Colonial RPG Kim is Bringing the Words of Rudyard Kipling to Kickstarter

Colonial India of the late nineteenth century is an unusual setting for an RPG, as most games of a similar ilk feature Toklienesqe fantasy worlds or futuristic sci-fi environments. The fact that Kim, inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s novel of the same name, from British developer The Secret Games Company, bucks this trend should be sufficient to intrigue any potential backers.

The procedurally generated world of Kim is viewed from a top-down perspective and although the artwork is fairly basic it does showcase a great deal of character. The setting does look to be far more interesting than most though as the titular Kimball O’Hara rises from an Irish orphan in Lahore to a spy in the ‘Great Game’ – the political conflict between the British and Russian Empires at the turn of the century.

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.

While I do admire this emphasis in producing a quality game over self-promotion the actual lack of details is enough to make me hesitate for now. There are admittedly, screenshots, brief snippets of gameplay footage and some information about the game but I won’t be pledging myself until further details are hopefully provided in future updates.

Track the progress of the Kim Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.