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The Funding Crowd 14 (Aug 7th - 14th)

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The Funding Crowd is finally out! We were prepared to use the Tuesday the 13th excuse once again, but it's no use since we weren't even able to get the article ready by Wednesday. Anyway, as the title of this column says, what you're about to read covers everything that happened in the crowdfunding business up until yesterday morning. Please excuse any slightly out-of-date information this article may contain: we did what we could.




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After the disclaimer, let's take a look at the campaigns that ended during last week. Unfortunately we don't have more good news than bad ones as we did last week, even though most of the sad ones leave place for hope:


· Sandman: Escape From Dreamland couldn't reach its goal. In fact, it couldn't attract any noticeable attention and so its campaign ended without any significant level of funding. To make matters worse, there are no news about its future.


· The Darkest Odyssey run a very similar fate: very few backers and a minimal raised amount. To make the parallel complete, there hasn't been any announcement regarding the future of this project.


· Belonging's campaign was canceled after some unexpected technical problems were encountered, and the creator intends to relaunch it soon. He'd better invest a little more in PR because the support was not that great at the time of cancelation.


· Tales of Terrene was also canceled, although when only a few hours remained. Up until then the campaign had raised a little over 25% of the funding goal. In spite of this setback the team will continue working on the game and they'll come back once they've got more content to show.


· Extinction Limit's creator decided to pull the plug and cancel the campaign with almost a week to go and still some chances of success. However, he prefers to work on the game on his free time and at his own pace, and slowly complete everything he wants to put into the game rather than committing to a limited schedule. Plus he'll also give the game for free to all 113 backers, as a sign of appreciation.


· Kingcraft is the last canceled project of the week. This particular one managed to obtain little over 30% of the necessary funds in exactly 2/3 of the campaign duration. That's why the creators decided to cancel it and instead continue working on the game before launching a new campaign in a few months.


· Celestian Tales: Old North has resulted in one of those rare projects that doesn't succeed in spite of raising more than 50% of their goal. The good news is they have obtained some funds elsewhere that will enable them to work for some weeks, and they'll be using that time to polish the game and to produce a demo before launching a new campaign.


· Ten Aces was able to gather even a bigger chunk of its intended goal, but ended in failure as well. However this isn't the end of this game either, as its creators will continue working it nonetheless and they plan to launch a new campaign in just a few months.


· Organic Panic is the first genuine good news of this week. Thanks to a great support upsurge in the final 3 days the $40k goal could be reached -- no stretch goals, though. As it was previously announced the Linux version will be released some time after its Windows counterpart, and it's estimated for the first half of 2014. If you missed its campaign you can still pledge via PayPal and also show your support on Greenlight.


· Adventurezator: When Pigs Fly was also successful, hitting its mark a couple of days before the end of the campaign. However, no stretch goals couldn't be achieved either. While you wait for its release next February, you can go vote it on Greenlight if you'd like to see this game/adventure creator on Steam someday.


· Legend of Iya made it at the last moment, after a final 5-day rush. The game will be released on Windows in November next year, and many ports -including Linux, of course- will follow once the game gets ported to GameMaker Studio. While you wait you can help the game get Greenlit or pledge for a slacker reward if you happened to miss the campaign.


· Crypt Run ended its successful campaign at $9k raised out of the $5k original goal. We're glad the developers decided to move the Linux support stretch goal from the original $10k down to the final $6.5k, as we'll now be able to eventually play this game natively on Linux. For now the Linux-compatible playable demo will have to do. If you arrived too late to pledge, you can now pre-order the game through the Humble Store.


· Tangiers is the last winner of this week. This project didn't need any heroic ending, and keeping its overall momentum was enough to succeed and achieve the first stretch goal. And most importantly, the daring developer gets to keep his house -- he quit a full-time job to work on the Kickstarter. The estimated development time is exactly a year, so we can expect the game to be released on August 2014. Before it gets released on Steam it needs many votes on Greenlight, though.











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Let's now try to anticipate how many good and bad news we're going to have in the following weeks. It's Speedster's turn to remind us about the ongoing campaigns that are worth remembering and at the same time have enough chances of getting funded:



· Fran Bow promises to be a worthy game for fans of creepy thrillers starring little children, who can check out the mood in the Linux-supporting demo which was updated a couple weeks ago with both bug fixes and new content. Assuming this project manages to reach the $20k goal, your pledge of only $10 gets a copy of Fran Bow for your favorite platform, while a pledge of $25 provides access to Fran Bow on all supported platforms (Android being one of the other targeted platforms). At this point, success looks likely. Last week brought in over $4k; at that rate, Fran Bow would be funded with over a week to spare!


· Monochroma is a rather serious and artistic puzzle-platformer set in the 1950s, starring two children standing up to an evil corporation. The story is told in a completely visual manner using black-and-white graphics accented by splashes of red, and the physics simulation leans emphasizes accuracy rather than super-hero-worthy jumping ability. If you are intrigued by this unusual sort of game, give the Linux demo of Monochroma a whirl. The funding period is relatively long at 45 days total, and shows signs of reaching a more active stage having finally reached the 50% funded milestone with 12 days to go. Last week's momentum was enough to bring the goal barely inside the Kicktraq cone, which indicates another good week can bring the project within striking distance of for a big final push. Monochroma is also on Greenlight, ready to be voted for by interested Steam members.


· 7 Days to Die bills itself as "The Survival Horde Crafting Game" which blends elements of open-world sandbox, FPS, survival horror, tower defense, and RPGs. Apparently this horde of zombies is interested in recruiting any zombie processes lurking on your Linux box, since they specifically reached out to GoL for support. This and other recruitment efforts have gone smashingly, with the project surpassing the base goal by over 50% even before the final 48-hour pledging rush has begun. 7 Days to Die is no longer asking for your Greenlight votes... thanks to the hordes of Steam members who thought there were not enough zombie-apolcolypse games with crafting, looting, mining, exploration, and character growth, this game has already been Greenlit!


· Balrum is a single-player open-world RPG that emphasizes a balance of combat and non-combat skills such as building, farming, and crafting: for instance, building a home and choosing a guild play important roles in how the plot develops. Balrum has a lot of support, with over a thousand backers, but there are just 3 days left to collect so a dramatic finish is needed in order to save this project.


· Plee the Bear open-source platformer game is still stuck at 28% of their modest initial goal. The starting point for this game is already available as free software. So far the pure donation-without-rewards funding strategy has not been doing too well for the poor bear, who will not appear here again unless the project owners somehow manage to get things moving again.


· Orbs CCG is an online version of collectible card games such as Magic: the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh. The base goal explicitly includes support for Linux, so there will be no ActiveX or other IE-specific hacks in the implementation; mobile versions of the client are rather more trouble to develop, so the Android version (along with iOS) is at the highest stretch goal and likely out of reach. The base goal has already been achieved, so those who have been waiting for a Linux-compatible online CCG can go jump on this opportunity to help such a game exist.


· DwarfCorp fantasy RTS casts players in the role of leader of a colony of capitalist dwarves ready to explore new lands and make a profit out of them. The graphics for this game are a combination of old-fashioned 2D pixelated sprites with their more modern cousins of 3D voxels, and the colony-building UI is reminiscent of classic turn-based management games such as Colonization. Apparently there are a lot of dwarves out there eager to turn a profit, as the base goal of $20k has already been achieved. There was a minor setback in reaching the $25k goal for Linux support last week, when it was announced that DwarfCorp development will be somewhat delayed due to grad school workload. A small minority of backers pulled out, while others were pleased with the transparency in admitting the schedule delays now... rather than waiting to bring it up after the campaign is finished. We'll move our prediction for hitting the Linux stretch goal to this week, but if wrong again then surely it will happen in the campaign-end spike.


· Insignificant open-world RPG started out with a rather modest goal of $1,760 which seems appropriate to its smale-scale theme: playing as a tiny person reminiscent of The Borrowers from classic literature. Not only has the base goal been conquered, but the first few handful of stretch goals as well: indoor settings, underwarder settings, a second playable character, soundtrack by professional composer, and Oculus Rift support. The next milestone comes at $6.5k, which allows customizing character appearance, and thus is a prerequisite for the NPC goal at $7.7 (what, don't tell me you wanted to adventure in a world populated of clones of the 2 playable characters??)


· Chroma Squad is an already-funded project for a rather off-beat management sim game, in which the player is in charge of a Sentai TV studio. This includes everything from hiring actors and buying equipment to dealing with fans and competing with other studios, with the actual TV episodes playing out as turn-based battles with explosive cinematics. Early success can partly be attributed to the good reputation of the team, who created the well-respected Knights of Pen and Paper (which does turn out to have Linux support on Steam). Greenlight for Chroma Squad has also been launched.


· Candle has a unique visual style to set it apart from other games that are a cross between adventure and platformer genres: hand-painted with watercolor and ink. Somebody seems to have lit a fire under some gamers, because that much-needed momentum has been building! Funding needed to reach $43k in order to get a Linux port and be a success by our standards, and that has already happened!


· Laika Believes: The Sun at Midnight is one of those creative platformers with a strong focus on story, in this case an alternate-reality story in which Soviet Russia's plans of world domination became reality, at least until the dog astronaut Laika returns to earth after having mysterious adventures in space. The original $100k campaign was overly ambitious for a not-yet-famous development team without an enticing playable demo to promote the project, but some additional funding was acquired by other means, so the remaining $20k for the re-launched campaign should be doable. Last week ended with slow pledging, but some slow days during the mid-project period are common even for projects that ultimately have success, so it's too soon to get discouraged. Steam members fond of games with heroic astronaut dogs are welcome to vote for Laika on Greenlight.


· Constant C is a crazy 2D puzzle platformer set in a world where normal physics do not apply, so skills such as gravitational shift and time flow control are used to solve challenging levels. The game engine has been finished for Windows, so the base $5k goal of the campaign goes into Mac and Linux ports of their engine. Given that there has already been positive buzz about the Windows port, it is a little surprising to see the campaign off to such a slow start; perhaps it suffers the general handicap that IndieGoGo projects have a smaller pool of indie game enthusiasts to draw from than Kickstarter projects. Constant C also is on Greenlight, with a nice gameplay video based on their Windows port.


· Paranautical Activity mixes old-time FPS action (think Doom or Quake) with the randomness of roguelikes for replayability. The modest $10k goal for the campaign will go towards adding lots of content (levels, weapons, enemies, items) when moving from the currently-existing public beta to the actual release. Since the campaign is thus far going well, stretch goals such as Oculus Rift support and multiplayer support are strong possibilities. You may have previously run across Paranautical Activity in the news, when an established publisher offered to get it on Steam... but Valve vetoed that opportunity because the game was already on Greenlight. Apparently the only way to get out of Greenlight is to become Greenlit, so those who want to see Paranautical Activity on Steam should go vote.


· "Help improve OpenGL support for the Linux Graphics Drivers" is not a game project per se, but an experiment that may end up helping a lot of Linux gamers. Timothy Arceri created this campaign to fund implementing a specific OpenGL extension as a Mesa 3D as a starting point for getting Linux OpenGL support up to the latest levels of the standard. It is encouraging to see this project has already reached base funding, so there is definitely some interest in crowdfunding free OpenGL development. If you have any questions not answered by the project info, feel free to post your questions on the GoL thread where Timothy has been personally replying.


· Sword 'N' Board is a puzzle adventure with an obvious Zelda-esque inpiration but with some twists. In it you play as Sidd, a kid with an active imagination who battles imaginary enemies throughout cardboard forests and dark pillow fort dungeons. It's a kind of mixture of childhood nostalgia with a little adult humour, that above all tries not to take the player by the hand like modern games use to do: it rewards exploration and trying things out for oneself without being explicitly instructed by the game itself. The $7.5k goal is fairly modest, which is a good thing since the start was fairly slow (not uncommon for a first project without an existing fanbase to draw upon). The project creator/sole developer has been very responsive to backer suggestions, which has already resulted in a Linux build of the early demo and a bargain-priced in-game participation tier at $30. No Greenlight entry for Sword 'N' Board yet -- this in part due to observing the Steam-sponsorship opportunity lost by Paranautical Activity.


· Ghost Song: A Journey of Hope is a metroidvania game with deep themes of love, hope, and redemption. The setting is rather unusual, mixing sci-fi with ghosts who are doomed to wander a cursed moon until they can be freed. Exploring will gradually reveal artifacts that tell a story of the past of this troubled place and those who haunt it. The 2D graphics are both suitably moody and beautiful. This game has already garned more than 150% of the base goal, which includes the first stretch goal of a "hardcore" mode. With over 3 weeks to go, expect to see more Ghost Song stretch goals vanquished by the mighty pledging power of backers.







And finally, it's time to be acquainted with the latest projects seeking our support. Let's start, as usual, with the big fishes:




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Bliss is, according to its developers, "a game about exploring a sacred and mystical land in need of healing". That description doesn't make it totally clear whether it's the land or the player who needs the healing, but later on when we read "...walking towards the path of enlightenment or our truth ... accepting who we are, and freeing ourselves from the shackles of unhealthy patterns..." it becomes clear that this project aims to be the digital interactive counterpart of a Paulo Coelho novel. However we're only judging intentions here, as the game is very early on in development and its Linux-friendly pre-alpha demo doesn't give too much away with regards to gameplay. Its creators claim it will be a puzzle adventure game, featuring a large environment with many hidden levels sprouting from it. The demo gives us a glimpse of that cheerful and colourful environment -whose palette reminds us a little of Proteus- as well as other darker and more atmospheric sequences. Unfortunately something more than self-improvement and positive thinking is needed to fund an ambitious project like this one, and the support received during its first week of campaign doesn't forebode a happy outcome its things doesn't improve drastically in the coming days.







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Black Talons is a radically different proposal: a tactical, real-time strategy game taking the best from the X-Com series and Mechwarrior, and putting it all together in vast universe Stargate-style. You'll play as the commander of a mercenary company and will have to deal in detail with recruiting, equipment, logistics and diplomacy, as well as tactical combat of course. Diplomacy will be very important, as your reputation amongst other factions will dictate whether you can recruit and manage some of their troops as well. Much à-la X-Com, you'll also have to take care of your troops as they'll earn experience after each battle and will learn new skills and get more powerful while they survive, so you'll really think it twice before trying any suicidal tactics. Plus, every unit class will have specialized roles, their own set of weapons and abilities to learn. Not to mention the powerful mechs that will assist your infantry in battle. All in all, a very promising game for the RTS enthusiasts. It would seem that a project of this caliber would have caused a massive backing response but the disapointing truth is that only about 9% of the $100k basic goal has been covered in the first week. Will they be able to raise the remaining 91% in the next three weeks?







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Project Phoenix, the best and most successful Biggie of the week, is the living proof that big amounts can actually be raised in a few days. Its initial $100k funding goal was readily overcome the first day, and at the time of writing pledges already account for more than 400% of that figure. Of course, such a level of support can only be achieved by extremely enticing and convincing projects which are way down into development, or by not-so-cooked ideas with popular names behind them. Project Phoenix relies on the latter, with a cast of developers and artists with tons of AAA experience on their shoulders. Among them, there's the entire Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu who'll take part in an indie project for the first time. As hard to believe as it may seem, this is also the first videogame Kickstarter project launched from Japan. As it couldn't be any other way, the game will be a JRPG with squad-based, RTS mechanics mixed in. The story behind it is hardly original: the land of Azuregard is living troubled times. Orcs descend from the mountains and attack human settlements, there are rumours of rising undead armies, and an inevitable battle for control of the land will ensue. Among all this, the unlikely group formed by a paladin, an angel, a princess, and a mage will go all over the land and perhaps they'll have their chance to save the world while they're at it. Clichés notwithstanding, the creators regard Project Phoenix as a way to revive the good old JRPG tradition while setting a new standard for Japan's game industry at the same time. Pretty aspiring goals, right? Well, money won't be in short supply to try it, that's for sure.









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Time now for the Hidden Gems Top-10, but before we'll be taking a look at a relaunch of an old friend:




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Dungeonforge strikes back on Indiegogo after a failed Kicstarter attempt. More than a month has passed since then and you can tell the developers haven't sat still during that time as they've got much more content to show now -- and much more polished too. The idea is the same as before: a free-to-play RPG where content is created and driven by the community. The developing team is only providing an easy to use dungeon and quest creation toolsets as well as an engaging action combat system, and the rest is up to the players. They also heavily stress the point of it being a truly free-to-play game, and they promise there won't be any gameplay-affecting improvements sold, only cosmetic ones. Every user-created dungeon will be playable for free, but you'll have the option to play them in the Epic Dungeon mode purchasing a required pass. Dungeons played under this mode will be extra difficult but they'll also reward the player with exclusive cosmetic upgrades upon completion. Oh, and the creator of that particular dungeon will also get some in-game currency to spend in cosmetic customizations for her characters. Speaking of which, the game will launch with five main characters that won't statically fit to a particular in-combat role, that will mainly depend on their build and equipment. Each of these characters will come with its own playable backstory campaign, and every Founder backer -$20 or more- will receive this content as it is completed! That's actually a clever idea for attracting backers, who won't feel so concerned about this being a flexible funding campaign as the more funding the developers get, the sooner they'll be able to produce this episodic content for them to play.






And finally, here you have the best and newest Hidden Gems we could find this week:





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Enspira Online fills this week's place for an educational/kids-friendly game. It's a non-violent MMO adventure in which the players will have to learn how to revive and tend the formerly beautiful gardens created by the Gnomes. These Gnomes have been kidnapped by some nasty spiders so the players will also have to discover the place where they're held captive and try to rescue them as well. The game, created by a veteran MMO designer, is currently functional in its alpha state and the funding campaign will serve to push its development into beta to be able to test it with nearly-final conditions. The $18k base goal will cover the closed beta development phase with a Windows-only client. However, one of the main goals of the creator is to make it cross-platform for all desktop, tablet and mobile platforms, so a Linux client will be produced if a $27k stretch goal can be reached. Right now the total pledges add up to nearly 10% of the aforementioned stretch goal amount, so more support is definitely needed to help this project become a reality.







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The time for our customary batch of retro-pixelated games has arrived. We'll begin with Mik'64, a Gameboy-esque fast-paced 2D survival zombie shooter. It will feature 6 different kinds of weapons, at least 5 classes of zombies, and many collectable items, as well as the ability to build barricades to temporarily block doors. It was originally targeting only Windows and Mac computers but at our request Linux was added later as an easy port since the game is being built with Game Maker. So all fans of frantic shooters with a taste for retro looks are called to pledge on this project, which won't only fund this particular game but the developer's ability to continue creating games.







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Shiden is another retro game, both in its pixel art style and in its devilishly high difficulty. It's an arcade SHMUP designed to be easy to enter thanks to its simple controls, but very hard to complete due to the comparative weakness of the player's ship, which only takes a single shot to die. The game will support Windows, Mac and Linux, it's almost completed and the modest $1k goal will allow for porting it to Android, Ouya and maybe iOS. Anything above that figure will serve to an overall improvement of the game. This campaign has already reached its halfway point and so far not even 40% of its goal has been achieved, so anyone willing to spare as little as $5 to get a copy will certainly be welcome.







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More nostalgia is coming our way with Caribbean Island: A Pirate Adventure. As you may have already guessed, it's an old-school point & click adventure game about an eccentric pirate arriving at an island in search of treasures. Yes, it looks and sounds that similar to Monkey Island. And that's a real shame because it can turn away many people that would otherwise heartily enjoy a good old point & click adventure. There's not much content to be seen yet, but what has been shown has real potential. Let's hope the rest of the art and the story can escape as much as possible Guybrush Threepwood's shadow in order to be more widely accepted and judged by its own merits alone. The game will of course support Linux and it will be finished even though the flexible $30k goal is not met. In such an event its scope and content will be accordingly downsized, though. So far the fund-gathering campaign hasn't been doing very well, but it's been planned as a long distance race and it will still last for a month and a half, time in which we hope it can atract more backers.







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Oculus Rift has been a reality for a while and it was only a matter of time someone looked back at the very origins of videogames, put two and two together, and came up with what could one day be regarded as the fundational stone of VR gaming: a 3D, virtual reality Pong. The proof that this wasn't an uncommon idea lies in the fact that no less than two projects with this exact idea have been almost simultaneously launched: Proton Pulse Rift on Kickstarter, and BouncerVR on Indiegogo. Both games rely in the same hands-free mechanics, as simple as controlling the paddle by simply looking around with a VR headset. And, because of the need of an Oculus Rift set, both games will be available on Linux once the developers can make it to work on our OS (Proton Pulse Shift) and when the Oculus Rift SDK for Unity3D supports it (BouncerVR). The main differences between them is that Proton Pulse Shift includes some Breakout elements into the gameplay, and multiplayer came with its already widely overcome funding goal. BouncerVR, on the other hand, is more focused on power-ups for defeating the rival, will also be playable without a VR set, and there are two Linux alpha builds -one without VR support and another with it- available to try. In contrast to its direct competitor it's only raised 42% of its basic goal even though it's been around for longer. Anyhow, our advice is to check both campaigns and back whichever you like the most -- or both of them, of course!







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Back to pixel-land with College: the Game, an action/satire game about college life in which you'll literally have to battle your way to get your diploma. Whether you're too young to have been there yet, or you're old enough to look back at your college years with a pinch of nostalgia this game will let you experience an action-packed enhanced version of a student's life. Choose your classes and battle to death in order to pass them, before you can face a final boss related to your major and finally get your diploma. Gameplay will strongly depend on the major and the general-ed classes you choose, so replayability value is assured. You'll never see History, or Art, or Religion the same way after having fought Napoleon, a stickman or Budha himself using your chosen major's weapons. Its concept, originality, and art style makes it a highly appealing game to us and we're sure to many of our readers too. The only serious drawback we've found is the minimum pledge to secure a digital copy of the game on release: $25, with no beta access involved. It's quite a steep price for a non-massively anticipated game, but certainly a worthwhile one if you can afford it.

UPDATE: Hooray for developers who listen to the community! After our constructive criticism about the rather high pledge to get access to the finished game, the creator decided to add a couple of rewards to that tier: besides a DRM-free copy of the game and the soundtrack, all $25 pledgers will now get beta access and a student in the game based after them. :)







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The first member of our week's Top-3 is Chromancer, yet another online trading card game but with an adaptive strategy twist to it. According to its creators, it will be entirely browser-based (fully compatible with Linux) and free-to-play. So far, so good. Its most distinctive features are its innovative gameplay mechanics, which escape the typical approach of continuously attacking the opponents until they run out of hit points. Instead the main goal of a duel is to destroy the opponents' three strongholds, each of them controlling one aspect of the game. Once you lose one of you own strongholds you become disabled in some way, and must change your strategy on the go in order to adapt to the new situation. There are several categories of cards, each one fulfilling a well defined role in the game, and those cards can belong to one of the game's 12 colours. Besides the combats themselves the game will also sport a fully transparent and free market for cards, where players will be able to arrange their own terms to carry on a transaction. Furthermore, every card will be unique with its own serial number like there were physically printed cards, and there'll be the possibility of sharing cards between players as a sort of guild pool of spells. You can contribute to the happy outcome of this campaign with as little as $5, which will get you a starter deck of 48 cards to start playing upon release. During the first week, more than 100 backers have contributed about 12% of the $60k base goal. The Kicktraq cone only gives it a slight chance of success so several more hundreds of backers are needed to bring the project to a good end.







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Second place goes to Project Starborn, a thousand sandbox games in one. Rather than a game, it's a sort of high-level game engine featuring powerful tools for world editing, as well as a built-in scripting language (LUA) to create your own games. Any world you create can easily become a team death-match, a tower defense game, an RPG, an RTS game, or anything else that crosses your mind. This whole project began from its creator's addiction to Minecraft and the frustration the limitations of that game inflicted on him. He wanted smaller blocks to achieve more detail, an easier way to build, and to share the creations with other players. So he started working on his own game but as time went by his interest were progressively focusing on the game engine itself, so he finally decided to create what is now Starborn. Besides the aforementioned features, it will also include a blueprint library that will enable players to easily share their creations as well as to download everyone else's designs and incorporate them in their own worlds. A Linux port of the current Windows prototype has been planned from the beginning, but it's not very clear whether that version will be available on release or some time later. $35.5k are needed for it to become a successful project, and it's got a long way to go before that happens. You can help enhance its chances by backing it: a $15 pledge will get you a digital copy on release and a permanent multiplayer account, while $25 will grant you early beta access before anyone else.







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And finally our #1 Hidden Gem of the week is Waking Amy, a 2.5D action/puzzle platformer inspired by the great titles from the PS1 era. It's the story of a little girl stuck in a coma, who must conquer various dream worlds in the hopes of finally awakening. During those visits to the different worlds she'll encounter creatures from her past that will provide her with new abilities to help her solve and defeat any challenge she encounters in that particular world. Contrary to what the previous sentence may suggest, one of the key points of the game is that players will have the freedom to choose their own approach to beat it. There won't be a single way to defeat a monster, or to solve a puzzle, and the game will allegedly appeal to a broad audience spectrum. It's being built using the Unity 4 Pro engine, so Linux support is guaranteed at launch. What isn't yet for sure is the successful outcome of the campaign: the midpoint has almost been reached and only a little over 40% of the $10k has been contributed by backers. Your humble $5 pledge will put it a small step closer to success and it will secure a digital copy of the game for you. A more generous $25 contributions will get you the Special Kickstarter version of the game, including new skins, more music, a special thanks at the end of the game and other surprises.





That was all for today! We'll meet again next week with more exciting projects to spend invest your money in. In the meantime keep checking our crowdfunding wiki if you want to keep updated with the crowdfunding of Linux games. Bye! ;)


. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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A Linux user for more than 15 years, I've just recently rediscovered the passion for gaming. Couldn't have chosen a better time than now: the [second](http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/linux-techdemo-available-for-race-the-sun-.1752#4850) Golden Age of Linux gaming.
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9 comments

toor Aug 15, 2013
There is no "linux port" mention for project phoenix, I would have bought it right away.
Speedster Aug 15, 2013
Quoting: toorThere is no "linux port" mention for project phoenix, I would have bought it right away.

You're in luck, as long as you don't mind Steam.

Check again under the image with light breaking through the clouds:

"Platforms: Mainly for Windows, Mac and Linux via Steam and our website. iOS and Android will have a different version to the PC counterparts due to limitations. We are also working to have the game released on PlayStation 4 and other platforms but is yet to be confirmed."
toor Aug 15, 2013
oh… thank you… well no DRM-free then… well… I guess that's better than nothing :/
Mike Frett Aug 15, 2013
Thanks for another excellent article Muntdefems!
aFonteGames Aug 15, 2013
Great article muntdefems,

Also, thank you very much for including my Kickstarter for College: the Game under your hidden gems, I'm truly honored!

I'd like to note that the $25 price point now warrants you access to the beta version of College: the Game when it becomes available, as well as a student based after you in College: the Game, and a copy of the soundtrack.
s_d Aug 15, 2013
Quoting: Speedster"Platforms: Mainly for Windows, Mac and Linux via Steam and our website. iOS and Android will have a different version to the PC counterparts due to limitations. We are also working to have the game released on PlayStation 4 and other platforms but is yet to be confirmed."
It is buried, but does appear to offer a (potentially DRM-free) download via their website.  A backer ought to corner them into making some kind of crystal-clear statement.
Znurre Aug 16, 2013
Thanks for the great article as usual.
Many interesting titles in there, my wallet is going to suffer.
scaine Aug 17, 2013
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You know, I hardly ever comment on these posts, but they're superb, and I inevitably end up spilling out on at least one of the entries. Great stuff, muntdefems. Keep 'em coming!

And Project Pheonix. Incredible.
muntdefems Aug 18, 2013
Updated the article to mention the nice gesture from the developer of College: The Game, who listened to us and decided to add new rewards to the $25 tier. :)
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