Back to Back: indie RPGs to fund
It’s a slow news day today; you know what that means! It’s time for another edition of Back to Back, where we look at indie RPGs currently up for funding on Kickstarter. (Besides, it’s been a few weeks since we ran one of these.)
From our last list, Cryamore, Terra Incognita and Delver’s Drop succeeded with flying colors; Heroes of Steel made its goal and then some; and Days of Dawn squeaked over the finish line with some room to spare. I didn’t get a chance to post The Dark Triad here, sadly, and it appears its funding campaign has already been canceled in the interim.
Here’s the new list:
- Bloom: Memories — an unusual-looking Zelda-alike. I’ll be digging up more info on this one soon.
- Caravaneer 2 — this isometric post-apocalyptic survival wRPG / economic sim (previously covered here) is still fundraising, and is now down to 25 days in its Indiegogo campaign.
- Hartacon Tactics — this rather nice-looking 2D isometric tactical fantasy RPG (previously covered here) is limping along with only $40 in funding despite months on Indiegogo. I can only assume the author hasn’t been marketing the campaign properly, which would be unfortunate given that the game looks pretty nice. This one has 28 days left to go.
- King Voxel — a 3D voxel-based Zelda-alike (previously covered here) with a new procedurally generated world / quest each time you start a new game.
- Lords of New York — a 2.5D adventure/RPG hybrid set in Prohibition-era New York City with a poker-based combat system. It looks like a legitimately interesting game, but it could use a boost, as it’s currently stuck at less than 4% funding with 20 days remaining.
- Paradigm Shift — a 2D jRPG with $46 in funding and 36 days left to go on Indiegogo.
- Pixelry Champions — a 2D jousting simulator that bills itself as an RPG (I’m not fully convinced that it actually is one, but whatever; jousting with RPG elements is close enough for purposes of this list).
- Telepath Tactics — a 2D tactical fantasy RPG with mod support.
There are also some projects with big teams behind them raising large sums of money right now (inXile with Torment: Tides of Numenera, Portalarium, Inc. with Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar, and Larian Studios with Divinity: Original Sin). Rather than go on another lecture about what it means to be indie, I’ll just say that these games look excellent, I have tons of respect for the teams behind these projects, and I’m glad these guys are all telling publishers to buzz off, even if their studios are probably too large to technically warrant the “indie” designation.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Has there been any IndieGOGO projects successful?
What I also have noticed is that projects of countries that don’t speak english, twitter isn’t used that much (same have apps just to post there but don’t interact and think they use twitter), theses projects are not succesful.
Hartacon Tactics is a italian project. I’ve seen a portuguese project on Kickstarter not generating almost nothing and they only use facebook. I’m always monitoring twitter and Hartacon Tactics just doesn’t appear.
Twitter only works well because of the filters and we all speaking the same language. Cyberspace dosen’t work well in multiple languages, key search filters are a nightmare. People trying to communicated another nightmare.
Theses projects have to be more open and used all the tools: twitter, google+, facebook, interviews on well known sites, use the english language so the biggest chuck of people can hear the word or just post in multiple languages but english is a most. LOL Go crazy, use the top languages: mandarim (chinese), english, spanish, portuguese, french, german
You have to get the word out.
I didn’t know that Telepath Tactics looked so snazzy! Need to back that one and get the word out…
Have you taken a deliberate stance to be low key about plugging your own game on here? I don’t think anyone would mind! 🙂
As far as Indiegogo goes, I know that Ithaka of the Clouds by Jonas Kyratzes was funded successfully.
It could just be me, but not backing Hartacon is nothing to do with exposure for me – I’d seen it a little while ago, and made the same decision then. I’ve loved tactics games/SRPGs since LaserSquad, to the point that I’m writing my own. But that game/IndieGoGo campaign falls down in two very big ways, from my point of view:
– Seems to be multiplayer only. I’m one of those guys who backed The Banner Saga and haven’t touched Factions.
– Rewards are… unrewarding. Most people see KS/IGG/etc. as a preorder system, rightly or wrongly… I’m not sure I’ve seen a single campaign succeed where “getting a copy of the product” wasn’t an accessible reward!
On top of this they don’t have any sizeable reward tiers so few people are likely to back for more than $5, and the rewards they offer look a bit pay-to-win-ish. :/
[…] Tactics – a year and a half after its last attempt, this Disgaea-style sRPG is back on IndieGoGo seeking €20,000 in funding. This time around, […]