The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

[LobsterSundew]

The pitch video for Copper is a strange atmosphere almost like it is a one of those videos that parody Kickstarter campaigns. It feels honest, but at the same time it is putting itself down.

Shenmue 3 has been inserting new reward tiers.
http://i.imgur.com/15mzPUG.png
Unallocated funding is surging up. The $29 tier is actually losing backers. It is an example of how filling in pricing holes in the rewards structure can get people to upgrade a bit more. The $800 tier gets added and backers start moving up from the $500 tier. There is a big price jump from $29 to $60 that hasn't had new reward tiers inserted yet. With such a popular $29 tier the average should be above $60 per backer. The average pledge amount is a strong $87.10 per backer. If it had an average of $90 per backer it would need approximately 111,111 backers to reach $10 million. Exploding Kittens had 219,382 backers for comparison. It would need to start averaging over 6,000 backers per day in the remaining time to hit that stretch goal which is unlikely but not impossible.

From what I'm hearing in comment sections, there are a lot of people who did not like that RED ASH launched before Mighty No.9 delivered. The argument of keeping teams busy is not enough to satisfy many people. It may be a repeat of Human Resources situation, but RED ASH is seeing numbers that it should be able to reach its goal if morale is maintained.

[LobsterSundew]

SkyRider is a pixel art platformer. There have been a lot of those, but not much else good has been launching. It is the July flood of quickly slapped together campaigns.

Mark of Mephisto is a multiplayer platfomer combat game that at least stood out with that penciled art style scene. It is really rough. There could be a great game buried under there.

The current pitch video for Downward is really strangely executed. It has flythroughs of static environments which some campaigns do when they don't really have anything. The developer talks a lot. It appears like there isn't much there. However, the Greenlight teaser actually shows something with potential. They should almost throw out the current pitch and just upload the Greenlight teaser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCICieqt6Mk

Kickstarter attempt number 5 for Final Breath. "Where to begin... we promised so much. We were young, foolish, hopeful". The minimum goal was further slashed by $15,000 AUD to just $5,000 AUD. They keep slashing the scope.

Song of Horror didn't make it. The early-bird lasted too long. The following tiers did not do well. In update #11 they mention the possibility of a re-launch.
http://i.imgur.com/JzF3jKr.png

Another Castle had its developer go bankrupt.

Kickstarter apparently now has the project thumbnail images for projects in backers' profiles change based on what the spotlight image for a succcessful project is.

On July 20th there is the launch of RTS game XO. There was also some Banjo-Kazooie clone planning to launch in July that I couldn't find the name for.

At 00:19:19 in episode 230 of Funding the Dream they mention stats that project creators who have pledged to more campaigns generally do better. 1 to 5 projects backed saw 27% chance of success. 6 to 10 projects saw 48%, 11 to 25 projects saw 52%, 26 to 50 projects saw 64%, 51 to 100 projects saw 66% and 100 to 200 projects backed saw a project creator have a 72% chance of success. Matt is at 172 projects backed.

[matt]

Thanks for the links of the current kickstarter projects. We'll be joining that list tomorrow. It looks like Downward has already been cancelled. I guess they rushed out their campaign to be the first in Italy?

Mark of Mephisto reminds me of David Jaffe's latest game "Drawn to Death".

That is good to hear that Song of Horror is going to relaunch.

That is good news about the projects backed! I imagine a lot of it has to do with how well you understand kickstarter. If you don't back many projects, it's tough to get a feel for good reward structures, the community and their expectations and all that.

You are up to 711 projects backed, so I think you'll have a 200% chance of getting a project funded if you ever launch one. That's crazy! I have quite a few unsuccessful campaigns on my record, but I have trouble keeping track of all the projects and when they'll come out. Most of them are still in progress. I backed at the $100 tier for Double Fine Adventure, so I haven't gotten all the rewards for my first backed project yet. haha

[LobsterSundew]

Sacred Agony is a 3D horror game that has a cool teaser, but it looks like the project page wasn't ready yet when it launched. A €544,400 goal is also huge.

Pixel Ripped 1989 is another strangely executed campaign. It is a Oculus Rift game set in a 1989 classroom. They put effort into the effects for the pitch video, but the audio is poor quality.

Circuit Breakers is a top-down 2D co-op shooter. Not much else worth noting launched.

Shenmue 3 is in its last 48 hours. It is getting a lot of attention.

Remix Mini is a $30 (1GB RAM + 8GB flash) to $50 (2GB RAM + 16GB flash) priced 64-bit quadcore ARM machine running Remix OS with H.265 4K hardware decoding. The project creators are ex-Google employees that had previously delivered on a kickstarted tablet. Their new project appears to be using the recently announced $5 Allwinner A64 chip. I decided to pledge for one to sit next to my Ouya and Raspberry Pi model B.

[evilkinggumby]

wow $39 USD to just get the digital copy of Sacred Agony.. brutal. I don't think they're going to make their goal by any stretch. The wording and grammar on the site also seems quickly put together and not well proofed.

[LobsterSundew]

The graphs for Red Ash just went strange after project update #10. Look at the $25 and $49 tiers. Also notice that the $69 to $299 tiers were boosted.
http://i.imgur.com/86Ku7ey.png

Shenmue 3 also has interesting graphs. I may have to use it as an example of seeing how inserting new reward tiers caused many backers to shift up into what were previously big gaps in reward pricing. The $10,000 tier for the original jacket had its backer disappear sometime near the end. I guess the creator will be keeping the jacket now. That $29 tier has an interesting dip in the number of backers. There is almost $1,000,000 in unallocated funds.
http://i.imgur.com/TqPubec.png

The Remix Mini team revealed they are using a H64 chip for home entertainment boxes instead of its similar sister chip the A64 for tablets. There are now questions about if Kodi/XBMC will support the GPU any time soon. In the comments section I am reminded of the days back when Ouya's campaign was live. People in the comments would keep asking for features like more RAM or USB 3.0 and then not understand when they are told the processor does not support those things to keep costs down. SoC processors have limits like the maximum amount of RAM designed to work with them or if they support SATA.

The current Humble Weekly Bundle is full of kickstarted games. I didn't back Warmachine: Tactics or Lords of Xulima. I had backed Retro Game Crunch, Full Bore, Guns of Icarus and AR-K.

[LobsterSundew]

Satellite Rush is a rogue-like dual-stick shooter with an abducted human dumped into an alien arena.

The Wizards of Trinity Bellwoods has some good production values for its project page, but the game itself didn't hook me. It is amusing that the game is set in Toronto. I'm waiting to see what reaction that part gets because people outside of Canada may not be aware, but many Canadians have a very negativeopinion about Toronto.

Gayway is an adventure game that had a "Warning: This campaign can destroy your mouse-wheel" joke.

Soul Keepers appears to be another Hyper Light Drifer style game, but not as strong. The video just suddenly ends at 26 seconds.

There really isn't much else interesting that has launched this week besides XO which is holding the top ranking. July has been fairly dry for good campaigns. This isn't good for generating traffic to Kickstarter.

Both the game and the film for RED ASH are ending within the next 11 days. Both those campaigns have been having a rough time.

[LobsterSundew]

Tsioque is a hand-animated adventure game with some great visuals. It is one of the few good campaigns to launch this week.

Another adventure game is Gourd of the Beans: An Unplanned Adventure with a really retro art style.

Renoir canceled its campaign.

I noticed that the blue background that appears behind project creator comments is currently messed up. Someone on Kickstarters staff may have made a coding mistake. The blue square is way bigger than the actual comment.

[evilkinggumby]

backed Tsioque, looks really solid for hand drawn animation. I had not heard of Renoirso I flagged them on my facebook account. would be interested in backing when it starts again, or to know how they expect to proceed.

The Gourd of the Beans is going a bit too retro for my tastes. Pass.

[LobsterSundew]

The 13th Doll is a spiritual successor to The 7th Guest. It is good that they actually mention they received permission to make the game.

Spark the electric jester is a 16-bit art style platformer inspired by SEGA Genesis games.

Disposable Heroes has an interesting drawn art style. It is a top-down hack-n-slash game.