KickStarter Kickstarter Watch.

[Excidium II]

How would someone who likes western and PC games not have played Desperados yet?

 

[Alex]

Maybe he just wasn't...





... desperate enough?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Desperados, clone of Commandos.

Zombras post recommended that and I have all 3. 1st one is a masterpiece in its quicksave/quickreload heavy genre.

But about kickstarters:
Tower 57 looks quite neat twin stick shooter with destructible environments.

Complex situations arising from simple systems interacting with each other.

These systems drive the world's rules: fire spreads, electricity travels down the path of least resistance, etc.

The game gives you tools and goals, and it's up to you to figure out how to use one to achieve the other within this framework.

e. Projects that seek funding in Euros are currently more common than few years back.
I wonder what has changed or is € still a death sentence for a kickstarter project?
Has the exchange rate with US$ dropped enough to not spook kwansanians?

e2. Tower 57 has already got it's own thread .

 

[Excidium II]

Yeah it looks p. cool, the devs have a thread here in GG.

 

[Abu Antar]

Maybe some day time is ripe for someone to make a western game without space, magic or post-apocalypse.

I hope this turns out to be good.

EDIT: FFS, this also has supernatural events going on. Oh well, still looks decent

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I hope this turns out to be good.

Yeah. I'm aware of Hard West. This was the game I thought about when I added magic to my whine.
Cautiously pessimistic about it.

BTW. That whine was combination of 24 pack, me watching Rio Bravo http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053221/ and my recent attempt to play Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord (nothing wrong with that game; I just decided to play Ultimate General Gettysburg instead).
But that is more fitting subject matter to thread "codexers lament about their dream games that don't exist and never will."

 

[Zombra]

I don't remember the last game in which I played as a cowboy fighting Satan. Looking forward to Hard West.

 

[CryptRat]

Woolfe is aborted: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45588301/woolfe-the-red-hood-diaries/posts/1168409

GAME OVER

It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed.
The team is now dismantled and we have requested bankruptcy unable to pay outstanding bills.

I guess our public silence the last few months already said a lot. It is not out of disrespect that our communication dropped to almost zero… it is out of shame. It is truly devastating to read the negative comments we received by some press and players. With Woolfe being the most passion driven thing we have ever created, it feels horrible to live with the feeling we let you down.

Once the sales numbers began rolling in, the consequences of our beautiful adventure started to become painfully clear.

This is not just the end of Woolfe, but the end of the studio that I founded and nurtured through ups and downs the past 13 years. In 2002, when I founded GRIN with 2 partners, it was our goal to develop independant games. At the time we were focussed on browser based 3D games. Not an easy market to make a living from at the time. Less than 2 years after we started my 2 partners stepped out; there just wasn’t enough work to go round.

While not losing my passion and still spending every minute of spare time, I generated my basic income doing work-for-hire jobs. Every year the company grew a little stronger, a little better, a little more stable. Until 2 years ago, GRIN had 5 full-time employees exclusively making games for clients, we even made enough money to save a little cash on the side. We would use these savings to create the game of our dreams. Little did we know this would be the beginning of the end…

The optimist in me led me to believe we could actually pull off making a “bigger” indie game. I really wanted to prove an indie game did not have to be rendered in pixels or stylized as a solution to cut development costs. I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong!

At first we could not believe that our “baby” was not more successful, in our emotions we started looking for explanations not related to the game. Maybe gamers are just spoilt brats, bashing on everything, maybe there is an oversaturation of indie market, maybe all the free-to-play games by big studios are giving players a false sense of value. How could less than $10 be to expensive for a beautiful game like Woolfe? How could this be our fault?

Of course none of the emotional excuses above are the reason of our mixed steam rating. We can only blame ourselves…

Our lack of experience just could not be compensated with passion alone.

Why on earth would we want to increase the scope of our game without increasing the budget. Ok, it is understandable that you get inspired to try new things in gameplay, you have to experiment to come up with creative ideas and solutions. I’m not saying the ideas we came up with were impossible. But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development cost (we found out a little too late). Collision detection for instance (and you can’t even really see that) became such a big issue so fast. Instead of having a simple 2D track where you would not be able to collide with small environment props like crates, piles of stones or skulls. Now every little element had to collide, every crooked stone on the floor had to trigger correct foot placement.

The same goes for the fences that seem to cause so much frustration with some players. Although is was a conscious game-design decision, I believe the feeling of freedom the 3D movement opened up, gave players the sense that Woolfe was no longer a platformer, but an open-world type game (more than once compared to Assassin’s Creed, which is an honor, but also a curse as we would never be able to compete).

Although our rules for fences and borders were used very consequently throughout the game, we just couldn’t get players to see them as an environmental gameplay challenge.

Not to mention the combat… OMG! How much more work it turned out to be having enemies follow and engage with the player in the semi-open environments we had grown to love.

Like a “smart” drug dealer might say: Don’t get high on your own supply…

What about our Kickstarter backers?

The people that believed in us from the beginning? People we made promises too. People we have let down. Even worse… people we will not be able to give the full rewards they invested in.

The crazy thing is, that we have most of the rewards ready for postage. All the backer stickers and letters of enlistment just need a stamp. All the poster sets printed, signed and ready. The artbook is ready to be printed, the soundtrack is ready for distribution, the DVD case is ready for production. But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print the artbooks and dvd-cases.

What about Volume 2?

I think it is quite obvious now that we will not be able to finalise production of Woolfe Volume 2. With the low rating of Volume 1, all interested publishers have backed off and we no longer have the financial means to self publish… But we still have loads of assets and we think it would be a shame to let them all go to waste… maybe there are other developers out there that would like to take a shot at making new volumes of Woolfe. Maybe they can achieve what we were unable to accomplish. If our visual style is our strongest element we should make this available for others who are stronger at making gameplay. We would want nothing more than that the legacy of Woolfe would live on forever, or at least longer than a few months.

So with a heavy heart I have to communicate that as of now the IP of Woolfe, all of the assets and source code is now for sale via the appointed trustee Cathérine Lannoy. (c.lannoy@etrevia.be)

I would like to end this post with a very big thank you to my wife for standing by my side in this turbulent period, I hope she forgives me for pulling her into this dangerous adventure. I want to thank my parents and family who have supported me all the way, even financially when things got really rough these last few months. My friends for putting up with my limited conversation topics and recent period of isolation. My former employees that have become some of my best friends. The people who invested in GRIN. The amazing fans that helped us push the limits of what we could achieve. But I would also like to add word of thanks and support for my colleagues and fellow game developers here in Belgium and the rest of the world. YOU ROCK!!! Never stop doing what you’re doing, you have the power to make your dreams come true, but beware of the pitfalls. Beware what you risk, you do not want to be in my position now. You do not want to lose everything you worked so hard for.

As for me, I going to take it easy the next couple of weeks/months, but I have learnt so much about game development the past few years and I don’t plan on letting that knowledge go to waste. And as always, if there is anything I can do for you or help you out with, don’t hesitate to contact me (but give me a little time to get my shit together first please…).

If you want to know more about what game developers go through, I suggest reading this very interesting post of a former game developer on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3cg2hc/repost_as_a_former_developer_theres_a_lot_of/

Thank you,

Wim Wouters

 

[Kz3r0]

http://steamspy.com/search.php?s=woolfe+
Owners: 36,196 ± 4,768

 

[Kutulu]

First time i ever actually browsed through kickstarter myself, wow, just wow.....

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-and-help-create-our-pc-rpg-gam?ref=discovery
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/995975983/youtubers-for-us-all?ref=discovery

 

[Bester]

So with a heavy heart I have to communicate that as of now the IP of Woolfe, all of the assets and source code is now for sale via the appointed trustee Cathérine Lannoy. (c.lannoy@etrevia.be)

What the fuck? Nobody's gonna buy your shit for more than 100 bucks, what the fuck you greedy belgian tard?

Either put those assets up on Unity Asset Store for 100 bucks and sell them non-exlusively or make them free and available to everyone. No, instead you'll take them to your own grave. You fucking faggot. Hate this shit. I'm happy your game turned out to be shit, you don't deserve any money you greedy asshole cunt.

With the low rating of Volume 1, all interested publishers have backed off and we no longer have the financial means to self publish…

All your had to do was to make a good game, you fucking whining crybaby. You had your chance, that's more than most people got and you fucked it up, now who's fault is it? Fuck you, release the assets you cunt.

 

[Destroid]

We love developers here on RPG Codex!

Is anyone else stunned that the fucking fourth cypher system kicksterstar has like 120k pledged in less than a week?

No, it's almost a guarantee that each subsequent kickstarter for a project will raise more funds than the previous, regardless of the outcome before.

 

[Astral Rag]

Grip Kickstarter is live now:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/169002413/grip-an-intense-futuristic-combat-racer

 

[Animal]

Grip Kickstarter is live now:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/169002413/grip-an-intense-futuristic-combat-racer

This looks fun!

 

[Astral Rag]

Yeah it looks great, this is the first project I backed since Underworld Ascendant, can't wait to get my hands on the beta

 

[Executr]

Couple Kickstarters...



Has own thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/everspace-a-rogue-like-pc-space-shooter.101569/



This one is way ambitious, asking for such amount. It's been in development for 3 years and will be released as Early Access for backers, soon after the KS.

 

[Zombra]

Jesus Christ ... "CivCraft"?

 

[Abelian]

One of the devs registered here last year (on April Fool's of all days...) and created a CivCraft thread.

 

[Crooked Bee]

The 7th Guest fan game The 13th Doll has been funded: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64161490/the-13th-doll-a-fan-game-of-the-7th-guest

 

[Infinitron]

Here's Exoplanet: First Contact, a "space western" action-RPG that's been in development for a long time and is soon coming to Kickstarter:

http://alersteam.com/blog/en/
https://www.youtube.com/user/Alersteam/videos

Kickstarter is now live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/287489203/exoplanet-first-contact

 

[CryptRat]

An alternative trailer for Knite & The Ghost Lights with video game music :


And the horrible official one with stupid pop-music :

Spoiler

 

[Tehdagah]

About the Red Ash controversy...

So the game would have FUSE money + fan's money rather than just fan's money and supposedly this is bad thing.

Okay.

Also, Shenmue 3 and Bloodstained are being partially funded by other companies, yet there's no outrage.

 

[80Maxwell08]

About the Red Ash controversy...

So the game would have FUSE money + fan's money rather than just fan's money and supposedly this is bad thing.

Okay.

Also, Shenmue 3 and Bloodstained are being partially funded by other companies, yet there's no outrage.

There was outrage at all 3 of those things. Plenty of people were pointing out how dumb it was for Shenmue 3 to be on kickstarter when it had Sony behind it and I saw quite a few people skeptical about Bloodstained's mystery publisher. Also Red Ash wouldn't even say what the kickstarter money was going to be used for when they announced the partnership with FUSE so there's reasons to not like any of the 3.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-08-17-red-ash-wants-another-usd247k-for-its-anime-spin-off

Red Ash wants another $247k for its anime spin-off
Hopes to expand it from 12 to 30 minutes.

A couple of weeks ago Keiji Inafune's Mega Man Legends' spiritual successor Red Ash fell $280K shy of its $800k Kickstarter goal, but its anime spin-off, Red Ash: Magicicada, achieved its $150k crowdfunding goal with an ending tally of $162,882. That hasn't stopped animation developer Studio4℃ from asking for an additional $247k to expand the anime from a 12-minute short to a half-hour longer short.

Red Ash: Magicicada has big ambitions for a spin-off of to a game that the public had little interest in.

As outlined in a new Kickstarter update, Studio4℃ decided it would need $260k above the $150k is asked for. It already has $12,882 of that from surplus funding on the original Kickstarter, so now it just needs another $247,118 to go.

Weirdly, it's spreading this out into two different crowdfunding platforms. There's the international Studio4℃Fun& (yes, that's the actual name) asking for $127,118 and the Japanese Motion Gallery asking for $120k.

Both have until 14th October to secure their funding.

Given that the original Kickstarter barely met its goal and the Red Ash game failed to meet its goal, it seems highly unlikely that this anime will achieve this newly added, post-Kickstarter stretch goal.

Studio4℃ is remaining hopeful though, as its objective is for there to be a third stage of its fundraising operation where it raises enough for a full feature-length 92 minute film. A budget for this will only be revealed once the $260k is raised for this second stage of the campaign.

The Red Ash game will still be made, sort of, as a roughly eight-hour prologue called Red Ash: The KalKanon Incident, as Chinese company Fuze Entertainment swooped in from outside of Kickstarter and funded its development for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

 

[Infinitron]

Important news: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...art-and-schafer-on-its-advisory-board.102204/