Kickstarter officially launched in Australia and New Zealand yesterday with over 1700 projects up and running in the first 24 hours. Luckily for us only a dozen of them were in the video game category. Rather than picking through them we thought it might be nice to wrangle all of them into one story and give you a bit of information about each one. As you’ll see the projects launched over the past 24 hours run the full gambit of game types, campaign professionalism, and funding goals. If you think we missed some please shoot an email our way and we’ll make sure we post another update!
[divider]
Game : 3 Minute RPG
Origin : Australia
What Is It : It’s a game you could play through five times during your fifteen minute break at work! There’s not a whole lot else to say except that the funding is to pay some artists to add some additional artwork to the game. Only $700, so at least the developer is being realistic. Oh, and you can play the game now for free if you like, and it’ll stay free once it’s officially released.
Funding Goal : $700
[divider]
Game : Eelcreek
Origin : New Zealand
What Is It : Described as a reverse fishing game, Ellcreek looks to change things up a bit. The game started out as a fishing sim but then the developers had second thoughts about making a game that encourages people to deplete natural resources. This moral conundrum was addressed by expanding the scope of Eelcreek. Once you play through the fishing portions of the game your character comes to a realization about what he’s done and goes about finding a resolution. Art imitating life?
Funding Goal : $22,500
[divider]
Game : Hand Of Fate
Origin : Australia
What Is It : A PC card game that’s got quite a bit more to offer than the competition. In Hand of Fate you’ll draw and play your cards, except that when it comes time for the play portion you’ll be put into an action slasher, God of War style. The levels and enemies are all decided by the cards in your deck, as well as that of your enemy, so it’s a Rogue-like card slasher game. Cool. The development team is comprised of ex Pandemic, THQ, Sega, and Krome talent, with titles such as Mercenaries, Freedom Force, Homeworld, and Total War under their belts.
Funding Goal : $50,000
[divider]
Game : Huntsmen
Origin : Australia
What Is It : A post apocalyptic first person RPG that takes place in a shattered Australia, and not just in the Outback. According to the developer you’ll not only have to deal with the usual bad guys and animals, but also a hostile environment that reacts to the actions you take. Speaking of a hostile environment, as you play the game the world and its inhabitants will evolve based on your actions. If you come across an animal do you kill it, or leave it be? If you kill it you’ll be impacting population levels of not just that animal type, but the levels of other animals that interact with it. Given a finite population levels I’m immediately struck with the desire to turn this into a hunting meta game where I purge the world of Dingos.
Funding Goal : $200,000
[divider]
Game : LaQuisha’s Odyssey
Origin : New Zealand
What Is It : The first game to feature a bearded lady drag queen. No it’s not a joke, at least not all of it, this is a game based on the very real LaQuisha Redfern who happens to be a bearded lady drag queen from down under. The game, LaQuisha’s Odyssey, is an old school adventure that owes much to Leisure Suit Larry. The Kickstarter video is full of comedy and innuendo that’s actually funny; if the game is half as good as the video then we’ve got a winner here.
Funding Goal : $69,000
[divider]
Game : The Neverending Game
Origin : Australia
What Is It : Quite the contrast to 3 Minute RPG, isn’t it? In this 2d platformer you play a cube that must navigate a number of mind numbing levels. The levels are all handmade, with no awkward procedurally generated sections, and appear to have a mix of themed environments along with straight jumping sections. If jumping around constantly isn’t your thing, then Neverend Game’s trivia sections may be of interest. Why toss trivia into a platformer game? To change things up a bit, and because “…earning/expressing your knowledge of the world is also fun.” Tough to argue with that.
Funding Goal : $2,000
[divider]
Game : Outer Worlds Online
Origin : New Zealand
What Is It : A sandbox RPG, RTS, MOBA, MMO. Lots of acronyms there, but what’s it all mean? Advance your characters and units in level to better prepare them for combat. Gather resources to help you spread and upgrade your empire. Deploy your units to battle and jump into the action and fight alongside them using a character you directly control. There’s a number of other features that may draw backers in, including a player economy, player created content, explore the stars and find new worlds to conquer. Outer Worlds is promising a lot for the relatively humble $35,000 funding goal, but according to the funding page the Kickstarter looks to be mainly for funding some new art and building a community.
Funding Goal : $35,000
[divider]
Game : Smash
Origin : Australia
What Is It : A fruit smashing simulator. Sounds silly, maybe like a Fruit Ninja knock off? That was my thought initially, however Smash appears to be aiming for quite a bit more than that. Think of it less as a fruit smashing sim, and more as an arcade game that shows what VR controllers can be fun. It’s going to be available for Xbox One, PC, Mac, and Linux and will support Kinect, Razer Hydra, Sixense STEM, and Oculus Rift. There are also stretch goals for more VR devices, including Leap Motion, PrioVR, and Reactive Grip. So basically everything.
Funding Goal : $1500
[divider]
Game : Space Station Alpha
Origin : Australia
What Is It : There isn’t much information on the Space Station Alpha Kickstarter page, and maybe that’s ok, since the title pretty much says it all. Start the game with an open building area, some money to spend, and a robot assistant to do the heavy lifting. Keep the citizens of your station happy by keeping a good stockpile of supplies, repair any life threatening damage as soon as possible, and for the love of god keep those space pirates away!
Funding Goal : $5,000
[divider]
Game : Tapshot
Origin : Australia
What Is It : It’s like an updated Wild Gunman where players need to be the first to draw their six shooter, or wind up full of bullet holes. Given the gun slinging subject matter the graphics in Tapshot are pretty tame, featuring cardboard cutout style enemies that fall over when killed, making it a fairly family friendly experience. As you would expect from a mobile game, Tapshot has plenty of social media features, allowing you to post scores to Facebook while calling out your friends to beat you in a challenge. But don’t worry, you can disable the social functions and stick with shooting bad guys.
Funding Goal : $10,000
[divider]
Game : Tiny Shops Burgers
Origin : Australia
What Is It : At first I thought this was a lemon aide stand game, where you just buy supplies at a particular price per unit and sell them for a slightly higher amount, but Tiny Shops Burgers is a bit different. The developers are priding themselves in providing education benefits to the players in the form of various mathematical principles such as recognizing appropriate Australian coin values, place values in order to give proper change, and problem solving for when things don’t go according to play. As you can see it’s a game geared towards a fairly young audience, but I’m sure all of us could use a little practice telling those coins apart.
Funding Goal : $2,500
[divider]
Game : Trainz Simulator : A New Era
Origin : Australia
What Is It : Not to be confused with Train Simulator, Trainz is a series that has its own group of hardcore followers. New Era comes across as a love letter to fans for the series, and genre as a whole, while taking things to the next level in order to compete. This side-by-side screenshot is undoubtedly impressive, as are the huge physics improvements in the works. What kind of physics can you really have in a train sim? Take a look at the Kickstarter page and see for yourself, it’s pretty impressive.
Funding Goal : $165,000
[divider]See what we mean? Talk about all over the board! Which will you be backing?
wow….thanks for the focus on this…all the kikstarters look awesome….t
(developer of 3 minute rpg )
Turns out the demo link for 3 minute rpg was not working.
[…] started accepting projects from the land down under, namely Australia and New Zealand. The last time we checked there were 12 projects across a wide variety of genres that launched in the first 24 hours. […]