Studio Namaapa is a fledgling game developer from Indonesia. The team has been working on their current project, a raising sim called Ciel Fledge, for about a year and a half. After building the bulk of the game with their own money, they have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help bring some much needed life (and sounds) to Ciel Fledge.
As the campaign page explains, “with a very tight budget, it’s hard to allow the audio department creative freedom. We want to hire a vocalist, live instrumentalists, and voice over artists for the characters, but with the current budget situation, it is not possible.” The studio is seeking just $5,000 to bring this more refined vision of the game to market. They also hope the campaign will help them reach the “simulator/visual novel/daughter raising/RPG enthusiasts” community.
For the uninitiated, raising sims are the game equivalent of parenthood. Basically, you micro-manage a child to successful adulthood. How you plan your child’s education and activities will impact how they grow and respond to others. Sometimes, the grown child has the responsibility to save the world. As their parent you have a set amount of time to help prepare them for this destiny.
Her Life Is In Your Hands
Ciel Fledge follows this same basic premise of most raising sims. In this distant future, an alien outbreak has left the surface of the earth uninhabitable. Since the alien’s originated in earth’s core, humans have had to flee to giant Arks above the planet’s surface. Okay, so maybe the story is a little different. After an attack destroys a nearby Ark you take in one of the few survivors, a young girl.
From there you are given the span of 10 years to raise your adopted daughter and help prepare her for the dire circumstances of the world. The bulk of the story is told in the form of a visual novel. You can view your daughter’s stats and plan which activities she will participate in to improve her scores. This pays off during the puzzle-based combat portions of the game.
Yes, this is the same game.
It’s a strange idea that occasionally relies on chibi-potato representations of the characters to get its point across. And yet, I kinda want to play it. A large part of that is due to how the sincerity of the developers. This is a team of people, most of whom work remotely, trying to break out from the standard mobile market that dominates in their country. To do so they just need a modest funding goal and a supportive community of backers.
So yeah, Ciel Fledge is a weird little indie game that is going to fly right under most people’s radars. At the same time it’s exactly the sort of plucky little project that crowdfunding was made for. You can’t help but hope it succeeds.
