The Funding Crowd 17 (Aug 28th - Sep 2nd)

We did it! The Funding Crowd is back on Mondays -- well, it's still Monday at certain parts of the western hemisphere, isn't it? Right. :)







Unfortunately, we've gone back to the days of bad news dominance. Only two successful endings to counter many failures. However, as it's often the case, most of the unsuccessful campaigns aren't the end of the story for the game involved. Let's review them all:


The Losers

Project Aella and Crash Point failed to reach their respective funding goals. None of their respective creators have made any official announcement regarding their future, so we may consider them defunct until proven otherwise.



The Optimistic Losers

The Trail West failed to achieve its modest goal but the project will apparently go on nonetheless. The same applies to Will to Survive, whose creator is determined to finish it and is pondering his next moves. Laika Believes, but the gaming community didn't believe in her for the second time; after raising even less funds in this second attempt than on the first one, the creators will continue working on the game, although some features may not be implemented at launch time and will probably be coming later. BouncerVR only managed to raise little over 40% of its goal, but being a flexible funding campaign the creator at least will be able to complete the game and release it to the backers. Jacob's Island and Eyes Open were able to gather a significant chunk of their respective goals, but not enough as to claim victory; both projects seem to go on regardless this financial setback. Waking Amy suffered a more painful defeat as it ended above the 80% mark, but its creators are considering to relaunch the project in a few months. Finally, ZED: Absolution had failed on its funding endeavour but its creators have already launched a second IndieGoGo campaign.



The Winners

Shiden picked up some traction during the final days and could reach its quite modest $1k goal; backers be prepared, as it's scheduled for release this very same month! Fran Bow had become a winner many days ago, and it ended its campaign at a 140% mark: surplus funding will go into porting the game to more platforms and translating it to more languages.













And now please welcome Speedster who's going to recap all the noteworthy ongoing campaigns, in case you had missed any of them or had forgotten to pledge in an interesting project:





· Constant C is a crazy 2D puzzle platformer set in a world where normal physics do not apply, so skills such as gravitational shift and time flow control are used to solve challenging levels. The game engine has been finished for Windows, so the base $5k goal of the campaign goes into Mac and Linux ports of their engine. Given that there has already been positive buzz about the Windows port, it is a little surprising to see the pledging so stagnant and so little publicity about the campaign. The team is going to need to do something about the lack of publicity if they want to see this campaign succeed, but with about 3 weeks left before the deadline they may be putting it off for later. Hopefully they will not wait until it is too late... Constant C has successfully shifted up its frequency from red to green on Steam -- it was one of the highlights of last week's batch of Greenlit games.


· Paranautical Activity mixes old-time FPS action (think Doom or Quake) with the randomness of roguelikes for replayability. The modest $10k goal for the campaign will go towards adding lots of content (levels, weapons, enemies, items) when moving from the currently-existing public beta to the actual release. The base goal has already been achieved during the slow middle period period of the campaign, and the Oculus Rift support stretch goal looks very achievable during these final few hours -- an average increase of $0.50 per backer would do it. You may have previously run across Paranautical Activity in the news, when an established publisher offered to get it on Steam... but Valve vetoed that opportunity because the game was already on Greenlight. Finally this setback has been overcome, as Paranautical Activity was another notable entry in last week's batch of Greenlit games.


· Sword 'N' Board is a puzzle adventure with an obvious Zelda-esque inpiration but with some twists. In it you play as Sidd, a kid with an active imagination who battles imaginary enemies throughout cardboard forests and dark pillow fort dungeons. It's a kind of mixture of childhood nostalgia with a little adult humour, that above all tries not to take the player by the hand like modern games use to do: it rewards exploration and trying things out for oneself without being explicitly instructed by the game itself. The project creator/sole developer has been very responsive to backer suggestions, which has already resulted in a Linux build of the early demo and a bargain-priced in-game participation tier at $30. Somewhat surprisingly, there are still over a dozen slots left in this limited tier; perhaps they will be claimed by Wii U owners during these final few days of the campaign, since the project's latest big news was Wii U support added to the base goal. Speaking of the base goal, there is still 10% to go towards the target, which must be achieved in the next few days in order to add Sword 'N' Board to the list of winners in our next edition. There is a Greenlight page available for those who wish to see Sidd come to Steam.


· Ghost Song: A Journey of Hope is a metroidvania game with deep themes of love, hope, and redemption. The setting is rather unusual, mixing sci-fi with ghosts who are doomed to wander a cursed moon until they can be freed. Exploring will gradually reveal artifacts that tell a story of the past of this troubled place and those who haunt it. The 2D graphics are both suitably moody and beautiful. This game has already garned more than 200% of the base goal, which includes the first two stretch goals of a "hardcore" mode and a pet who evolves over time based on what you feed it. The currently-in-progress stretch goal sounds intriguing: a shorter follow-on level after completing the main game, allowing players to experience key game events from the perspective of a different character with different gameplay abilities. This goal is less than $2.5k away, which is easily within reach if a decent percentage of the existing 2k backers wants it enough to put in a minor pledge bump during these final 48 hours.


· Project Phoenix continues its progress as a wildly successful Biggie, sitting at over $680k in funding! This squad-based RTS will be set in a beautiful JRPG fantasy world created by a star-studded cast of artists and composers, such as Kiyoshi Arai and Nobuo Uematsu. Project Phoenix is the first major Kickstarter project to be produced from Japan, and has ambitious non-monetary goals about leading the way to more innovation in the Japanese game industry, with key team members willing to forgo salary if it had been needed. Last week was "slow" for a project of this scale and calibre, but sufficient to cross a second stretch goal off the list: detailed modelling of cities and towns for expanded exploration beyond the main points of interest, plus a system for customizing appearance of characters in your party. The next stretch goal that affects the game rather than just backer awards kicks in at about $1M; that one is a counterpart to the expanded city exploration goal, expanding exploration opportunities everywhere else. "Everywhere else" notably includes adding a new interior location -- inside a kraken!


· Dungeonforge is a relaunch where the team has some great ideas but is lacking the huge reputation of say, a Project Phoenix team, which is also generally required to inspire enough confidence to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from backers. The team has thus dropped their initial scope in order to get the goal down to $50k, and has relaunched with flexible funding at IndieGoGo. The base idea of a cross-platform free-to-play RPG with content developed by the community seems worth exploring, but there does need to be some interesting initial content to attract enough community to become self-sustaining. Hopefully this new campaign will be successful in funding that bootstrapping process!


· Enspira Online is a rather unusual MMO, designed to be non-violent and suitable for young children. Enspira Online seems like an appealing project, but it has had trouble picking up momentum so far. The project creator is the seasoned MMO developer known as Runesabre in his Ultima Online days, so there is no lack of credibility due to inexperience; perhaps the usual crowd of Indie game backers are mostly interested in games for themselves, rather than games for kids. Probably most of us don't have kids (though we know of some notable exceptions) but perhaps we can at least help spread the word to those who do. Last week was a big week for Enspira Online, with a gameplay video and a big increase in pledging momentum. Now the base goal finally appears feasible: pledging stands at over 80% with 4 days remaining. The stretch goals for early release of non-Windows platforms still do not look likely, but delayed release is far better than no release in our opinion.


· Caribbean Island: A Pirate Adventure is a point-and-click adventure inspired by (need we say it?) the old classic Monkey Island games. The flexible funding model was chosen because the entire campaign is basically for stretch goals, "making the game more awesome" rather than essential to make the game exist at all. The DRM-free Linux download is going for $15, so it is not a big monetary risk for other devoted fans of Monkey Island.


· Proton Pulse Rift and BouncerVR were the first pair of games to share a spot in the Hidden Gems list, since they are based on a common core mechanic: Oculus Rift control of a paddle to bounce a ball. The Proton Pulse campaign has avoided the fate of BouncerVR and is sitting pretty at 200% of the base goal with a few days remaining. The project lead has already managed to sign up musical talent for the soundtrack and is asking for Proton Pulse Rift votes on Greenlight.


· College: the Game is an action/satire game about college life in which you'll literally have to battle your way to get your diploma. There are 17 different majors to choose from, which are the equivalent of classes in a more typical game, because your major determines what weapons and items can be used. Will you pick the English major for proficiency with The Pen, or Pre-Law for proficiency with The Gavel? Note that per Kickstarter policy the side-bar tier descriptions could not be updated, but the $25 rewards are now a really good deal. In addition to a DRM-free copy of the game itself and the soundtrack, there is actually an in-game appearance: "A student is based after you!"


· Awesomenauts: StarStorm is our latest Biggie to become a winner. This project has coasted to victory with a backer community including thousands of current Awesomenauts players eager for an expansion introducing new characters and new features such as spectator mode and twin-stick controller support. The base goal of $125k having already been reached, further progress will go towards the $200k stretch goal for a whole new map: a battle station scenario featuring automated flamethrowers.


· Elementary, My Dear Holmes! is a point & click adventure game that tries to turn the classical Sherlock Holmes stories upside down by putting Dr. Watson in the lead role. As we reported last week Linux support was moved to the base goal, after being initially relegated to a 150% stretch goal. The game will be released on March 2014 for the OUYA and desktop versions will come six months later, in accordance with the exclusivity clause from the #FreeTheGames Fund, in which the developers are taking part. Unfortunately in the past week there has been some controversy regarding a mysterious backer who donated a significant amount of money split up among a bunch of Kickstarter accounts with fake names. Since the same thing happened to another game project which has nothing in common except also participating in #FreeTheGames Fund, it is not likely to be funny business by the project creators trying to get around Kickstarter rules -- much more likely to be an Ouya supporter with plenty of spare cash who is attempting to make Ouya exclusives look popular. It remains to be seen in what way the mystery backer is related to the Ouya company (hopefully it was an unofficial astroturfing scheme cooked up by an outsider rather than the Ouya PR team).


· Icebound is a dark-fantasy steampunk work of fiction: a story-heavy puzzle game or an interactive novel, depending on the settings. The story is set during an ice age in a world in the middle of an industrial and alchemical revolution, and follows adventures of Dougal the wandering alchemist with his bat familiar named Isaac. Get a feel for the game style with its Linux-compatible demo.


· Tetrapulse is not just another Unity3D TPS; it has an interesting twist. In this co-op TPS, your ammo and your health are the same. That's right: the more you shoot, the less vital energy you'll have left. "But then how can you survive to kill enough enemies?", you may ask. Fair question and the answer to it is the Heartstone, the life source that replenishes your energy whenever you touch it. Multiple players can grab it at once but then they must move as a single being, thus fomenting co-operative play. Tetrapulse is descended from an existing Global Game Jam project, which helped provide enough credibility for over $5k in pledges during the first week and even a mention or two in mainstream gaming news. With a good start like that, the remaining $10k will likely be collected during the next 3 weeks, so we're predicting Tetrapulse as a winner.


· Pocket Rumble is a retro 2D fighting game with Street Fighter-like gameplay. How retro? 8-bit pixel art retro! 2-button controls retro! (Though the latter will be optional). Pocket Rumble is off to a decent start for a project by previously-unknown developers, but needs to pick up the momentum over the next couple weeks in order to reach the winner list. Pocket Rumble also has a Greenlight page.


· Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora is a noir side-scrolling adventure platformer starring Private Investigator Emma Jones and her partner Franky the fedora-wearing cat who must investigate a series of murders. Clearly this game is going to be an interesting mashup of various influences. The character art-style is blocky like certain other Lego-inspired modern hits, and also in common with the team's previous game starring Emma, Jones On Fire. The gameplay features a special revolver which holds up to 4 different non-lethal bullets, with the various types of ammo being discovered as powerups throughout the game; players much load their ammo wisely in order to solve levels. Hot Tin Roof attracted over 1k backers and 40% of needed funds during the first week, so the future looks bright for this project despite a likely slowdown in funding during the next couple weeks. For those who have not yet tired of Noir-themed puzzle platformers with feline sidekicks clogging the Steam catalog, here is your chance to vote for Hot Tin Roof. You can read more about this game in this recent first impressions article.








And finally, let's move to the new stuff. Here you have the finest Biggies and Hidden Gems we've been able to find, only for your viewing -and pledging- pleasure:














Neverending Nightmares is the second -and in the event of failure, the last- attempt at producing a successful indie game by the creator of critically-acclaimed-but-financially-disastrous Retro/Grade. It's a a psychological horror game inspired by the creator's own battle with OCD and depression. Just like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, one of the main influences for this game, the gameplay will focus mainly on exploration rather than on combat as the enemies are invulnerable and the player's only options are hiding or running away. On the other hand, the control system has been extremely simplified and unlike many stealth games Neverending Nightmares won't be too unforgiving, so dying just will make the player wake up either inside the same nightmare -acting as a checkpoint-like mechanic- or into a different one. Incidentally this is probably one of the most prominent features of the game: its open narrative by which, depending on the actions and decisions taken, the player will hop from one branch -nightmare- to another and will never be sure about what's real and what's not -- a little like Inception. Since the game is being designed to be completed many times to enjoy its different endings, each playthrough will typically take from 1 to 3 hours. Another remarkable characteristic about Neverending Nightmares is the hand-drawn, black & white art style, inspired on the works by Edward Gorey. However, in order to emphasize the gore and violence, blood appears as bright red.
Even though there's only a Windows-compatible demo right now the game will be released on Linux, although that will happen 6 months after the Ouya premiere as Neverending Nightmares is also taking part in Ouya's #FreeTheGames Fund and will thus be an exclusive of this console during that time. But prior to that the project must get funded and right now it's barely trending towards 100% of its $99k goal. So fans of psychological horror games should totally check this campaign out and help it become a success.











Mighty No. 9 is already a smashing hit. At the time of writing, its rather high $900k funding goal has already been overcome. And only in 2 days! However we cannot celebrate yet, as Linux support is conditioned to a $1.35M stretch goal, but we're sure we'll be able to do it in just a few days -- or hours. :P
And what's all the fuss about? Nothing less than what would be the latest instalment in the Mega Man series, were Capcom to grant permission to the developers: an "an all-star team of veteran Mega Man devs" with Keiji Inafune himself at the forefront. So this project is expected to provide classic Japanese side-scrolling action, transformed and adapted to the current PC technology. The main character is Beck, the 9th iteration in a series of powerful robots and the only one which hasn't been infected by a computer virus and grown deranged. And so Beck will have to stop and destroy the other robots and mechanized creatures before they infest the whole world. He will try to achieve it with the help of his inherent body-transforming abilities as well as with new weapons acquired after defeating each one of the other Mighty Number boss robots. In addition, whenever killed with a particular weapon or hit at a certain soft spot, some of the low-level enemies will release energy cells that Beck can acquire, store, and use later to release one of his Mighty Skills: be it a double-jump, a speed boost, or an energy blast.
You can grab a digital copy of the final game starting at $20, with higher pledges granting more rewards or privileges -- like a digital manual and the OST for $60, beta access at $99, or even getting your voice in the end theme song or your face in the game for a little. But whatever the pledge the devs want to get everybody involved, with regular surveys, polls, and contests throughout the development process.



















Epic Space Online is a sandbox MMO set in an infinite universe, currently only available for Windows and Mac. But as they advertise on their website, Linux is going to be supported soon. Meanwhile, they are running this Kickstarter campaign in order to gather funds for implementing two more features into the game: capital ships and the crews required to man them. If it succeeds, this already deep game will also offer you the opportunity to join your friends and together crew your carrier or destroyer capital ships into battle or exploration journeys.
They are asking the relatively modest amount of $5k and they are doing quite well so far: in approximately 1/4 of the campaign they've already raised 60% of the base goal, so stretch goals descriptions are expected soon. If 2D space games are your jam, take a look at this one because it looks really cool.











DARKWATER CHRONICLES is a first-person paranormal adventure/mystery game in which the player will take the part of an agent working for a secret government organization that investigates paranormal issues around the world. In fact it's been conceived as a game divided into several chapters, the first of which is the one being crowdfunded here: In Search of BigFoot. In spite of being a first-person game its gameplay will not be focused on combat, but rather on getting evidence about the paranormal phenomenon that's being investigated, be it photographic or a sound recording. The game is designed to follow a rather strict pattern during its first part: finding a person who knows relevant first-hand information, interviewing said person, finding a location revealed by the interviewee, and finally carrying out a field investigation. After repeating this proceadure three times the player must get back to the base, just in time to carry out a night investigation. Here the game will loosen a bit, as the night sections are in free-play mode: the player can freely choose the best location and procedure according to the previous interviews and investigations. Finally, if enough evidence has been uncovered, the player will be able to claim to have proven the existence of those mythical creatures.
The game is being developed with Unity3D, so that means Linux support out of the box. It must be on the early stages of development though, as no in-game footage is shown in its Kickstarter pitch, but its concept seems interesting enough and quite unique. The creators have planned stretch goals up to $1M but, looking at the progress made so far, reaching the $25k funding goal would be a remarkable success.











Apocalypse Overload promises to be a fun and zany 8-bit retro platformer set in an apocalyptic scenario. What king of apocalypse? All of them: zombies have risen, vampires rule the night, pirates are sailing the Seven Seas, robots have gained self-conscience and have rebelled, meteors are coming straight to the Earth, and several more. Your friends have fallen to one of these multiple scenarios and obviously your task will be to save them by overcoming ever-increasingly difficult platforming levels. Besides jumping around and avoiding obstacles, you'll also have to fight enemies by using your multiple powers and abilities. Plus the game will feature character progression, hidden secrets, and amazing power-ups.
Apocalypse Overload will support Linux at release time and will be successfully funded if $20k can be gathered before the campaign ends. Thus far it hasn't received much support, so your contribution will certainly be well received. The game can be yours for as little as $10, and you can even contribute by designing an in-game element starting at $75.











If earlier we were considering the existence of Bigfoot, in RedNeck Assassin they are definitely real. This is a typical story revenge, starring Hirsch the Deer who was shot and left for dead by a group of redneck hunters. But luckily for Hirsch, he was found by Sasquatch who took care of him and trained him in the arts of assassination. So now only one thing occupies the deer's mind: vengeance.
Redneck Assassin is a third-person stealth game, where you've got to always avoid direct confrontation as your enemies are all carrying firearms and you're only armed with a knife and a bow. The game was originally conceived for mobile devices and this campaign will serve to port it to the desktop platforms -- Linux included, of course. The porting jobs will include reimplementing the controls to support keyboard and mouse, and revamping the graphical assets to take full advantage of the superior capabilities of PCs over mobile platforms. The overall game concept is quite engaging, and its pitch video is frankly amusing, but nevertheless it has failed to connect with the Kickstarter audience. Luckily the campaign is a longer-than-usual one with 40 days so there's still plenty of time to reverse the current trend.











Kingdom of Knights is a future MMO medieval RTS game set in the once great Kingdom of Avalon. Now the land is in turmoil and many new kingdoms spawn as their Lords seek power for themselves. Your task will be to build a city and make your kingdom grow to revive Avalon's past glory. As in many other games of this genre the world is persistent and everything goes on when you're not logged in: resources are being generated and your city can be attacked in your absence, so you must carefully plan and implement your defenses. To help the player with that, and unlike similar games, Kingdom of Knights has been conceived as a rather fast paced game: building times are really fast, with 10 minutes being the absolute maximum for the more complex buildings and structures. In addition to elevated building speeds, beginning players will also enjoy a two-day grace period during which their cities cannot be attacked. It is advised to make good use of these two days and thoroughly prepare the city, as many enemies will be setting their eyes on it for sure. However, a player will never lose a city; in the worst-case scenario the city will be destroyed and its owner will have to command the repairing tasks to rebuild it. To avoid such unfortunate events, there will also be an alliance system by which players can associate and help each other in either offensive or deffensive endeavours. And last but not least the game will also include the innovative Hero feature, by which the player can join the battlefield and take part in the fighting in a first-person perspective.
One of the developers' main concerns is keeping the game balanced. In this respect, no resources or other performance boosters will ever be available for purchase. The only way to obtain resources will be directly gathering them or by trading with other players. However, if you want to gain a slight advantage you can registrate early for the alpha on the game's website and be among the first ones to play it.











The Moaning Words is a so-called interactive investigation, a multimedia experience "at the crossroads of books and video games" according to its developers. Written by sci-fi author Alan Dean Foster and set in the Cthulhu myths, is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft's work consisting in a collective dark investigation throughout 18 daily episodes. By that we mean a sort of Choose your own adventure along with your friends, featuring interactive storytelling (your choices totally determine the final outcome of the story), social interaction (you can experience the story together with your friends), narrative-influencing games, and riddles you'll have to solve in order to make progress in the investigation. The social aspect will be further expanded with the ability to create and share your own Lovecraftian stories thanks to the embedded writing tool. To sum it up, it looks like an enhanced reading experience like The 39 Steps but more interactive.
This application/game/interactive experience will be free to play and it will be made available for mobile devices and web browsers. The web version is being developed in PHP so it should be fully compatible with any browser running on Linux. The funding mark has been set at $20k and just over 35% of that amount has been raised on the first third of campaign, so it looks like this one will become a winner if the current momentum can be kept until the end.











You know we like to showcase educational games whenever we've got the occasion. That's why when we learned about Penguemic: Word Domination, a vocabulary-mastering game created by a bunch of Linux enthusiasts and starring an army of penguins, we couldn't help but include it in this column as a high-ranking Hidden Gem. :)
As we said, this is a game focused on English vocabulary learning and reinforcing for English native speakers. If the Kickstarter goes sufficiently well, there are planned stretch goals for adding an ESL (English as a second language) version, a Spanish version, and even two unannounced additional languages. But whatever the language, the game mechanics are the same: the Penguin Army wants to conquer a certain territory and thus has to fight the indigenous creatures. The enemies will attack with a superpower related to a specific -difficult- word, and the players' task will be to counter the attack using the available allied unit and spell cards -- which are also words, but only one of them is the appropriate response. In order to prevent rapid fire guessing the cards have a cool-down time before they can be used again. Whenever a region is conquered the defeated creatures become allies and they can be used in subsequent battles, in a pure Monkey Island sword-fighting insults fashion.
You can secure a digital copy of the game for only $10, and if you're willing to spend $250 you can become a Gentoo Penguin and make sure your favourite word is included in the game (among many other rewards). The campaign will be successful if it raises at least $50k. Over 25% of that goal has been achieved in only four days, but most of the funds were gathered during the first 24h so part of the initial momentum should be regained in order to make sure the campaign finally succeeds.











This week's third place is for Enhanced Wars, a multiplayer turn-based strategy game heavily influenced by Game Boy Advance classic Advance Wars. The developers aim to set it apart from other similar games by focusing on tactics and battle itself rather than on mining resources and amassing troops. They are trying to fix some of the typical weaknesses in strategy games by implementing two fundamental features. First, an action points (AP) system: players receive a certain amount of AP to spend during their turns, and thus forcing them to focus on following their essential strategy and to carefully balance their actions. The second basic feature is the winning condition: instead of with the total destruction of the enemy, victory will be achieved by earning a certain amount of points either by capturing zones, attacking the enemy, or destroying many units in a single turn. In this way conservative playing styles are penalized and more dynamic and offensive strategies are encouraged. Everything described so far is included in the available web-based demo (disclaimer: we don't actually know if it can be played on Linux since it requires registration and we haven't tried it). Additional planned features include more units, a special abilitu for each unit, random events during a game, terrain effects on mobility and combat, more animations, visual and sound effects, and music.
The game is advertised to support Linux and needs $50k to succeed. The first week of campaign hasn't been bad at all with nearly 300 backers, but that won't be enough unless the pledges rate increases in the following weeks. You can help it improve its chances by pledging $10 and getting a digital copy of the game on completion, or else get one of the many early bird $20 closed beta access pledges.











What!? We're already at #2 and no permadeath roguelike has appeared yet? Don't you worry, here comes Death Road to Canada to put things in order. In fact, this is a mix between a roguelike, an action adventure, and an apocalyptic decision-making game à la The Oregon/Organ Trail. Presented in glorious pixel art style, this lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek game features all the usual motifs of the zombie genre: scavenging for supplies, finding survivors, and engaging incessant hordes of brain-eaters. You'll be able to recruit up to five survivors, each one with a random name, appearance, personality, and quirks that can be either beneficial for your ultimate goal of reaching Canada, or utterly disastrous for you but providing unvaluable comedic effects. Speaking of which, whether you're interested in the game or not don't forget to take a look at the hilarious pitch video.
Death Road to Canada is expected to have high replayability value as everything, from cities to the survivors you meet, or the events you must face are randomized. Survivors will shape the options available to you when facing those events, and they will keep track of their feelings about each other, thus influencing the overall morale of the group and its ultimate outcome.
The game will support Linux and it's in an advanced state of development as is expected to be released by November. If they exceed their $25k funding goal they've chosen to avoid Kickstarter's Folly by not proposing stretch goals. Instead they'll put any extra funds into post-release content, be it feature requests or extra content. Regarding its current funding pace we can safely predict a lot of additional content coming our way. :P











And finally this week's #1 Hidden Gem is Octopus City Blues, a surreal adventure set in Octopus City, a city literally built around a giant octopus. In it you'll take the role of Kaf Kafkaryan, a middle aged slacker with an octopus blood addiction, who's been recently having dreams about a bizarre world. While trying to help the inhabitants of his dream world he'll get involved in a conspiracy that will put Octopus City at stake. The game resembles a conventional adventure set in an unusual place full of tentacles, with a strong focus on exploration and having replay value due to the players' choices having different effects on the final outcome.
When reviewing the previous Hidden Gem we remarked its humourous nature, but Octopus City Blues is every bit as good as far as hilarity is concerned: take as an example the Kickstarter page itself with its references to other games featuring tentacles and a surreal FAQ entry (originated in a comment on RPS), or the studio's pseudo-fake website full of corporate mumbo-jumbo. But of course the game itself won't be exempt from silliness, from Kaf's spin dash ability -not unlike Sonic the Hedgehog's one- to his whimsical dreams. But under all this zany crust one can find a deep, engaging, and carefully threaded story, where NPCs have their own personality, opinions, and daily schedule, where your past actions and conversations will directly influence future events, and where you'll have to manage the main character's stress and guilt levels in order to make progress.
To add up to the game's unusual nature, after the initial English release it will also be made available in Arabic, Spanish, and Catalan -- certainly not the languages the most commonly found in a videogame, but the latter being my (muntdefems') native language has certainly helped improve our positive assessment of the game. :D  None of the previously discussed bizarre elements of the game seem to have put backers off as its initial $7k funding goal has been largely exceeded by now. In fact the first stretch goal (expanded dream worlds) has already been achieved, and the second one (mobile and Ouya versions) is about to be unlocked. If the current momentum can be kept until the end of the campaign the developers will need to think up more stretch goals as the current ones will be easily reached in no-time.







And that was all for this week! We'll hope to see you again next Monday, with at least as many exciting projects as today. In the meantime don't forget to check our crowdfunding wiki if you want to keep updated about the crowdfunding of Linux games. Bye! ;)



. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.