Kickstarter is becoming more and more popular these days, with several projects being in the news of lately. Two projects that caught my eye were FTL (Faster Than Light) and Techpocalypse.
Faster Than Light Kickstarter
FTL is a spaceship simulation game that features elements of exploration, discovery, spaceship management and real time strategic combat. In addition to this strategic combat it seems that players also need to make further decisions (and therefore more strategy elements are present) upon certain text-based events. It’s like in Star Trek where the crew was always facing unpredictable dangers and needed to react swiftly and cleverly to solve them. FTL is in a way you in the skin of a captain or personifying a spaceship crew deciding what needs to be done to deal with circumstances.
The team behind FTL stated that they were in Alpha but close to completion when they launched their kickstarter campaign. They already have a demo available (through OnLive), but they asked for additional $10.000 to help fund business costs, to pay the sound designer and for further game polishing and improvement.
At the time of this writing they have already achieved 432% funding!! (no, not a typo) In two days? This is insane :) This is again proof that when a project is solid and based in a strong motif anything can happen. StarDrive is another of these success stories, among many others that were not so lucky in attracting the public sympathy.
The devs plan to launch FTL for Windows, Mac and Linux still this year. For more info checkout FTL’s kickstarter page.
Techpocalypse: A Sci-Fi Social Experiment
Techpocalypse is a sci-fi social game project that unfolds on a post-apocalyptic world where you need to team-up with your friends to survive in this new hostile environment dominated by machines. This project seems to be slightly less solid than FTL to me, not because the idea is not good and has no merit or any of that but because it sounds more like an experiment than the real need to have funds to complete an already established game. I apologise if this is not the case but although the people behind the project do state that they are 90% done, they also enigmatically state (right after) that “all that remains is the other 90%”. But they do claim to be no strangers to building games. They show-off a big credits list of games that they have done in the past.
They’re revolutionary new collaboration play method is not clear to me at this stage, nor the exact technology behind the game. Will it be a facebook game, a typical browser game? Does it require a SW client to be installed? It’s not clear yet but judging from what I’ve read in their kickstarter page the game seems to be going in the browser direction. The apocalyptic theme in F2P games is not new either, example of this is the browser-based game Renations, which also features a multiplayer post-apocalyptic gaming environment. Will they succeed?
Checkout Techpocalypse’s kickstarter page for the details.
Seems like the crowdfunding scheme is becoming more and more into a serious way to raise money for projects (including game projects). Kickstarter is one of such crowdfunding systems, probably the most hyped service at the moment but there are other platforms like Artistshare, Pledgemusic, Funding4learning, Fondomat, Rockethub, Sponsume, Indiegogo and probably many more.
Judging from past crowfunding successes and failures that I’ve witnessed (not many yet though to reach meaningful conclusions) it seems like you may have a good shot if your idea is solid and if it resonates with people, preferably in a nostalgic way. All with a solid project already established, a sound release plan and a list of goodies and you may have a real shot with this sort of programs. Just pay attention to the entry details.
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Just played FTL. Looks really nice … and the idea is great plus game could be made really deep, like crew experience, different ships and modules + probably some factions and economy, planetary interaction and events.
Great to have your impressions on it, thanks a lot for sharing. Looks like a great game, and great concept indeed.
Yeah I jumped in as a supporter to get beta access, Dwarf Fortress in space meets SG, hell yeah. =)
OMG! FTL is at 760% funding with 21 days to go!
Techpocalypse has still a long road ahead with 13.6% already.