[ Each week, we take a look at some of the new and interesting projects popping up on Kickstarter, the online crowd funding service.
Here’s what caught our eye among the projects this week! ]
————————————————————–
Recently Launched:
Starting life as a game jam project, SUPERHOT’s unique ‘time only moves when you do’ mechanic gained poularity among gamers online. Following the positive feedback for their demo, the team behind SUPERHOT have now launched a kickstarter campaign to make it into a full game for PC, Mac & Linux. The response following the announcement of the kickstarter resulted in SUPERHOT reaching it’s target goal of $100k in just a day, with all subsequent pledges now pushing the game towards several stretch goals set by the developer. At the current level, better animations and a new speedrun mode will be added to the game as part of the unlocked stretch goals.
Ongoing:
Patema Inverted – Ultimate Edition
Patema Inverted (Sakasama no Patema) is a 2013 anime film centering around Age, a teenager living in Aiga, and Patema, girl from a village underground, where gravity is reversed. The film follows the story of these two characters and the events that being them together. Anime Limited has recently been helping to bring Patema Inverted to the UK by screening it at the BFI Anime Weekend as well as having a limited theatrical release in several select cinemas around the country. Their Kickstarter campaign is to bring Patema to a DVD & blu ray release along with limited edition extras for backers at certain tiers. With a couple weeks left, the campaign has already surpassed it’s goal and is on it’s way to achieving stretch goals to add even more to the home release of the movie.
From Yanim studio, Red Goddess: Inner World is a sidescrolling ‘Metroidvania’ style game where you explore a mysterious planet controlled by the psyche of the main character.This is in fact the second time the studio has taken to kickstarter in order to fund this game, with the first attempt missing it’s original $50k goal. The revised kickstarter campaign launched last month sets the goal at a lower level of $30k, with several stretch goals if they surpass the amount they’re asking for. As of this article being posted, the kickstarter for Red Goddess is just a couple hundred dollars away from the $30k mark, so it’s pretty much certain that they will at least reach the baseline level for funding. So far the parts that have been shown look interesting, along with some great artwork filling the world.
Ending soon:
Hover: Revolt of Gamers
Hover, the fast-paced pakour action game from Midgar Studio immediately invokes vibes of Jet Set Radio and games like Mirror’s edge. That’s far from just a coincidence as the game’s developers name both of those titles as the inspiration behind creating Hover. Sporting a brightly coloured graphical style set in a futuristic cityscape, you’ll be able to run, jump, slide & trick your way across the city to defeat the oppressive new mayor.
With just a couple days to go, Hover already blew past it’s original asking amount of $38,000, gaining more support from people pledging the game’s kickstarter page and achieving several stretch goals to add more playable characters, a larger city size and new areas, local multiplayer, a Wii U version of the game, and a soundtrack composed by non other than Hideki Naganuma, the prolific musician behind many tracks in both Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio future.
We breifly mentioned the announcement of Harmonix’s revival of Amplitude at the launch of the kickstarter campaign a couple weeks ago. As the campaign was set to 18 days, less than most kickstarter campaigns, the end is already in sight, with only a couple days left for people to pledge to the PS3 & PS4 music rhythm game from veterans of the genre. Asking for $775k to make the game a reality, Amplitude’s kickstarter saw quite a bit of interest in the first half, with pledges leveling out shortly after, leaving the total pledged amount increasing very gradually. Harmonix have been very active on the kickstarter page, announcing new music that will be added to the game, such as tracks from chiptune artists, Anamanaguchi, as well as interacting with the community via podcasts, forums and the Harmonix livestream. The amount of pledges recently got a shot in the arm once Insomniac, fellow developers and fans of Harmonix’s work, showed their support for the kickstarter and pledged at one of the highest reward levels available. Since then, pledges for Amplitude have been rising rapidly, with over $200k being added in just the past 2 days. At just under 3 days left in the campaign and about another $200k away from the target, here’s hoping that support and pledges for the game can keep rising that there current rate.