Lightime intrigues me a lot. On the surface, it seems like just another low poly puzzle platformer Kickstarter, but there’s a lot of ambition in this project. Lightime focuses on time as a mechanic for solving puzzles. I don’t find the actual mechanics particularly innovative, but that isn’t a bad thing. We’ve seen these mechanics scattered throughout our video game libraries from Overwatch to Ratchet and Clank, but Lightime brings them together. I think the project has a lot of potential, but I also have a number of doubts.
This ghost mechanic is present in many games. Ratchet and Clank incorporates it too.
This project clearly has a lot going for it and has quite a low Kickstarter goal of $25,000. I’ve seen small creative teams make great games on shoe-string budgets like this. However, this is when I started getting worried. If this developer reaches their minimum funding goal they plan to work on it themselves. If they raise more, then they might hire additional help, but the plan seems to be to DIY this project. I don’t mean in any way to slight the developer, but they’ve only just got into making games. They’re self-taught and so far as I can see only have one actual game under their belt. I fear this project is simply too much too soon for them. They want to work 10 hours a day and try and release this game in Mid 2017 and I say don’t do it.
I’ve never wanted a Kickstarter project to fail before. Yet I feel as if the developer is setting himself up for a disaster. The guy clearly isn’t stupid, the Kickstarter page is a testament to that. He is merely inexperienced. Personally, I think this game deserves more money and more work because it is a great idea. I can imagine quite vividly what Lightime could be, but I don’t see that happening at the hands of one man. My advice is if he wants Lightime to be the 25 world strong non-linear experienced laid out here, he should redo this Kickstarter campaign.
What do you think of Lightime? Am I underestimating the developer?
This article contains a lot of subjective speculation from the writer. I find it really difficult to take Cliqist.com seriously as a journalism website with posts such as this. Shame on Cliquist’s editor for continuing to allow articles like this to be published. Believe it or not, there are plenty of autodidacts out there that are competent and proficient, and it seems to me that Hyden is one of them. What gives you the right to crap on people’s dreams based purely on your myopic viewpoint and limited or non-existent experience in the field? You claim you love Indie games and support the community…but then you regularly publish berating articles with negative headlines. What gives? Instead of using a scalpel to dissect the presentation of someone’s Kickstarter line-by-line, why don’t you actually do some thoughtful journalism and analyze the merits of a game project? Why not discuss where the game/projects stands out, look at parallels and similarities from other games and how the indie project diverges, etc? You have the means and personnel to be a real journalism site, so why aren’t you doing it? Why go for low-hanging fruit and click-bait articles? Why go this route instead of building a reputation for integrity and astute analysis?
I was going to respond simply that you misspelled Cliqist, but that would be insulting. Instead I suggest that you should consider having a more critical eye when it comes to the games you consider backing.
If Lightime was just a game that someone was making and we were sharing it with everyone then that would be one thing, but the developer is asking strangers to give him $25,000. If we focused only on what looked great about the game then we’d be buying into the crowdfunding hype that so many sites got suckered into in 2012/2013. It was that lack of campaign criticism that allowed projects like YogVentures, Clang, and Code Hero to waste peoples’ money so dramatically.
Stephanie mentioned several times in the article that the game looks promising, and that she wanted the campaign to succeed, but she also pointed out some very real concerns with it.
For my part the biggest concerns I have are at the bottom of the campaign. The Risks and Challenges don’t actually list any real risks or challenges. The other concern is that in the Who Am I section the developer states:
“One day I got up, walked up to my boss, told her I was sorry but this life wasn’t for me and I went home.”
I can’t bring myself to give money to someone that could just walk out on a job without sufficient notice. Too many developers have walked out on backers for me to give money to someone that’s willing to throw their arms up in frustrating and walk out on the people paying them to do a job.
I mean no disrespect to the developer, I just don’t want this to blow up in their face. They have a wonderful idea and they should cultivate it, but if they jump straight in with no help there’s a risk it will never come to be. A little planning could go a long way. I’d love it if they surprised me and did it by themselves, but I’d still prefer if they played it safe.
[…] A GIF can be used to show how a mechanic works when added alongside a text explanation.(Kickstarter: Lightime) […]