HomeMake‘s been a little quiet on the Kickstarter front. The experimental platform adventure game has just posted its first official update since May last year, as the development team has been updating backers primarily through their TIG devlog. Backers unaware of this fact will be pleased to see some news, I’m sure! $18,842 is quite the investment from a mere 380 backers. There’s a lot riding on the game’s progress. Thankfully, that’s precisely what the update covers.
It’s good but disappointing news. HomeMake‘s development has been slow due to quality assurance, if Franklin Cosgrove & Archgame are to be believed. The team, looking to build hype for the game, submitted their project to various festivals in order to be showcased, but weren’t quite met with the welcoming embrace they were hoping for. This is likely because of HomeMake‘s high-concept essence. It’s a hard game to describe. ‘Platform adventure game’ really doesn’t convey what I’m seeing on the game’s Kickstarter page, which doesn’t do a terribly great job of explaining things, either. Indeed, it goes straight into explaining the game’s world and characters before telling prospective backers what the game actually is.
The team are now focusing on the hardcore technical aspects of the game in order to bring everything up to a highly polished level. As a result, the projected release date for a playable build of the game has been set back to September to let the team breathe a little easier.
I’m not averse to high-concept, experimental games. In fact, I’m quite fond of them. However, I still really don’t understand what HomeMake is. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the concepts being thrown around here, I just don’t get what the ‘game’ is yet, and the project’s Kickstarter page doesn’t make it very clear. Here’s hoping HomeMake itself is a better communicator when the game launches (probably) in September. You can read the latest Kickstarter update here.
