More Kickstarters

I've been looking at a couple of Kickstarter projects lately and thought I could mention some interesting ones here if you haven't allready heard of them.

Just announced today is GODUS. This is Peter Molyneux and his team at 22cans who is looking at reimagining Populous. He feels nobody has really been able to recreate the magic of that game, so now he's going to try for himself. Needs £450,000. Too early to tell if this is going to succeed, but my bet is that it will.

A company called Retro Fusion wants to make The History of Ocean Software. This will be a book detailing the history of Ocean. It will of course include input and anecdotes from a lot of the people involved with Ocean and other major developers at the time. Full Colour and high production values is promised. If you like your videogame history, this looks like something worth having. Has raised almost £5,000 of its £12,000 goal with over 20 days to go. With a good push towards the end this one has a good chance.

Amiga game musician Allister Brimble wants to remake most of his classic Amiga themes and release them on a double album called The Amiga Works. These will be proper high quality productions, not just some quick remakes like the ones musicians like this sometimes make just for fun. If you don't know much of Allister Brimble's work, he worked for several developers either as an employee or freelance in the Amiga days, most notably Storm, Codemasters and Team 17. He created a lot of music for their titles, which include the Body Blows games, Superfrog, Full Contact, Assassin, the Alien Breed series, Overdrive, Indy Heat, Several Dizzy games, Project-X, Troddlers and many more. These are just examples, there is no finalised tracklist yet. Pledge high enough (£40) and you will also receive a USB stick with all the original mod-files and many of the sound effects like speech samples from Alien Breed. It will also contain a number of ringtones created from the original music and effects. The goal is £13,000. With over £9,000 collected and with over 40 days to go this one is a certainty.

Will keep posting interesting projects in this topic as I come across them.

I like the art they want to use for Godus, looks great. The idea of building 'up' is also great.

These all look very interesting projects. Well definitely check them out some more tomorrow.

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Didn't take long for antoher to turn up: The Oliver Twins wants to make a new Dizzy game, Dizzy Returns. Barring one or two remakes for modern platforms, this will be the first Dizzy game for twenty years and will be an original new game, not a remake. Will also include a retro mode with 8-bit graphics and the classic difficulty level.
Requires £350,000 and will be developed for PC and iOS to start with.

Whether this one makes it or not is up in the air, I think. I'm a bit pessimistic actually. The problem here is that Dizzy hasn't remained a well-known brand for all these years but has faded into obscurity for all but retrogeeks like us. I think £350,000 will be hard to reach for something most people don't know what is anymore. I think they should have aimed lower. Then again there might be retrogeeks like us aplenty that want to see a new Dizzy title, so I might be surprised. Will be interesting to see how this develops.

I saw that mentioned today on a site somewhere. I wondered how long it might be before a proper Dizzy was attempted again (rather than those lame handheld ports recently).

Dreamfall Chapters was added to kickstarter today. If you've been following gaming news, Ragnar Tørnquist has been talking about this follow-up to The Longest Journey series for a while, and that he would go to kickstarter for most of the funding. And here it is.

So it's obviously a sequel to Dreamfall. And from the looks of it will play exactly like it did, third person adventuring with three main playable characters. So no going back to its point'n'click roots I'm afraid. Still, it's a good story they've been telling in the previous two games, I'm interested in seeing the rest. Has almost $90.000 of its $850.000 goal in the first day, no doubt this will get made.

Zoë !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:yesyes:
I loves both games

They already arrived to $175,443.

Yeah, turns out I was early in saying they had $90.000 in the first day. In the end, they hit $400.000 in 24 hours! I think it's safe to assume now that this is a thing that is definitely getting made. :)

That is great news.

Talking about kickstarter projects, have you all seen the latest one?

In the US they petitioned the White House to get the Death Star made (as in Star Wars), but the amusing letter of reply back said that at this current time the US defence budget was concentrating on other things. It also contained some other amusing references to the film, such as its design having a fatal flaw leaving it vunrable to small space ships... anyway, because the government turned down the idea those instigating it have now launched a Kickstarter project to raise the money needed to build it themselves! :lol: Was already close to $200,000 when I looked. Nearly enough for the estimate needed to get the plans drawn up.

Just imagine if they actually managed this. Would be mad!

From Bedrooms To Billions is a two-hour documentary about the UK games development scene, how it started and how it got where it is today. Lots of the old C64, Spectrum and BBC classics will be covered and it will feature interviews with a great number of legends like Matthew Smith (Manic Miner), Jon Hare (Sensible Software), David Braben (Elite), Rob Hubbard (famed C64 musician), David Darling (Codemasters founder), Julian Rignall (Zzap!64 reviewer), Martin Galway (another legenday C64 composer), Jeff Minter (oh come on, you know who this is), Dave Perry (this too), just to name a few. This kickstarter is a little shady in my book. You see, this project was allready successfully funded on another crowd-funding site indiegogo.com. They chose that site then because Kickstarter was only open to US-based companies, until recently. Anyway, this new crowd-funding drive is for improved post-production apparently. The documentary is by and large finished, all interviews have been made and so on. But in its current state it would only be two hours of talking heads. With this extra money they can add some proper music (by old legends), graphics work and make the whole thing more interesting. I allready funded it on indiegogo, so won't be backing this one (that soundtrack option sure looks nice though). Their goal of £18,000 has allready been met, so no worries there at least.

Another that's made waves today is Torment: Tides of Numenera. This is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment. It is not a direct sequel, but a new game with new characters in a new setting. So it won't be a D&D Planescape game. Otherwise this new game will stay true to the original's roots by having a large focus on making a high quality, thought provoking story with rich dialouge. It is being developed by Inxile Entertainment with Brian Fargo in the lead. They have many of the original team leads back, and I think Chris Avellone is involved. Mark Morgan is back doing the music. Several writers of the original story are returning. This looks promising indeed. They're asking for $900,000. The kickstarter was launched four hours ago, and they're passing $700,000 literally as I'm writing this. This one will probably set a new kickstarter record, the current one being held by Project Eternity which was just a few thousand dollars shy of hitting $4,000,000. (Project Eternity is another spiritual successor to old-school RPG's, Baldur's Gate in this case. Has also much of the original team back. Looks like this is a popular theme, allright.)

I've been reading about all the projects you mentioned recently.

Does seem a bit suspect that they already raised money elsewhere though. Let's wait and see what the end result is.

Really looking forward to those games though.

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Seems it's a good week for old-school RPGs: Richard Garriot, aka Lord British, wants funds for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. Lord British is famous for being the brain behind the entire Ultima series. He promises a fully immersive and interactive role-playing world. There'll be a rich story and the world will be well developed with races, religions, politics and so on. There's a classless character system which hasn't been elaborated further on yet. Basically he says he wants to bring roleplaying back to roleplaying games. He feels modern RPGs have been reduced to just level grinding with only a few initial character choices. This is going to be different, apparently. He has a very experienced team behind him with individuals who has worked on a long list of well-known titles. They're asking for $1,000,000 and though it hasn't got the incredible response that Torment got, they are nearly halfway there after a little more than a day.

Yes, it would be brilliant if he manages to raise the money for Shroud of the Avatar.

And I agree regarding modern RPGs. As much as I love playing them, many have a lot of grinding and fixate on mindless, boring side quests where you just run errands all day to level up and gain enough money to buy the items you need to pass a location to progress in the game world. The majority of MMOs are even more guilty of this. I loved some of the old Ultima games so it will be great to see a return of their creators next ideas.

I also wish they could come up with a better design for online MMOs. I've played SWTOR since beta and love the game, but this is very guilty of these things. Having to travel the same parts of a map over and over to complete quests before triggering a main mission quest to progress in the character's story starts to get boring after a couple of hours in one location. You don't however need to grind to progress so that is something it achieved.

C64 music legend Matt Gray wants to make an album of remakes of his old music. Best known for Last Ninja 2, the rest of his C64 music is also very good. It's definitely going to be a double album, with further discs added as stretch goals. There's a separate Last Ninja 2 bonus disc if you pledge high enough, also available on vinyl. There's even a special edition at £55 where the album comes in a videogame-style big box with the cds in imitation 5,25" floppy sleeves. I'm excited about this one. I really like his music, and he released a test remake on soundcloud and bandcamp to test the waters before going all in with this, and that sounds great! It's still the first day and it has nearly £8,000 of its £25,000 goal so shouldn't have any trouble succeeding.

The Elite Archives is a book detailing every Elite release there ever was, with pictures of each individual release, details of everything included in the boxes, comments on the version's strong and weak points, how they reviewed, etc. Lots of classic Elite details on offer here. The funding goal has already been reached and there is only two days left so be quick if you want to grab this along with some perks.

Looks awesome, already wanted to back the project, but 70$ for the paperback version is quite a bit steep. But I'm really tempted.

EDIT: And I just did it, because it looks so great, pledged for the 130$ version hardback copy.

@Teho, stop posting this stuff, you make me spend too much money :)

:lol: Hey, I don't want be alone in spending money on these things. And I went for the $130 one too.

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Originally Posted by Teho

:lol: Hey, I don't want be alone in spending money on these things. And I went for the $130 one too.

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:thumbs: :D

The elite archives is great but I think it's over priced compared to the other books being released and hence I can't personally justify it. As for the C64 SIDS album I am all over that.

Why would I buy a C64 SIDs album, when there's a HVSC?

www.hvsc.c64.org/

That Matt Gray album are remakes though. I already linked to the test remake he did to gauge interest in the previous post (on the phone so don't want to dig up that link again), listen to that to see if you're interested.

Actually it's reached a stretch-goal now where he will make a bonus disc with new SIDs inspired by the old games. He'll imagine there were more levels in some of them and make the songs for them for instance. They'll most likely end up in HVSC too of course.

Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, creators of Maniac Mansion and of the point & click adventure genre, have currently a kickstarter for their newest game Thimbleweed Park. The game looks exactly like Maniac Mansion at the time. The game reached now almost one third of its goal.

My favorite pledge is the 25$ one:

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"I pirated Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island when I was a kid and I feel bad!" This reward tier instantly absolves you of all guilt and includes the Thimbleweed Park game. All subsequent tiers also include guilt absolution.

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...-and-click-adv

Like it. :)

Trying to shame me into backing, eh?

It worked.

Seen the new Kickstarter to fund a new British led mission to the Moon? Anyone pledging £50 will be able to send their own DNA (in the form of a strand of hair) on the mission, and bigger pledges will allow photos and even video clips to be sent.

http://theconversation.com/british-l...loration-34103

Thimbleweed Park trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0EXTedMxNk

Remember From Bedrooms To Billions? It was that documentary focusing on the UK videogame industry that was funded on kickstarter a while back. It was released just before christmas and was quite good, and you can buy it digitally from that link in sevral editions from £10 to £30. Really recommend it. The only complaint I had when I watched it was that there was really not much C64 or Amiga material in it. C64 is understandable as the Spectrum was way more important for starting the UK game development scene. But why hardly mentioning the Amiga?

Turns out they had other plans. They are now going to make From Bedrooms To Billions: The Amiga Years which is a full 90-minute documentary focusing only on the Amiga, it's creation and what it meant for gaming. If this documentary is made to the same standard as the first one, it'll be absolutely fantastic. Here's a quote from the newsletter and a trailer:

"This 90 minute film will focus on the era for the video games industry that spanned the life of the Commodore Amiga. We will look at who built the machine and why, who were the standout developers and how the industry changed due to the incredible capabilities of the Amiga during its lifespan. There is so much to tell but we will keep it brief here, but what we can say is it will not be solely focused on the UK perspective, no doubt it will heavily feature the UK side, it is also important to understand that by the late 1980’s everyone really was becoming very aware of everyone else, so to tell the story of how the Amiga was created but importantly what it did for the video games industry we need to feature developers, musicians, Demo sceners, journalists, publishers etc from all over the world. While we do already have footage of interviewees talking about that era, it is our intention to shoot a whole new set of interviews and bring in a lot of other people, to tell real ly the definitive story of the Amiga and the outstanding development era that went on. it is our intention to run one single, short 30 day Kickstarter campaign starting in very early March, which if successful will allow us to film over spring and summer, then edit across the autumn and then release early 2016. We very much hope you will support us with this new project, if you do and we get funded we promise to put the same effort levels in and run the same sort of production along the way."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_wD_0xzvA

Will update with the link to the kickstarter once it goes live.

I suspect this will be footage they already have as the film they recently release skips most of the Amiga and ST era.

Yes, they say that they already have a lot of the footage but they intend to shoot some fresh interviews and bring in a bunch of people they hadn't spoken with originally.

Kickstarter for From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years is now live.

Dave Lowe aka Uncle Art wants to do a remake album of his classic videogames music. He did music for several platforms, Amiga games includes Street Fighter II, IK+, Beneath A Steel Sky, Microprose Formula One Grand Prix and Frontier: Elite II. It will include a full orchestra version of the Frontier: Elite II theme. There may also be a bonus disc with the original tracks, including versions that have never been released on the internet or otherwise. It's not off to a good start with less than 1/4 of the goal reached in the first couple of days but may still make it. Kickstarters usually get most of their pledges during the first and the last days and a healthy project will normally get nearly half of its goal at the start.

But that's only if they get the publicity needed to "kickstart" the fund-raising.

Would be great if it does happen.

The thing is.. unlike a book which needs funding to publish and edit, music can still be composed by a musician in their spare time, so I personally don't see Kickstarters as being so important, other than to secure the musician revenue prior to release.

The money is needed so the musician can set aside time and work on it full time as an official project without having to work on something else at the same time to pay the bills. There's actually a big difference in quality for a musician to work on something full time as opposed to doing something with it in their spare time. A spare time project won't receive as much attention and is usually something the musician does when he's just messing around and experimenting, and not something intended as a serious release.

Take Allister Brimble for example. He's remade a few of his songs over the years and most of those are found on the Immortal albums. But when you listen to those and compare them with the ones he made for The Amiga Works which he kickstarted and fully devoted himself to, the difference in quality is immediately obvious. Chris Hülsbeck as well, he's played around with the songs from the Turrican games many times, but again, his kickstarted Turrican Soundtrack Anthology is something else entirely.

In this case though a good chunk of the funding is meant for hiring the London orchestra and studio time at Abbey Road for it. Another reason for backing these kickstarters is that there are often special perks such as vinyl editions that won't ever be available anywhere again.

OK, I understand the orchestra and studio time, something you do need up front funding for.

However, working freelance and in Design Agencies for over 15 years as a designer from a similar art based profession we often have to work on something and deliver it before we get any payment. Sometimes leaving us out of pocket in the interim.

ZX Spectrum Kickstarter is live.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...y-bitmap-books

The guys that brought back the Shadowrun series to Kickstarter, now want to release a new version of Battletech, a turn-based tactical mech combat game, which reminds me a bit of the Front Mission games, which I absolutely adore.

The game was already funded after 53 minutes (250.000$), and is at the moment at 910.000$ with still 34 days to go. Eager to see how far this one goes.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ref=nav_search

Oh, it's turnbased strategy? I only read headlines about this kickstarter and assumed it was another Mechwarrior game in all but name. (Mechwarrior is set in the Battletech universe, I'm pretty sure.) Never cared for those games so didn't look closer at the kickstarter. Obviously I was wrong, I'll be taking a look after all then. :)

That sounds interesting. I used to play the original Battletech table top game back in the 80's. If they follow that then it will be good.

Another World book - Welcome to Another World! - doesn't seem to get funded, although the book looks quite nice. Only hours left.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ry_ending_soon

I'm surprised I haven't heard of this sooner. And that's probably this project's problem. I've backed a number of gaming book kickstarters now, and whenever a new one is created several of the old ones will send out updates telling you about the new one. But I haven't heard anything about this one, and haven't seen it in the gaming news I follow either. Seems to me they've failed at marketing this one properly. Shame, I would've liked this one. (I did pledge, but it's obvious this isn't going to reach it's goal)

If is only available in French, why the video is in English? :huh:

Funny one here, just read the text in the picture, and LOOK at the pictures, that looks really professional :lol:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ry_ending_soon

But don't look at it too long, you might get autheritis in your eyes :lol:

:D:D
the best project i ever seen.... lol

Last update I got from the Elite Archives book was October 2017. Is the project dead and money gone?

Seems to be the case. :(

He started two other book projects as well, The Mastertronic Archives and A Complete History of Game Controllers. Both of these haven't had any updates since october last year.

I don't think it was a scam from the start though, a lot of work went into the kickstarters and sample PDFs were given out as he progressed. Volume 1 of A Complete History of Game Controllers was actually completed and backers received the PDF ages ago. But he's yet to deliver the physical book. The last update was actually him recieiving the sample books from the printer, getting ready for the full print run for that book. Then nothing.

As for Elite Archives, I think in one of the updates ages ago he said he'd focus on these other books first as they were less work to finish and he needed to complete something so he could start selling, or something like that? He was going to resume work on Elite Archives afterwards. But at this point I'll be very surprised to see that project finished at all, even just in PDF form.

Might be real life issues getting in the way, but having taken money you should update and respect your backers.

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293 backers pledged AU$ 41,282 to help bring this project to life.

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Well, not too bad.

AU$ converts to about £22k or €25k. So yeah a fair amount. Enough to fund the project and a few months wages to get it complete.