Posts from ‘Kickstarter’ Category
Kickstart This: Home Free
By: Derek Yu
On: October 14th, 2015
In Kevin Cancienne’s Home Free, you play a lost dog trying to find its way home in the big city. Each city is procedurally-generated, not each time you play, but once for your entire game. Although it’s unclear whether you can really win (by finding home?), lose (by starving?), or restart your game, or what happens when you do, I think this is a pretty cool and bold way to make each player’s game feel personalized.
I’m also impressed by the quality and variety of the dog animations in the game, even in this early pre-alpha stage. Hopefully it’s as fun as it looks to run, jump, and socialize with other canines when the game releases in a year or so.
Kickstart This: Tower 57
By: Derek Yu
On: August 15th, 2015
Tower 57 is a gorgeous twin-stick shooter that’s being Kickstarted right now. The game’s developers are paying a lot of attention to graphical detail – as you (and possibly a friend) blast your way up the titular Tower 57, it seems like you’ll be admiring Cyangmou‘s superb pixel art only as long as it takes to destroy it into lots of itty bitty little pieces. One for the fans of the Bitmap Brothers and their classic shooter, The Chaos Engine.
More information (and plenty of fun animated gifs) are available on the Tower 57 devlog.
Kickstart This: Power Drive 2000
By: Derek Yu
On: May 29th, 2015
The release of the cheesy-fun 80’s action parody Kung Fury is coinciding perfectly with the end of the Kickstarter for Power Drive 2000, an 80’s-inspired drift racer complete with a talking car. The six modes planned all seem to be interesting variations on a time trial (i.e. racing alone or against a ghost), but Megacom Games is also planning offline and online multiplayer, so we’ll see how that works out. With 5 days left to go, Power Drive 2000 is about $15,000 USD shy of reaching its mark, so if you’re a fan of racers, you may want to give it a boost (pun sadly intended).
And also check out Drift Stage, which takes a different stylistic approach to the same genre.
One more Power Drive 2000 video after the jump:
Kickstart This: Formicarium
By: Alehkhs
On: November 18th, 2014
I’ve been wildly interested in ants since an early age, and have often wished that there were more games that allowed you to take control of an ant colony, such as the classic SimAnt, or 2008’s Ant Rush. So I was especially excited earlier today, when Formicarium crawled onto Kickstarter.
Billing itself as a strategic simulation game, Formicarium allows players to “become the invisible mind guiding an ant-hive through difficulties and dangers.” Drawing inspiration from other titles such as Dwarf Fortress and The Sims, the game aims to simulate a procedurally-evolving world where insects and arachnids struggle to survive the environment, and each other – with the player guiding their own colony of ants.
Similar to Dwarf Fortress, the colonies or “hives” of Formicarium will consist of multiple “cross-section” levels, extending downwards from the surface. Chambers will need to be dug, food will need to be stored, and new ants will need to be be birthed. All the time, the player will need to keep an eye out for potential dangers from the surface, including antlions, spiders, bees and wasps, and more.
Formicarium is being created by a team of just two people. The development side of this duo is Konrad Feiler, whose history as a mathematician and software engineer is being put to good use developing a procedural world, filled with all manner of bugs behaving in realistic manners. On the design side, artist Dorota Orlof has provided an incredibly eye-catching style, bringing each of the game’s “characters” to life through a clean and colorful approach.
So far, the duo has a working prototype of Formicarium, and they are now moving to bring the project to full fruition as a game on both mobile devices as well as PC and Mac. To reach that goal, the Formicarium Kickstarter campaign is aiming to raise just a modest $20,000. If the idea of being the overseer of a virtual ant colony – struggling to survive in a procedurally-simulated world of competition and danger – appeals to you, head on over to the Kickstarter page for Formicarium to learn more and pledge. You can also keep an eye on the game’s website and Twitter for more news, and even vote for it over on Steam Greenlight.
Kickstart This: Creepy Castle
By: Alehkhs
On: September 30th, 2014
Indie studio Dopterra has just three days to reach the modest goal of $6000 for its colorful 8-bit title, Creepy Castle. Promising a mix of 2D platform-based exploration and turn-based RPG combat, the game follows the adventure of Moth (note: an actual moth) within the halls of the titular Creepy Castle in an effort to uncover and thwart a looming threat. Dopterra has also teased several other protagonists, playable in an assortment of scenarios that intertwine with Moth’s story.
With a graphical style inspired by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and a catchy chiptune soundtrack, Creepy Castle certainly aims to present a fantastically old-school experience – but its six-person dev team is not afraid to pay homage to the modern indie game scene as well: It’s been revealed that characters from recent indie titles such as Shovel Knight and Super Meat Boy will appear in-game, possibly even in the form of playable characters.
With only three days to go in its Kickstarter campaign, Creepy Castle is tantalizingly close to reaching its goal of just $6000. Whether you’ve long dreamt of fluttering your way as a moth through a labyrinthine castle – drawn not to a flame, but to your awaiting destiny – or you simply enjoy old-school graphics and gameplay, Creepy Castle might just be the game for you: Head on over to the Creepy Castle Kickstarter page to learn more and pledge. You can also vote for Creepy Castle right now on its Steam Greenlight page. Finally, if you simply want to watch the game as it develops, be sure to check out the Creepy Castle DevLog on TIGForums.
Kickstart This: Band Saga & Interview with Rekcahdam
By: Paul Eres
On: September 24th, 2014
Band Saga is a musical roguelike—basically it generates action roguelike dungeons based on its own Genesis-like FM sequencer, which can then be played through. You can generate levels based on importing your own MIDI music, or by composing music within the game (which can be shared with a text string online with other players). Also interesting is that you can change a song while playing through the dungeon based on that song, which would then affect the dungeon you are in. And as you can see from the trailer, the animation is also very nice.
I interviewed Rekcahdam to get a more in-depth look into how it all works, read it under the jump!
Kickstart This: Pyrella
By: Alehkhs
On: July 25th, 2014
Dog And Pony Studio (DAPS) is looking to raise just $10,000 in the final four days of their Kickstarter campaign for Pyrella, a Metroidvania-type game where the female protagonist is the only light burning against an unholy darkness. According to designer Jim Burner:
Pyrella is the only light source in a black magic temple and her torch is always dying. Fight monsters, survive traps and solve puzzles to reach new Goddess Altars. Lighting these permanent checkpoints allows you to make your way deeper into the labyrinth. The ultimate goal is to light the Primordial Pyre at the bottom of the temple and cleanse it with righteous light.
DAPS needs to raise $10,000 before the end of the game’s Kickstarter in just four days, but the team is hopeful. The game has been submitted to Steam Greenlight, and the campaign has several stretch goals ranging from character customization and alternate endings to entirely new game areas and even a PlayStation 4 port of the completed game.
If this project sounds like one you would like to see completed, be sure to head over to the project’s Kickstarter page to learn more and contribute.
Kickstart This: Sunset
By: Derek Yu
On: June 18th, 2014
Tale of Tales is Kickstarting their latest project, Sunset. The premise is a cool one:
Sunset is a narrative-driven first-person videogame that takes place in a single apartment in a fictional South American city in the early 1970s. You play a housekeeper called Angela Burnes. Every week, an hour before sunset, you visit the swanky bachelor pad of Gabriel Ortega. You are given a number of tasks to do, but the temptation to go through his stuff is irresistible. As you get to know your mysterious employer better, you are sucked into a rebellious plot against a notorious dictator Generalísimo Ricardo Miraflores.
The Kickstarter description likens the game to Gone Home, which I personally enjoyed. Hopefully it’s another step in the right direction for this genre.
Kickstart This: The Universim
By: Alehkhs
On: April 23rd, 2014
Indie studio Ctytivo Games has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for their first big project, The Universim.
The Universim certainly aims high, promising to be a god game (presented by Crytivo Games as a “planet-management” game) in which you are tasked with guiding a race from the stone age to the space age. The player will achieve this primarily through indirect action, such as influencing the technological aspirations of the race, deciding where they will found their cities, and even when wars will be fought and for how long (and to what end). Once the player’s race has developed sufficiently, they will take to the stars in search of other planets that they may colonize. Each planet will have different environments and present different challenges to habitation, but the player will continue to guide their race in their efforts to become a universe-spanning empire.
Although the game seems to verge on being a Molyneux-ian pipe dream, the gameplay trailer unveiled today with the Kickstarter campaign shows that they have already completed a significant amount of the game. With Kickstarter, they are now hoping to raise the final funds to complete the game, setting the goal at $320,000. Beyond that, they have laid out potential stretch goals that they hope to be able to implement, such as planet and building editors and a multiplayer mode.
To see more and keep up with The Universim, head on over to the game’s website and TIGForums devlog. If you like what you see and want to help fund the game through to completion, be sure to stop by the game’s Kickstarter page and pledge.
Kickstart This: La-Mulana 2
By: Alehkhs
On: February 11th, 2014
Fans of La-Mulana rejoice: Indie dev team NIGORO has a sequel in the works and is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund its development!
The direct sequel to the Steam-and-WiiWare remake of the first game, La-Mulana 2 follows the adventures of Lumisa Kosugi, daughter of the first game’s curry-loving protagonist, Lemeza Kosugi. This time around, players will guide Lumisa through the ruins of Eg-Lana, which will have Norse mythology serve as a motif. Promising more of the deviously-designed traps, puzzles, and boss fights that made the first game so great, NIGORO also wants the sequel to be “a fresh new experience for people who enjoyed the first game, while also giving newcomers a chance to enjoy the series without being forced to play La-Mulana first.”
The game’s Kickstarter campaign has just 11 days left and has raised nearly 90% of its funding goal in pledges, so if you would like to see a sequel to La-Mulana, head on over to the campaign page and help them leap past their goal.
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