modeps

Castle Story

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Another day, another Kickstarter. This one appears to be for extra funding instead of full development of a game though. Castle Story is supposed to be like Dwarf Fortress which I've never played but has always sounded intriguing. This thing hasn't been up very long, and they're almost at their goal. What'cha think?

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Sounds more like rampart. Sounds neat and not totally a clone like I was expecting from your description.

Kind of amazing that a person can get 200k for a basic and loose idea. I think this is where Kickstarter shines, but I'd almost want a funding cap for stuff like this. I dont know who this guy is, it's just a programmer with a tech demo and idea asking for 80k; I'm glad he got what he's asking for, but has made over double... does he know what to do with that money? Does he even need that much more? This is the thing worries me about the system, its ripe for potential to create waste and poor budgeting.

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A tech demo is far more than most kickstarter projects provide, so kudos to them for having that. I remember seeing an even earlier demo a few months back that was just as promising and I'm glad they've made progress even without the kickstarter funds. Though I think I'm definitely getting kickstarter fatigue as I was thinking of funding but then realized it's just a preorder for an indie game that will almost certainly show up on Steam for cheaper if not on release than certainly soon after. So especially considering how far along they seem to be this seems more like a traditional point of purchase than your average indie game kickstart.

The overfunding possibility is pretty weird as you say. I mean, Tim Schafer had to completely redo his original proposal to figure out a way to make use of the surplus funding. Not everyone is going to be able to do that so efficiently.

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Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about over funding right now. This will always cost more than projected so having some leeway is fine; though should be anticipated in the original budget. More money equals more time which means more polish, so that's good, but I feel when people start a kickstarter they are proposing a plan in a genuine manner.

I'd like to take that a face value and give them those parameters they set themselves to make the project. If it turns out they need more money maybe a second kick starter or something?

In Shafers case I don't think many people would question why they could do with it, he's already running a business, everything is set up to reevaluate and change the project. With indie guys, I can't say the same. From the proposal and materials available I'd gather these are right out of school, they're in Montreal so if they have experience it's likely at ubisoft or ubisofts affiliate school, but where does the extra money go? It's a lot trust for two guys with an idea.

Even the thumbs received way more than they were asking, but in their case, it's a bit different since it wasnt going to a project persay, but operating costs, more money hopefully equals they'll be operating longer.

The publishing side is pretty shitty, yes, but its not without good ideas, like keeping an eye on budget and giving it to people who know how to manage it. Maybe transparency in the expenses to backers would be helpful, but it's not like you can pull out your investment at that point if you're unhappy...

So who knows.

****

Aside from that, this looks like it might be neat, but they are putting a lot of effort into branding that horrible looking yellow blob man, which already makes me wonder, so I'll just wait and buy it at retail.

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I assume what the huge amount of overfunding means is they'll be hiring contract work to temporarily grow the studio for the production of this game, making it much more ambitious.

It's a weird thing that happens with Kickstarter occaisonally, when a studio produces a game and then sells it they take the profits and use it to fund whatever they do next, but with kickstarter each person is donating to an individual project. Of course the thing about kickstarter is that the people are not investors they are donators, so really as long as every promise in the kickstarter has been fulfilled they don't have grounds to complain. Overfunding is a weird thing, usually not a problem except in extreme cases.

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Have any funded Kickstarter game projects been successfully released yet?

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Have any funded Kickstarter game projects been successfully released yet?

Yes. A while ago, I backed Life Flashes By, an adventure game by Deirdra Kiai. That got released. Of course, it was long before KS became so popular for games. And it was a really small game.

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Have any funded Kickstarter game projects been successfully released yet?

The Cthulhu Saves the World port Kickstarter game got released. Saturday Morning RPG came out. Zombies, Run! was released as were Air Guitar Move and No Time to Explain!. And so on. And those are just from the batch of games before the whole video game Kickstarter craze started. In a couple of years we'll probably be inundated with games from Kickstarter.

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