Indie-Resource.com

I was digging through Kickstarter looking at some video game projects, and came across Rubicon, by developer Wick (a indie game maker college student). The project is simply to fund his full-time development over this summer on a game he already has in a playable state, as Rubicon will be released for free when done.

I just posted it here because I absolutely love the idea. I highly suggest watching the video on the page I linked for an explanation on what exactly it is, but to sum it up, it takes the classic, distilled-to-the-core-mechanics gameplay of an old-school arcade game (Asteroids in this case) and then adds in modern trappings such as RPG-like leveling-up, customizable parts, campaign mode, etc.

I think this could be a great mission for other old-school arcade games. Imagine Joust with online multiplayer, collectable and useful equipment, gold, rare mounts, etc. While a straight retro remake is often too simple for today's players, the mechanics of them are time-tested and solid, and then with modern options and features, it could be a hit!

Back to Rubicon, I am actually really looking forward to playing it when it is released. It seems the Kickstarter is still open, so I may contribute to it, even though he has already hit his modest funding goal. If it delivers on what he says it will be (and the funding is supposed to help it do just that), it sounds like a very interesting game!

I will def take a look at it as soon as I get a free moment! Sounds interesting

Seems a cool game! Uhmm a question about kickstarter: do you get something back when you give money for a project? Or is it just donating?

Ark wrote:Seems a cool game! Uhmm a question about kickstarter: do you get something back when you give money for a project? Or is it just donating?

yeah u get goodies depending on the amount of your donation and depending on what the person that gets the donation i willing to give, just take a look in one kick starter project and you will see..

Foofighter wrote:

Ark wrote:Seems a cool game! Uhmm a question about kickstarter: do you get something back when you give money for a project? Or is it just donating?

yeah u get goodies depending on the amount of your donation and depending on what the person that gets the donation i willing to give, just take a look in one kick starter project and you will see..

Very true! It is a bit hard to see the system in the Rubicon project because he was asking for such a low amount and the product being funded is actually free, so his "backer rewards" were fairly small for small amounts of money, mostly consisting of allowing you to sketch ships to add to the game for larger fundings, and things as small as customized haiku poems for very small backings (like $2 - $8, etc.).

To get a better idea of the system, I suggest looking at a game that was asking for a much larger budget, for example, Double Fine's Adventure Game Project, which happens to be one of the most famous game projects ever on Kickstarter (they ended up raising nearly $3.5M). The rewards ranged from $15 for a digital copy of the game when it was complete, to $100 for a special edition boxed set including the game on DVD, making of Blu-Ray, special thanks in the credits, etc. all the way up to $10,000 for all previous rewards (which by this point include original paintings of the game art, a painting of you by the game's artist, hard cover books, autographed posters) and lunch with the creators of the game lol! The higher rewards are typically limited since they can only do so many. The artist cannot make thousands of original paintings of backers, nor can the team spend the next 5 years doing lunches with backers. But in case you were curious, they made 4 of the $10,000 backer rewards available (that included lunch with the designers) and they all sold out in a matter of days!

(Of course this was an established company who made Day of the Tentacle, and many other classic point'n'click adventure games.)

That's pretty cool!