Home Read Curses N Chaos Announced to Mercenary Kings Kickstarter Backers. Goes Poorly

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Curses N Chaos Announced to Mercenary Kings Kickstarter Backers. Goes Poorly

August 19, 2015

Do you remember Mercenary Kings? The Metal Slug inspired platform shooter was successfully funded in September 2012 after 3,880 backers donated over $116k. When it was eventually released in 2014 the game met with mostly positive reviews, with much of the praise piled on the cartoon-like pixel graphics and over the top destruction. Another happy ending!

Eh, almost.

Mercenary Kings’ developers at Tribute Games posted a backer update yesterday to announce the release of a new game. Curses N Chaos is a single screen brawler – think Super Smash Bros – with cartoon-like pixel graphics and over the top destruction that’s now available on a variety of platforms. It looks lovely.

Unfortunately the Kickstarter update reads like a press release announcing the games’ availability on Steam; which is where the problem comes in. Because the update is nothing more than a press release encouraging people to buy a non-crowdfunded game the whole thing comes across as a little tacky. Should backers get a free copy of the game, or even a discount? That’d be nice, but it’s totally unnecessary. However, backer Daniel sums up the issue nicely :

Sassy, sure, but he has a point. Just because you back a project doesn’t mean you should suddenly find yourself on a developer mailing list, especially if the updates are of negligible relevance to the audience. It’s easy enough to unsubscribe from a projects updates (Settings>Notifications>Projects You Back>Manage), but that’s beside the point. I enjoy following projects long after they’ve run their course, just in case something concerning the game is announced. Or, in the case of Mercenary Kings, to keep tabs on a broken campaign promise; as noted by Brian Watzig: