The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of February 8

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters – $204k. Finished.
Wildman – $454k ($1.1 mil goal). 7 days left.
Freedom Planet – $19k. 6 days left.
Unwritten: That Which Happened – $41k ($75k goal). 4 days left.
Cryamore – $126k. 17 days left.
Asylum –  $49k ($100k goal). 19 days left.

Big week for new kickstarters! Let’s get started!

First up, we have Dreamfall Chapters – a sequel to the PC adventure games, The Longest Journey, and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. This one has a large goal of $850k but it’s off to a terrific start – it launched today and it’s already at $195k. The developer includes the core team behind the previous games and has obtained the license from the original publisher to continue the series but doesn’t have the outside funding to actually create it. However, given how much money it’s raised in less than a day, I don’t think it’ll have any problems reaching its goal.

Next, we have Jon Shafer’s At the Gates. Jon Shafer is most famous for being the lead designer of Civilization V so it should come as no surprise that his new project is a strategy game that looks to share much in common with the Civilization series. In At the Gates, you lead a barbarian kingdom during the final days of the Roman Empire as you seek to become the new dominant power in Europe. One of the key ways that At the Gates seeks to improve over traditional strategy games is in the mid-to-late game. Most strategy games lose steam as the game progresses as the player’s position becomes solidified but At the Gates seeks to keep things interesting throughout the entire game by introducing new features & challenges as you play. After just a few days, it’s almost at its goal of $40k with $36k raised and 27 days left to go. It’ll be interesting to see how far about its initial goal, it’ll reach.

We have one other high profile new videogame kickstarter this week – Worlds of Wonder. Created by Tom Hall, Worlds of Wonder is a spiritual successor to the Commander Keen series (an early platformer from id Software). World of Wonder won’t just be a new platformer but will also include extensive creation tools for players and fans to make their own platformers. It has a goal of $400k and has only raised $41k so far with 21 days left to go so it’s still got a ways to go – it’ll be interesting to see if it picks up later.

Next up, we have a project I meant to mention last week but forgot to. ROAM is an online co-op action-survival zombie game. Yes, yes, we get a new one of these on kickstarter every week, but their prototype looks really nice already and they have $66k raised ($40k goal) with a couple weeks left to go.

Death Inc. is a strategy game for PC, Mac, and Linux where you control the Grim Reaper and your goal is to infect everyone with the bubonic plague (with infected individuals becoming new minions to help you infect others). It has a great cartoony art style and looks like it’d be a lot of fun to play. It has £39k of its £300k goal with 26 days to go.

Finally, we have Delver’s Drop. An Action/RPG with roguelike influences, Delver’s Drop features a mix of handcrafted & randomized elements, multiple classes, puzzles, and Zelda-style combat. They have some solid gameplay footage already but they’ve only raised $3k of their $75k goal so far (32 days left to go).

That’s it for this week!