Cool Crowd-Funded Adventure Game Projects

[s_d]

Since SpaceVenture benefited greatly from cross-promotion between Kickstarter projects, and the SQN forum admins have been quite welcoming to fellow adventure game KS projects posting here (Larry, Moebius, Tex Murpy, Quest for Infamy, etc), I think it would be great to at least attempt to keep them together for discussion.

 

Right now, each project has it's own thread, which is probably fine after it funds, but as long as there is a steady flow of Kickstarter adventure games, we may come to a point where the Rocket Bar is littered with these threads rather than the comatose remains of serious ale fiends.

 

To start it off, here's a project I'm excited about, from one of our own SpaceVenture backers, Stacy Davidson (Warbird Games); Jack

Houston and the Necronauts:

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warbirdgames/jack-houston-and-the-necronauts

 

It's a "fantastic adventures/amazing stories" styled pulp-fiction homage. Think Edgar Rice Burroughs Venus series (definite heavy homage there, actually). He's using AGS and is going to go cross-platform here for sure, if not at launch, which makes my little penguin-heart skip a beat. The backgrounds & sprites are going to be based on real stop-motion animation. This technique is pretty expensive, though, and so the project needs $56K, which I'm a bit worried about him raising. However, he's put together a hell of a pitch video, which is definitely worth a peek, and the reward tiers look fantastic. We've already seen the impossible, twice over, so Warbird's at least got a fighting chance.

 

The second game project "The Big Sheep" is on IndieGoGo, and was retweeted by Scott Murphy today:

 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/121701

 

From the pitch page:

 

In the spirit of “Grim Fandango” and "Discworld Noir", but with the classic look of golden era point and clicks such as “The Secret of Monkey Island”, “The Big Sheep” is a dark, twisting murder mystery conspiracy story based on the idea that all nursery rhymes are fractured, confused accounts of events in the same twisted story. It will provide a treat for fans of old school adventures and mystery lovers alike.

 

 

That about sums it up; I must admit a bit of joy at seeing TSoMI-style night-time locations again, and this project is a real bargain at $3K. The audio quality on the pitch video is so uneven as to make it unwatchable. This is especially unfortunate, considering how much of the pitch video is spent explaining stuff to us. That being said, the team should reach their funding goal without any serious troubles, with 21 days left to raise the remaining $2.2K.

 

Friends, moderators; think one thread is too restrictive? Comments, ideas, other projects?

[Intendant S]

I wrote up an article on the Kickstarter phenomenon as it relates to adventure gaming a little over a week ago and have included links to every one that I backed. I haven't gotten around to adding the new one that just started, but I plan on doing so soon. If you want to take a look, you can find it here:

 

http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/btenille_blog/archive/2012/06/18/kickstarting-adventure-gaming.aspx

[s_d]

Adorable LucasArts-styled Reincarnation: The Root of All Evil has a couple of days left to raise the remaining $2.5K. Should be a cakewalk (but is crawling slowly).

 

It's a P-n-C adventure game based on a Flash game series of some note, up at Kongregate by B Group Productions. Drive the cartoonish, vector-animated, adventures of a cute purple demon named Vile, as he sends escaped nasties back to the underworld by killing the awful human bodies they've been reincarnated into.

 

I hope the KW funding can bring voice acting to match the lead; it adds a great deal to the gameplay. The reward tiers are finely grained, and rich with goodies, including the demon dolls, as I've linked above, little resin demon fetuses, cool T-shirt designs, signed posters, short voice work by Vile's voice actor, digital and hard-copy artbooks, soundtrack album, in-game cameos, framed animation cels, framed canvas artwork, etc. All the usual staples of huge adventure game projects are in the tiers. I have no idea how Chris will afford them, but it's looking like most of the high-end rewards haven't been purchased, so he'll save some money not having to produce some of them (nobody has selected a hard-cover artbook yet, for example).