one of the ones mentioned in this article show up.