The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

[matt]

Patreon is interesting because you don't necessarily need a project. My friend Megan Fox (no not that Megan Fox - the creator of the successful Hot Tin Roof kickstarter) put up a page to support her making indie games: http://www.patreon.com/meganfox

It's an interesting idea... I wonder if supporting an indie developer is something appealing to fans. I think crowdfunding is new and exciting thing for content creators, and it's cool that there are more options than there were years ago. I suspect things like kickstarter or the more product driven patreons might be better.

It's strange that Haunts chose Go to develop in. For a long time google had a huge disclaimer NOT to use Go because it was an experimental language. The game seemed interesting, and it's definitely a bummer it didn't turn out.

In general, I think any project looking to hire a programmer is a bit worrisome. I'm not trying to brag, but I think pretty much everyone who has worked with me would describe me as a REALLY good programmer. Despite that, even I have trouble finding programmers to work on my projects. (I lucked out getting Dan on Neverending Nightmares) Programming games is tough! I think back to where I was in programming right out of college (over 10 years ago), and it is kind of embarrassing... :-/

[Harry Sunderland]

Let's hope Erin can more than double her funds in 24 hrs!

[ranger_lennier]

Yeah, Nintendo is really trying to make indie development easy on the WiiU easy. We were applying to be licensed developers, but I'm not really sure what happened with that. I think they were supposed to get back, and I never followed up. I suspect they will have no shortage of indie games given that I think they announced they are giving free Unity licenses to Nintendo developers. (That doesn't help us because we don't use Unity...)

I heard about the free Unity licenses. Is that for anyone interested in trying it out, or do they make sure someone is an established game developer, has specific plans, etc.?

[matt]

I think it's the latter. You still have to become a licensed WiiU developer and buy dev kits, which is a pain although not as much as it used to be.

Also, in terms of new crowdfunding projects, a new project launched that I'm sure everyone will be lining up to fund - Shaq Fu on IndieGogo! hahahaha The first game was so good that I can see why everyone would pay for the sequel. hahah

I think it's pretty lame that it's flexible funding at a goal of $450k. What happens if the game gets like $10k total? Will Shaq make up the difference? I hope so!

[LobsterSundew]

Proven Lands is a sci-fi game about surviving after a crashlanding on an unkown world. The atmosphere for this campaign is strong. I hope to reaches its goal.

Duelyst is a tactics game that was prototyped as a tabletop game. It has some very strong art assets and members with industry experience, but it launched on Saturday and the pacing of the rewards seems very stretched out.

Ashen Rift is a survival horror game about a man and his flashlight-wearing pitbull in a post-apocalypic world.

The new Shaq-Fu project looks like it is already struggling. It is possible to use comedy in a campaign, but overall the tone is too comedic. There are many things to nitpick. I do like the premise, but as noted by Matt the flexible funding campaign model places more risk onto the backers.

[matt]

I think in addition, the fact that Shaq is a millionaire, and it seems like a vanity project may make people reluctant to back it. Spike Lee found success with his kickstarter even though his pitch was pretty weak in my opinion, so maybe hat's not enough to deter people. Maybe it's because the original Shaq Fu was so terrible.

[gagaplex]

Here's one I just decided to back; heard of it from one of the Mighty No. 9 updates, dunno if it was mentioned in this thread already: Cult County.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/20 ... negade-kid

I played their three FPS for Nintendo DS and liked them a lot. Well.
Dementium: Atmospheric. Interesting setting. Some nice puzzles. Combat wonky. Reskinned enemies, bah.
Moon: Much improved gameplay, especially the controls/aiming, better but repetitive graphics. Haven't finished this one because I'm stuck on a boss and only play the game when I'm vacationing.
Dementium 2: Kept the improved gameplay of Moon, much more atmospheric, intriguing story. Only real flaw: Too short.

I have no idea how they will fare on PC and the graphics of the video don't look that great. Well, it's an indie project. But they have a lot of promise as a dev and - considering what they pulled off on the DS of all things - I think they can make a very atmospheric, very good game even with less than stellar graphics.

The goal is way too high, though, it would seem. We'll see.

[matt]

Yeah, I backed the project, but it isn't a project I feel super comfortable recommending because of the high goal, the lack of any sort of demo or anything beyond concept art and a gameplay video (without any gameplay), and the episodic red flag. (Since they are using Unity, I doubt the in engine mock up took very long at all given that it gives you lighting, shadows, and particle systems and there is no actual interaction besides one wrench swing)

While I think episodic games can be great, selling you an entire season only makes sens if they have the MONEY to finish the season. I expect that the kickstarter budget is to go to finishing episode 1, and they expect sales of the episode to finance the next and so on. I think this is a risky proposition. I'm still waiting for Sin: Episode 2 and Half-Life: Episode 3.

Doing episodic right is very hard, and Telltale is only able to do it because they choose IPs that will be successful and basically presell the entire season. I've never bought just an episode of a telltale game. Has anyone? Now, Telltale is a name gamers know and trust, but they've been making episodic games for 10 years now.

Hopefully the game will see the light of day because it has potential!

[gagaplex]

Aaand... Cult County's Kickstarter failed. You were right, Matt, the goal was way too high. It didn't even make 10 % of its goal. I'm sad now. I really liked Dementium 2 in particular. Oh well. They said they'll try to approach publishers about it, so the project isn't necessarily dead yet. In the meantime - if I ever get a 3DS - I can try out their newest release.

[matt]

Hopefully they can find a way to make the game work. I think the scope of the game is much too large. Even with Unity, supporting 9 platforms is a HUGE task, and especially because Unity isn't supported on 3DS, they'd have to do a complete rebuild in their own engine.

With Neverending Nightmares, I had a much more ambitious plan for the game, but I trimmed the fat, the skin, and even some muscles to create the minimum core experience that I felt would be true to the game I want to make.

They could always try to kickstart just one episode, and if it is successful, they could fund the development of the second episode. Assuming they aren't selling a "season" when a season might not exist, I think that is much more reasonable than Shadow of the Eternals that was kickstarting episode 1 but promising all the episodes.

Anyway, they have experience working with publishers, so maybe they can find a publisher interested in the game.