Back to Back: Indie RPGS to fund
Today is the day we boot up the old “Back to Back” program here at IndieRPGs.com and see what it spits out! Here we go:
Status: updating records on recently completed crowdfunding projects.
Succeeded: Umbra.
Failed: Planet Centauri, Spinal Blast, Venture Forth.
Status: observing ongoing crowdfunding projects.
The Auro Quest Expansion – an expansion to the tactics quasi-roguelike Auro (previously covered here) that seeks to expand it in much the same direction as Desktop Dungeons went: namely, with a quest mode that has you delving into multiple dungeons. With the campaign in its final 48 hours, they’ve raised about $3,800 of their $32,000 goal.
The Bard’s Tale IV – inXile’s latest Kickstarter foray has hit its goal, with funding now at $1,371,366. If the campaign ended today, this would be the lowest haul they’ve pulled in out of their three Kickstarter forays, but it’d still be damned impressive by the site’s standards. They still have 10 days left to go, however, so perhaps they’ll catch up with Wasteland 2 or Torment in the final third of the campaign.
Crisential – a post-apocalyptic survival sandbox RPG with voxel graphics. Crisential is hanging in there, but with 4 days left, its hopes of raising $80,000 are starting to seem quite remote.
Fantasy Dimension – a fantasy strategy game with a 6-character party and row-and-column combat. It’s looking for $500 in funding; it has $40 and 44 days left.
Legends of Fire & Steel – a 2D fantasy strategy game for PC and tablet with unique heroes, simultaneous turns, territory capturing, and story-driven single player campaigns. (There’s a multiplayer mode as well.) The art looks nice and polished, though it’s a bit stylistically generic. More than a week into the campaign, LoFS only raised about $2,200 out of $50,000, which is rather concerning; 18 days remain on the clock.
Luckless Seven – a 3D isometric RPG with an overarching structure reminiscent of Pokemon, consequential conversation options with choices made via a dialogue wheel, and a card battle system inspired by Pazaak. (Note: I have no clue what Pazaak is; apparently it’s a Star Wars thing.) Free demo here. Luckless Seven is about halfway to its $15,000 goal with 18 days remaining.
Regalia – a 3D sRPG with a colorful, cartoony art style and some town management mechanics, Regalia is about 150% funded; 3 days remain for it to take in more money.
Reikon Dungeon – a 3D action roguelite. The game’s combat is reportedly inspired by MOBAs, which is probably a draw for some people somewhere. It’s raised about $2,800 out of roughly $9,000, with 3 days left to make up the difference.
R.O.T. Age of Arias – a 2D jRPG with a professional looking anime art style. It’s roughly halfway funded, with 19 days left to raise another $5,000 or so.
Undead Darlings: No Cure for Love – a dating sim mixed with dungeon crawling and jRPG combat, in which you seek a cure for a highly infectious virus that kicked off the zombie apocalypse. The dating sim part is…well. Y’see, there are a bunch of girls turning into zombies, and you can romance them and get them to volunteer to let you test your cure on them. As deeply weird as the premise for this game is, it’s actually doing pretty well–UD’s already raised over $9,000 out of its $50,000 goal with 28 days left to go. Something tells me this one’s going to make it. (Hat tip to Brian Jeffears for finding this one!)
Vandal Swords –an open-ended strategy RPG with both a strategy layer and a tactical combat layer. It sounds good in theory, but suspiciously, the campaign has no actual screenshots or video of the game, instead posting screenshots from other titles. The creator mentions her past experience in the game industry, but neglects to actually mention what company she worked for, or what games she worked on. Add to this the fact that she’s only asked for $3,854 to fund a strategy RPG, and it starts to smell awfully fishy. I’d be wary of this one.
We Happy Few – a 3D, first-person roguelike-like in dystopian 1960s Britain–it looks both (a) bonkers and (b) potentially fantastic. We Happy Few has now exceeded its goal, with $215,000 raised and 3 days left for it to raise more.
(Note that I’m not going to count Shenmue III as an indie project here, as it has financial backing from Sony, who is going to be publishing the game. In retrospect, I feel obligated to withdraw Bloodstained from consideration as well, on the similar grounds.)
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