The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of August 10

Recap

Ouya – Finished with $8.59 million.
Penny Arcade Kickstarter – $449k with 5 days left.
Defense Grid expansions/sequel – $245k ($250k goal) with 4 days left.
Shadowrun Online – $305k ($500k goal) with 4 days left.
Castle Story – $426k with 15 days left.
Volgarr the Viking – $25k with 13 days left.

The big new thing since last we met is the Oculus Rift – a virtual reality headset. The kickstarter has the support of industry legends like Gabe Newell (Valve), John Carmack (id), and Cliff Bleszinski (Epic) so to say that there’s a lot of excitement about it in the developing community is an understatement. Keep in mind that the kickstarter is for dev kits – if you want one for gaming purposes, they recommend you wait for the official release since the finished product will be better than what they have right now. It’s currently up to $1.5 million, way above its goal of $250k.

Next up is Project Giana. The Giana series started out as a Super Mario Bro. knockoff, but since then got a solid DS installment in the form of Giana Sisters DS. This kickstarter is to release a new game in the series for the PC, XBLA, and PSN. The big feature of the new game is the ability to switch between 2 different versions of the world and main character at will. They’re up to $58k with a goal of $150k and 21 days left.

There is a kickstarter for Cheetahman 2: The Lost Levels. Not sure what to say on this one so um, check it out. It’s at $29k ($65k goal) with 27 days left.

The creators of Ascension have teamed up with Richard Garfield for SolForge, a free-to-play collectible card game for iOS and PC. Previous free-to-play kickstarters haven’t seen a lot of success but this one is up to $85k ($250k goal) with 31 days left so it has a chance.

That’s it for this week!