Broken Sword: The Serpents Curse

[biggytitbo]

Color me excited...a brand new Broken Sword game, and in full glorious 2d! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/165500047/broken-sword-the-serpents-curse-adventure

[DJ Solid Snail]

Cor, that is genuinely exciting. I was slightly underwhelmed by The Sleeping Dragon and didn't end up bothering with The Angel of Death, but the fact that this'll be in 2D has definitely renewed my interest in another sequel.

How long has this kick-starter been going? Raising another 230 grand in a little under a month seems a bit far-fetched, doesn't it?

[biggytitbo]

Apperently other less know games have raised millions on there, so I imagine something as big as the Broken Sword franchise would exceed that target easily.

[jutl]

How long has this kick-starter been going? Raising another 230 grand in a little under a month seems a bit far-fetched, doesn't it?

It did only launch yesterday.

[biggytitbo]

Interesting move to create a game with Dr Christian Jessen as the lead character, I hope he persuades Nico to drop her kecks.

[biggytitbo]

They've got 218k after just 2 days, at this rate they should get millions. Got a lot of potential this crowd funding idea.

[buntyman]

Yeah it seems a pretty good way to make money for a project. Not quite sure how the target amount is calculated, there must be an element of 'let's see how much we can milk without obviously taking the piss'. I have recently contributed a few quid to get a new cartoon made by John k. He managed to scrape together about $125k and I think it's just going to be a simple short made using some animation computer program.
Anyway, I'll probably chip in on the broken sword game as I've played the first 2 through more than probably any other game.

[Ignatius_S]

Apperently other less know games have raised millions on there, so I imagine something as big as the Broken Sword franchise would exceed that target easily.

Only two games projects have raised more than one million dollars - an unspecified Double Fine game and Wasteland 2. It's these two projects that really drew attention to game funding in this projects, particularly the first one.

They've got 218k after just 2 days, at this rate they should get millions. Got a lot of potential this crowd funding idea.

The Double Fine one passed $1 million mark in less than 24 hours  (which I think was a record for Kickstarter) and Wasteland 2, it took about 2 days to get to that figure.

...Not quite sure how the target amount is calculated, there must be an element of 'let's see how much we can milk without obviously taking the piss'...

With something like this where you've actually got people who know what they're doing, then I would be confident that the figure is the amount they reasonably think they can complete the project for, due to the various stuff I've been told and read about funding projects  this way. Brian Fargo, for instance has discussed about this quite a bit - and it never sounded back of the fag packet estimates. Instead of going to get someone to invest in a project, you're asking people to pre-order, but whichever path you go down, it helps if you have a good idea how much money you'll actually need. It's not as if the only people who will buy the game will be the ones pre-ordering, either.

On the other hand, when the team is made up of inexperienced people (like the Pebble watch) I wouldn't have the same kind of confidence.

[Thursday]

This looks like a good deal, there's been some very dubious kickstarter's in the past, but this seems to give a good deal for your pledges.

I worried suddenly because I remembered I gave up on the angel of death, although that's largely because my computer was struggling to run it. But also it was awkward to control. Sleeping Dragon has been designed  to be more friendly to console users, but when it came to Angel of Death, they weren't releasing it on a console, so it went to some method that didn't really suit anything.

I actually really liked the Sleeping Dragon, but the PS2 loading times made it infuriating and completely killed a lot of dramatic tension in some scenes.

[The Argus]

I've backed it. The 3rd and 4th were awful games, but I'm convinced that was mainly down to the 3D. If they can salvage any of the charm of the original 2 then I will be very happy indeed.

[Ignatius_S]

Thought I would give this a bump as the total raised is $615,061 - so it's now reached its second reach goal, meaning there's another section going to be included in the game. They're hoping to reach the $800k point, but as there are four days to go, I suspect that's a little optimistic.

[Thursday]

They'd actually said it would need to be $650,000 for those sections to be included, but I guess they've decided that's near enough.

They've also set goals where they'll put backers into the game at $700,000 and $800,000 I can't help thinking I'd rather they didn't achieve that much as it would mean these weird stand-out characters that aren't really there for any real purpose.

[Ignatius_S]

They'd actually said it would need to be $650,000 for those sections to be included, but I guess they've decided that's near enough.

They've also set goals where they'll put backers into the game at $700,000 and $800,000 I can't help thinking I'd rather they didn't achieve that much as it would mean these weird stand-out characters that aren't really there for any real purpose.

Sorry, Thursday - I cut and pasted the figured from the Kickstarter page, which seems to be a little out of date as it was announced on Twitter that the $650K figure had been reached. I should have been more alert and I apologise!

re: putting backers in the game, it looks to me like the characters will be in the game, but if those funding stages are met, the name and likeness of backers will be used.

*edit*

I've just realised that the Kickstarter page figure is for people who have pledge through the site, but not those who have pledged via PayPal – the full figure is here.

[Ignatius_S]

Going back to the characters, on their own, I feel that the interest is a little too select to encourage a flurry for last-minute donations... but we shall see...

[brat-sampson]

The ones I've watched before tend to get a bit of a boost at the end so long as it's kept in the headlines as people who've been putting it off realise it's their last chance or change their mind and decide to take a punt anyway. They've got my money though, looking forward to it, plus some freebies*.

*That, yes I technically paid extra for but- SHUT UP!

[A.A]

Seems to be going alright.

12 hours to spare, 727k on kickstarter, 41k in paypal- so another 32k in the next 12 hours to get 800k.

Won't get the million to greenlight Beneath A Steel Sky 2, but the Revolution guys have said numerous times it's likely to happen anyway.

Good news all-round, then, really.

edit: And here's a competition to win a signed animation cell. Fill out a crossword on BS, and then find items from the games that have been sneakily scattered throughout the original kickstarter video. Of course, you could bypass the whole watching and rewatching the video by simply cheating, but where's the fun in that?

http://revolution.co.uk/kickstarter/competition/

[mikeyg27]

Vaguely related: The 1st two Broken Swords are among the beat-the-average games for the latest Indie Gala Bundle. Currently, that average is $5.87.

[A.A]

^^^ First three BS games, in fact.

Final kickstarter tally: $771, 560
Final Paypal tally: $47, 728

TOTAL: $ 819, 288  (original target: $400,000)

There are several other gaming kickstarters that have done considerably better; but only Double Fine Adventure has gotten more money for an adventure game project.  Fair effort that.

And BASS2 is, apparently, entering very early pre-production.

[buntyman]

Not sure if it's a reflection of how the final product will be but the character designs and animation in the promo video for the new Broken Sword game is rather disappointing.

Why couldn't they have gone with the art style from the original (or the better drawn remasters)? That cel-shaded look is ugly and you lose a lot of detail in facial expressions with it.

[KLG-7A]

Agreed. Even the background is worse.

[Ignatius_S]

Beneath a Steel Sky sequel will go ahead!

....TOTAL: $ 819, 288  (original target: $400,000)

There are several other gaming kickstarters that have done considerably better; but only Double Fine Adventure has gotten more money for an adventure game project.  Fair effort that....

Other than Wasteland 2 and the Double Fine , I can't think of any other computer games off the top of my head – were there any more?

I wonder with this Kickstarter that they might have done better with the beefing up  couple of the awards – a punter's name being used, struck me as something that would attract the type of person, who would pre-order straight away.

Recently, I bought FTL: Faster Than Light, which gets touted as the first Kickstarter computer game project - that raised just over $200K, which was pretty impressive, all things considering. There's certainly been a huge growth in the amount of board and computer games on Kickstarter –an area that I feel works well with the site and one that I hope goes from strength to strength.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

They've done alright, considering there's been a bit of a kickstarter fatigue following the big rush of oldschool adventure game developers trying to emulate Doublefine's success.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Yeah I think they've done pretty well. I would add that backing Double Fine Adventure has already turned out to be an excellent decision (one that you can still make) - the documentary series that charts the game's progress is really well put together and interesting. I've never seen this sort of insight into game production before and it's quite eye-opening at times. Seems like a nice place to work as well.

[Ignatius_S]

They've done alright, considering there's been a bit of a kickstarter fatigue following the big rush of oldschool adventure game developers trying to emulate Doublefine's success.

There was certainly some fatigue that I noticed from comments about wanting there more space between projects. Something else that I noticed was that quite a few commentators seemed very motivated by the source of funding and I inferred that for some, it was much, if not more, about it being on Kickstarter than the game itself. In any event, it's a method of pre-ordering that I feel is a lot more attractive that traditional ones.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

In a very short space we saw:

Tim Schafer's Doublefine Adventure
Jane Jensen's Moebius and Mystery Game X
The Two Guys From Andromeda's Spaceventure
Al Lowe's Lesiure Suit Larry Remake
Tex Murphy: Project Fedora

Along with several other smaller names and studios, many of whom failed to reach their target goal.

When you take into account that the audiences for all of these titles will be, by and large, the same people, it's no wonder the later titles struggled to reach their goals. Donating to a cause you want to support can feel good. Donating to several causes, all asking for cash at the same time, can create quite a dent in your bank balance - particularly if you're a superfan and 'need' to get the one-of-a-kind exclusives at the top end of the donations reward tiers. It becomes an expensive hobby.

I hope all the production houses can reach some form of agreement to pace their releases if they ever intend to use crowdfunding again.

[MojoJojo]

Broken Sword : Directors Cut is currently 25p from the Google Play store.

[Thursday]

I keep seeing people mention these price drops and thinking "oooh!" Then remembering that I have it. I have no reason to get it and yet I keep being tempted by it. I'm a fucking moron.