Songmasters, the Music Wars – $11k ($20k goal). 23 days left.
Star Citizen – $1.042 million. 10 days left.
Dysis – $27k. Finished.
Distance – A Next Generation Racer – $74k ($150k goal). 7 days left.
Second Quest – $53k. 6 days left.
Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption – $209k ($400k goal). 11 days left.
Shadowgate – $70k ($120k goal). 16 days left.
FORCED – $18k ($40k goal). 21 days left.
MaK – $26k ($230k goal). 10 days left.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted – £54k. 22 days left.
Spud’s Quest – £669 (£5k goal). 20 days left.
Rainbow Nightmare: Libra – $2k ($9k goal). 6 days left.
Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA (Enhanced) – $3k ($6.5k goal)
Lots of new stuff this week! First up, we have Sportsfriends! This is a kickstarter to take several indie local multiplayer sports games like Johann Sebastian Joust, polish them up, and release them officially for the PS3 & home computers. What makes this especially interesting is the fact that Sony is officially backing this project – they posted an article about the kickstarter & the games on the Official Playstation Blog and Sony is also giving them funding via the Indie Pub fund. They’re up to $26k ($150k goal) with 31 days to go.
Next, we have a kickstarter to port an enhanced version of Pier Solar to the PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox 360, and Dreamcast. Pier Solar is an indie RPG that is most famous for the fact that it was released on the Sega Genesis just a couple years ago. The new version will have enhanced HD backgrounds & other features like achievements. It’s up to $76k ($139k goal) with 25 days left to go. What I find especially fascinating is that near half of their funding currently is coming from diehard fans who want the special edition Dreamcast version of the game. Apparently there are a bunch of Dreamcast fans on kickstarter.
Here’s another indie RPG kickstarter – Rainfall: The Soujourn. They have some great screenshots on their kickstarter page (very reminiscent of the Secret of Mana series) although I’m a little worried that they don’t have any gameplay footage yet since creating an entire game with that calibur of visuals is going to be quite the endeavor. They’ve already a little over their goal of $6k with 26 days left.
Finally,we have a blast from the past in the form of a kickstarter for a new Elite game. It’s raised a massive amount of money already, £375k, but their goal is even more ambitious – £1.25 million. Not sure if they’re going to make it, especially with Star Citizen also up for funding but they have 56 days left to go so they’ve got plenty of time to try to spread the word.
Kickstarter available for UK creators is huge, possibly bigger than Kickstarter in the US. While the Game Industry feels predominantly US based these days (Thanks to their big publishers, with Japan only a force on consoles), Europe and especially the UK were the big names in the 8 and 16 Bit Era and made Commodore Computers the big force. Psygnosis, Team 17, Gremlin, Ocean, Sensible Software, Bullfrog, Domark and possibly dozens more that I forgot. A large amount of developers are still there, and them having easier access to funding could spark another massive retro-boom.