Back to Back: indie RPGs to fund

Howdy folks! The approach of PAX has made it rather difficult for me to keep the site updated over the past couple of weeks; moreover, I’m definitely going to be gone for a week starting Wednesday. But with that said, there’s no reason we can’t do a quick update on the state of crowdfunded RPGs, right?

Of the games from our last Back to Back, Dungeonmans, Frontiers, Last Dream, Liege, Rugged Kingdom, Soul Saga and Undertale all met their goals; a much better success rate than usual! Let’s see if this latest batch of games meets with the same success:

• AdventurOS — a 2.5D Metroidvania that constructs its world procedurally based on the file system it finds on your hard drive. Footage of the game makes it looks quite early in development, but I think it could end up being pretty interesting.

• Aurion : Legacy of the Kori-Odan — developer Madiba Guillaume Olivier bills this as the first-ever African fantasy action RPG. The art style borders on anime, but its subjects give it a decidedly unique touch (there isn’t much anime set in Africa, much less starring black characters). It looks promising, though I find the lack of video footage showing the game in action somewhat suspect.

• Project Phoenix — this is a somewhat surprising one. It bills itself as an indie RPG with squad-based RTS gameplay (so…Infinity Engine style?) More odd than the description is the amount of experienced AAA talent on the team (among other things, Nubuo Uematsu is doing their music). The Kickstarter page already lists 17 team member positions, with more to come–in all likelihood, this game won’t qualify as indie by the time they’re done hiring their team.

• Steel and Steam Episode 1 — this 2D RPG Maker jRPG promises a “large scale” steampunk game world. There’s a free demo available, so you can give it a try in advance of backing.

• Sword ‘n’ Board — a 2D Zelda-alike that openly embraces the idea that you’re a kid who is just making all of this stuff up as you go along. (To wit: “you will battle your way through imaginary enemies, cardboard forests, dark pillow fort dungeons!”)

• Valgard’s Fate — a top-down, 3D, open world action RPG for mobile devices. For a game of this sort, it has rather nice graphics (as well as some adorably wonky walk animations that make me think of a stop motion film).

All in all, it’s a much leaner selection of games on offer compared to the mid-year glut we saw in our last Back to Back. That isn’t to say that there aren’t RPGs out there seeking funding right now; it’s just that most of them are MMOs and free-to-play, browser-based stuff (which I generally decline to cover). It should be interesting to see if a whole bunch of new projects suddenly pop up this Friday to coincide with PAX.