The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

[mario]

The game Jumpman Forever which Matt mentioned in his most recent project update seems really interesting!
They are very close to reaching their goal. In order to achieve that they may need another high tier backer. I think it'd be great if Infinitap Games gets a splash screen or an in-game supporter link in that game, it'd advertise very well Retrograde and Neverending Nightmares.

[Harry Sunderland]

The game Jumpman Forever which Matt mentioned in his most recent project update seems really interesting!
They are very close to reaching their goal. In order to achieve that they may need another high tier backer. I think it'd be great if Infinitap Games gets a splash screen or an in-game supporter link in that game, it'd advertise very well Retrograde and Neverending Nightmares.

Why am I not surprised that someone named "Mario" supports jumpman? Anyway, congratulations to Jumpman on getting funded.

Now let's just hope the other game Matt plugged (which is a project I haven't rooted so hard for since Neverending Nightmares) pulls through, Super World Karts GP!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/one ... d-karts-gp

I really hope to see success for this game, but it's looking even more dire than NN and Lobodestroyo! They have < 70 hours to raise almost 40% of their funds. Granted it's only $6000 AUD ($5400 USD), but things are looking a bit dire for this one.

I hope for the best though. I'd love to play some classic Mode 7 action on my Ouya! Who knows, if it has online, maybe we can form a little NN online community of players, especially if the online is cross-platform . Imagine throwing a melon at Matt's head :p.

[LobsterSundew]

Midora is inspired by top-down Zelda games. If you look at the Kicktraq data you can see this campaign had a very slow start. There was no pitch video at launch which hurt it a lot. The project page has also seen a lot of improvement since then.

Another game with a demo is James Journey of Existence. The project itself is a bit rough, but the game's blend of 2D visuals and a 3D environment is interesting. I'm concerned that the goal is too low for the amount of sprites needed.

December was a bad time to run a campaign. It is interesting that I saw so many underprepared campaigns launch mid-December. I assume many of those project creators went on their holidays so the thought they would have time of school or work to run a campaign. Now that it is 2014 the quality should start to go back up.

If you enjoyed Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon then you might enjoy the 80s flavoured film Kung Fury. The trailer starts at 00:30 in the pitch video. If funded the project creator wants to release the film online for free.

The second project I've backed for 2014 is another film project called Warriors of Kitri. Jump to 02:17 in the pitch video for the good parts. Visually it is impressive for just one animator.

Fight The Dragon has been getting barely any new backers since December 22nd when looking at the daily numbers. 1 to 3 backers per day is not enough with a goal that size.

Long Night has yet to exceed 90 backers which surprised me. I thought that one was strong enough not to get buried.

Path of Shadows announced it will eventually run a Kickstarter. It is a stealth game with a strong art style.

[LobsterSundew]

LEVEL is a 2D puzzle platformer with a sliding environments mechanic and a demo. That has been the only new project that launched recently that I thought was worth mentioning. The Video Games category is not really doing much right now. Shining Empire has a nice song in its pitch video.

Indie Dev Supershow is streaming this weekend with a number of Kickstarter-funded games involved like Dyscourse and War of Omens.

Kickstarter released a slideshow for 2013, but if you have a Kickstarter account you probably already saw it. 452 people had backed more than 100 projects according to the slideshow for 2012. Now it has increased to 975 people having backed more than 100. I find that encouraging for the health of the platform as I often see such backers (At least in the Games category) being the earliest backers helping to get the momentum of small projects rolling.

[matt]

I suppose kickstarter is a bit slow because not many people wanted to run a project over the holidays. I feel like that hurt "Fight the Dragon", which canceled their campaign. I think now is a good time to do a project on kickstarter for tax considerations - at least in the US because you get more time to spend your money before you have to pay taxes on it.

I was quite proud to cross the 100 project barrier this year!

[LobsterSundew]

Now big projects are starting to launch.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is an MMO from game designer Brad McQuaid. I find a lot of pieces of this campaign are very rough, so I'm watching to see if it will stall out in the middle or not. A $800,000 goal is very ambitious.

Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians is a tactics RPG with people who worked on Final Fantasy Tactics involved.

Default Dan tales the idea of reversing what are enemies and powerups in a standard 2D platformer. It is an interest premise.

Project Rain World takes place in the world of slugcats. The animations look like so much care has gone into them and the backgrounds are impressive.

Both The Banner Saga and Broken Age are about to deliver their first episodes. People will be using them as examples of if Kickstarter's model works or not in their arguments.

[matt]

Things are getting exciting again on kickstarter! The Banner Saga and Broken Age have both released to good reviews. I have Broken Age in my steam queue waiting to be played. I was thinking of waiting until episode 2, but I'm not sure I can resist the temptation.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Broken Age Act I is fantastic! It surpassed my expectations.

It's fairly short, coming in around 3 hours or so, depending on how much time you spend checking out all the inventory combinations and dialogue, and the interface is simple with the puzzles on the easy side, but the game looks amazing and the story and attention to detail are top notch.

It's very polished for a "beta", really I believe they just released it like that to give the backers their promised early shot at it and give themselves some more time for minor polish. I'd recommend playing it as soon as you get a chance, it will be a while until the next Act (July-ish I think?), so you can just replay the whole thing then. Outside of some minor animation glitches it feels like a full Act I already.

[matt]

On the 28th, they are releasing the full game on Steam (and it's no longer early access), so I think they basically polished the first half to completion, and then are going to use the funds from the sales of the "Season Pass" to finance the development of the rest of the game.

While some backers were disappointed with this arrangement, their original budget of $400k for both the game and the documentary would have only been able to finance a very small game, so I'm happy because I'm getting a much bigger and better game than I expected when I pledged.

I am looking forward to it. Maybe I'll try it on my Steam Machine I got at dev days. I'm trying to get the hang of the new controller. It's VERY different.

[matt]

It's on IndieGogo, but I'm excited about The Lady Game. I really like the art style, and it's really, really weird. It is similar in theme (but not in execution) to Neverending Nightmares in that it is an exploration of anxiety and depression. I backed it and hope they can get their funding!