Every week we take a brief look at all of the Kickstarter video game campaigns that launched in the previous week. This isn’t to say that all of these projects are worth your hard earned cash, but with any luck having all of them in one place will make it easier to educate yourself on the projects you’d like to back, and which ones to run from. You’ll find two types of campaigns listed, “featured” and “the rest“. Featured campaigns are those that contain a significant amount of game information, are from known developers, or are significant in some other way. The rest of the games are usually smaller campaigns that are lacking in information, are from unknowns, have unanswered questions, or have not yet stood out for one reason or another.
Featured Campaigns :
Game : Tree Hugger
What it is : Stephanie wrote: “Tower defence games usually entail that you build structures to help defend your base. Usually you get all the time you need to build and then when you are ready choose to let the enemies come they’ll attack. However, the developers of Tree Hugger have decided to go a different route, putting you in the position of the antagonist. Rather than building towers you are building your forces to attack your enemies towers.“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
Game : STARMETAL
What it is : Stephanie wrote: “Starmetal is an arcade style shooter where you control a tiny ship that has to blast through endless enemies. It is a vertical scroller and oddly reminds me of a more advanced Space Invaders, and lists Tyrian and Raptor as inspiration. It is meant to be 3D however from what I can tell the player only operates on one plain and can’t dive or rise above enemies. The developer boasts that the game will feature upgradeable ships and loot drops.“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
Game : Legends of Callasia
What it is : Georgi wrote: “Anyhow, I played the provided build for a while. It was pretty damn fun actually. After going through a (not so) short tutorial, you get to delve into 2, 3, 4, or 5 player maps where turns are taken simultaneously and the overarching goal is to conquer every city/gain the most victory points. As such, each force owns a main city which can spawn up to 4 heroes, with those being the only controllable units and mainly used for capturing land, building structures and fighting enemy heroes. Sadly, battles are always automated, but it seems that the strategic element falls on gauging your opponent’s forces and whether you can take them on.“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
Game : Refuge
What it is : Stephanie wrote: “I’ll be the first to admit that I am a sucker for gloomy games with dark themes so Refuge really did catch my eye in a heartbeat. The developer mentions some of his influences while creating the game citing Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, My neighbour Totoro), and games such as Limbo, Journey, Ico, and Monument Valley. Now I am crazy about all of those things (right now I’m wearing my Totoro jumper and will happily play Limbo for a few hours in bed tonight). Even without the name dropping I still really like the visuals available to look at. I enjoy simplistic structures like these and overall am a fan of Unity games (I’d be embarrassed if I told you how many hours I have logged on Race To The Sun).“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
Game : Tokyo Warfare
What it is : Serena wrote: “And while it’s fun to ride around in modern machines of mayhem you can also tweak just about anything you want in Tokyo Warfare. Including several graphical overlays. While most of the screenshots shown are more-or-less your standard fare you can also chance your settings to that of a black-and-white manga feel, among apparently many other settings. Play death dealer however you want and start shooting down environmental assets, including luring other tanks onto ramps all the while safely shooting the ground underneath them. Sometimes you just want to turn your brain off for an hour or two, grab some heavy artillery, and literally go to town in Tokyo.“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
Game : Slipstream
What it is : Stephanie wrote: “Slipstream currently has 8 unique music tracks which you can have a preview of on Soundcloud. They definitely have a great style down, the visuals look amazing. The rewards they are offering are quite good to0, for just $10 dollars you get a Steam key for the game and a DRM-free version. The Kickstarter page also mentions that stretch goals will be revealed as funding progresses.“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
Game : Kim
What it is : Dan wrote: “The style of the Kickstarter campaign for Kim itself is also a bit unusual with an apparent desire to stay focused on the game at the expense of promoting it. The result of this is that Kim has no stretch goals, a low target of £5,000 ($7,450) and only two reward tiers with £15 ($22) getting the game itself and £20 ($30) getting you the game plus the soundtrack. To account for the lack of marketing the campaign will be longer than most, running for 60 days and ending in February 2016 with a Steam Early access release shortly afterwards in March 2016.“
Track this campaign’s progress in our Campaign Calendar.
The Rest of the Campaigns :
World Of Mo : A puzzle platformer that could be interesting, unfortunately the funding goal is out of step with what’s been shown.
Legend Of The Keepers : $450,000 funding goal for nothing! Seems like there’s at least one of these every week.
Pinball Labs : There’s no shortage of pinball games these days, but this one adds some pretty unique elements to the genre. Check it out.
The Secret of the Rendrasha Blade : Another RPG Maker game; at least this one shows off a lot in the video and has a low funding goal.
Mecha: Apocolypse : More nothing.
The final parody : This seems more like a Kickstarter parody than a game parody.
Reboot Robot : An N+ looking platform puzzler with less polish, and an unreasonable funding goal.
P.T.S.D : Another campaign with nothing. Why do people still do this?
W.S.D – Half Blooded : Aaaaaaand another one with nothing.
Shred : Nothing but a wall of text for this snowboarding game.
Valiant : The jousting concept is cool, and the screenshots look lovely; the gameplay looks fairly comical though. But hey, some people dig that sorta thing!
Code Defense : Another in a long line of “learn how to code in a game!” games.
Legacy Untold Online : $100,000 for nothing.
DECODED: System Shutdown : I’ve always loved the concept of playing a game within your computer to protect it from a virus and various other system problems. Reminds me of Virus: The Game.
Indoor Soccer Game : The Kickstarter offers up very little info, but at least the funding video has lot’s of gameplay to check out.
Dungeon Divers: Infinite Mayhem : I’m not even sure what that cover image is.
MAKIN’ A GAME! : I’m not even sure why I included this since the developer doesn’t know what kind of game he’s going to make.
Younique Games : A rough looking 3rd person horror survival game that’s already raised more than $8,000 from 12 people. Huh.
Endless : The opening line “Well their is not much to say about this game.” doesn’t compel me to read further.
Ship O’ Hoy : The Kickstarter is to fun the developer’s coffee purchases during the games’ development.
Fairstone Legacy : Pro tip: When you launch a Kickstarter for a game that you have gameplay footage of, don’t have your funding video consist solely of you talking at the camera.
The mystery of the wind order : Another RPG Maker game with nothing to show.
Project Gold Eagle : A FPS with nothing to show and a $1,500 funding goal.
Haven : A Fallout inspired vault bunker survival strategy game.
That’s it for last week’s Kickstarter video game campaigns. Watch your wallets!
