Welcome to The Funding Crowd! We're up to issue #28 and our third of 2014! After our post-Christmas lull, contributions are back up to normal strength and so back to our regular fortnightly release schedule. You'll notice that we don't have a Still in the Running section this time around - possibly a consequence of our later edition last time, so we'll kick off straight into the Gems, get the low down on our Winners and Losers, then finish, as always with the Biggies. Read on!
The name Dysfunctional Systems will probably be familiar, that's because there is already an episode out, and now the developers are looking to create another two episodes in their visual novel series, and due to pricing their first episode too low they need some Kickstarter love.
They're aiming a little higher this time around, asking $10CAD for episode 2, or (oddly) $25CAD for episodes 2 and 3, implying that episode 3 will be a far bigger project than their second. Finally, if you haven't already experienced episode 1, you can secure all three for $30CAD.
Looking like the love child of Paradise Lost and FTL and coming in at number 4, we have Galactic Princess! Build your ship, train your team, select your tactics, then build your empire! Will you smuggle for illegal profit, trade legally, or take the bloody route of the pirate? Galactic Princess doesn't care how you do it and will prod you through the journey with self-referential humour, parody and drama, as each moment demands. The studio behind it all, Cecly, has created a full universe of alien races, culture and backstory to help bring the plot alive.
Already funded at the time of writing and with three weeks still to play out, there's plenty of hope that additional stretch goals can be achieved. You only need a £10 pledge to secure a copy of the game, or £15 if you'd also like your name in the credits. The game has already been Greenlit by Valve, so your pledge will also land you a Steam key on release, which is targeted for around Christmas next year.
Catapult for Hire is a project that takes a classic title, in this case Sony's Pain, and expands on it. Man a giant catapult and use a variety of projectiles to journey through a puzzle-based landscape to your eventual target. Throw in some beautiful cel-shaded graphics and author Tyrone Henrie is hoping that his relatively low target and reasonably near release-date will win the necessary pledges. As is the norm these days, you can also vote for free to get the title Greenlit on Steam.
Are you in search of a good casual-ish game, available for both your Linux box and (potentially) your mobile device of choice, suited to short playing sessions? Search no more as 39 Days to Mars is the project you were looking for: sporting a beautiful steampunk-ey hand-drawn art style, along with a co-op survival-slash-adventure-slash-puzzlesolving gameplay, it tells the story of Sir Albert Wickes and The Right Honourable Clarence Baxter, two Victorian era explorers who are on their way to Mars aboard the HMS Fearful. Unfortunately they are certainly not the best men for the job, and steam power isn't also a reliable enough technology for such an enterprise, so trouble is expected to appear sooner than later. And that's what the player's job will be: fixing any mechanical problem that arises as well as attending the two anachronic astronauts' needs, be it eating, sleeping, or getting entertained to avoid death by boredom.
You'll be able to tackle this challenge either solo or in local co-op mode with a friend for as little as $2NZD and up. What's that you say? You aren't that keen to back a project with your credit card? No problem, as there's now a PayPal backing option available so you've got no excuse left. More than 200 people found this game was worth their money and they helped reach the $2kNZD Linux support stretch goal at the same time. 9 days are left to try to reach the $4kNZD stretch goal which would allow for mobile ports of the game, so you can also try to make Wickes and Baxter reach the Red Planet while you're waiting the bus.
We finish our Gems with StarCrawlers, a beautifully realised space-based dungeon crawling RPG. Explore space ships and put together your team of "Crawlers" to combat the various denizens you'll meet. The exploration itself is oddly reminicent of Legend of Grimrock, while combat appears to take inspiration more from traditional jRPGs, moving into a turn-based combat system where each Crawler can use their skills to deadly advantage.
Star Crawlers will be the debut title form Juggernaut Games, a studio which formed in 2011, but contracted by Sony to create content for the Sony Home platform. Star Crawlers will be their first independent release. Already Greenlit on Steam and already nearly funded, it would seem that their decision to go independent has paid off!
Please follow us to the next page, where we review the recently finished campaigns and their respective outcomes.
.
The name Dysfunctional Systems will probably be familiar, that's because there is already an episode out, and now the developers are looking to create another two episodes in their visual novel series, and due to pricing their first episode too low they need some Kickstarter love.
They're aiming a little higher this time around, asking $10CAD for episode 2, or (oddly) $25CAD for episodes 2 and 3, implying that episode 3 will be a far bigger project than their second. Finally, if you haven't already experienced episode 1, you can secure all three for $30CAD.
Looking like the love child of Paradise Lost and FTL and coming in at number 4, we have Galactic Princess! Build your ship, train your team, select your tactics, then build your empire! Will you smuggle for illegal profit, trade legally, or take the bloody route of the pirate? Galactic Princess doesn't care how you do it and will prod you through the journey with self-referential humour, parody and drama, as each moment demands. The studio behind it all, Cecly, has created a full universe of alien races, culture and backstory to help bring the plot alive.
Already funded at the time of writing and with three weeks still to play out, there's plenty of hope that additional stretch goals can be achieved. You only need a £10 pledge to secure a copy of the game, or £15 if you'd also like your name in the credits. The game has already been Greenlit by Valve, so your pledge will also land you a Steam key on release, which is targeted for around Christmas next year.
Catapult for Hire is a project that takes a classic title, in this case Sony's Pain, and expands on it. Man a giant catapult and use a variety of projectiles to journey through a puzzle-based landscape to your eventual target. Throw in some beautiful cel-shaded graphics and author Tyrone Henrie is hoping that his relatively low target and reasonably near release-date will win the necessary pledges. As is the norm these days, you can also vote for free to get the title Greenlit on Steam.
Are you in search of a good casual-ish game, available for both your Linux box and (potentially) your mobile device of choice, suited to short playing sessions? Search no more as 39 Days to Mars is the project you were looking for: sporting a beautiful steampunk-ey hand-drawn art style, along with a co-op survival-slash-adventure-slash-puzzlesolving gameplay, it tells the story of Sir Albert Wickes and The Right Honourable Clarence Baxter, two Victorian era explorers who are on their way to Mars aboard the HMS Fearful. Unfortunately they are certainly not the best men for the job, and steam power isn't also a reliable enough technology for such an enterprise, so trouble is expected to appear sooner than later. And that's what the player's job will be: fixing any mechanical problem that arises as well as attending the two anachronic astronauts' needs, be it eating, sleeping, or getting entertained to avoid death by boredom.
You'll be able to tackle this challenge either solo or in local co-op mode with a friend for as little as $2NZD and up. What's that you say? You aren't that keen to back a project with your credit card? No problem, as there's now a PayPal backing option available so you've got no excuse left. More than 200 people found this game was worth their money and they helped reach the $2kNZD Linux support stretch goal at the same time. 9 days are left to try to reach the $4kNZD stretch goal which would allow for mobile ports of the game, so you can also try to make Wickes and Baxter reach the Red Planet while you're waiting the bus.
We finish our Gems with StarCrawlers, a beautifully realised space-based dungeon crawling RPG. Explore space ships and put together your team of "Crawlers" to combat the various denizens you'll meet. The exploration itself is oddly reminicent of Legend of Grimrock, while combat appears to take inspiration more from traditional jRPGs, moving into a turn-based combat system where each Crawler can use their skills to deadly advantage.
Star Crawlers will be the debut title form Juggernaut Games, a studio which formed in 2011, but contracted by Sony to create content for the Sony Home platform. Star Crawlers will be their first independent release. Already Greenlit on Steam and already nearly funded, it would seem that their decision to go independent has paid off!
Please follow us to the next page, where we review the recently finished campaigns and their respective outcomes.
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4 comments
Thanks! I hear you on the burn out angle. I was the same around Christmas, but I'm actually slowly getting more tuned again and even if I'm not pledging as often as before, I still love researching and writing about these projects, so the Funding Crowd isn't going away, I hope!
That said, I'm moving house tomorrow and will be offline for a fortnight, so I won't be contributing nearly anything to TFC#29... but I'm sure S.D., Speedster and Muntdefems will keep the flag flying.
And if you, or anyone else wants to get involved, drop us a PM! Even if it's just a write up for a project you love, even if it's just for one issue, we'll be happy to use the help.