Mongrel a new kickstarter project

I am a sucker for a metroidvania style game , the upgrading, the exploring and just the feeling your character is getting more and more powerful. But i feel that nothing has really come along to really move the genre along they seem content to stick with 8/16bit graphics and yet could be so much more.Then i saw this picture on kickstarter

I thought that looks great so went to have a look, unfortunately it turned out to be concept art the footage shown was nowhere near as good as the art which is a shame.

But still the project does show some promise with gameplay and details on the influences though i have never heard of the developer but they have a site and they say they formed in 2014 and they have a website here http://www.fischmell.com/.

I think it has potential but my concerns are a new developer and a budget which when converted is only about $10,000 which does not seem that much at all but still the fact there is footage makes me optimistic.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1559949250/mongrel

Imagining on how the internet and technology will affect the world within 50 years and some wishful thinking

Go into the supermarket and seeing everyone with cameras recording video logs.

Number of accidents on the rise as people recording themselves walking down the streets and not paying attention to to other people...or cars.

It becomes a crime to take more then 5 selfie pictures a week

Photoshop google glass.....you do not like the world as it is ? then wear these Photoshop google glasses when you put them on it photoshop's the world in real time so you see the world as you would like it.

Film piracy gets so bad the films are pirated before they are actually made.

Walking dead now has so many spinoffs that no one remembers how it started

Sharknado 8 "Nuclear Fishing" has won a oscar ...no one expected it

The film version of the very hungry caterpillar is released to middling reviews they say it has a enormous plot hole

Youtube facebook and twitter all merge they call it YouTwitFace.

Idea for a review type of system for covering games on crowdfunding sites

Just a idea i thought of when covering games on crowdfunding sites basically a rating system

Pitch video: Did it have a video or was it just a picture? just a pic would get a 0/10 a well rounded video with game play and details on the game and showing the people who are working on the game.

Budget. Is it a realistic budget ? do they give a breakdown on how the money will be spent  ?

Game description. Does it have screen shots or Gameplay footage ? if it is a early game do they give a detailed description of the type of game it will be and any influences

Developer. Does the developer have a history that can be found or any of the people working on the game do they have a track record ?.

Rewards. What do you get for your money ? can you get the game for a decent price and for higher levels will you get good rewards for your money?.

Stretch goals. Are they realistic ? do they actually add value to the game ?

The last one i would put i am not to sure i was thinking either.

Risk. How much of a risk is backing the game? are there any alarms or potential scams?.

OR

Chance of success. How likely is it they will reach there goals ? are there things they could improve and if they do reach the goals how likely are they to come through with a finished game.

MK X microtransactions

So it has shown on a lot of websites that mortal kombat x has microtransactions you can pay to get easy fatalities you can pay to unlock everything from the krypt. That i am ok with as you can still do things the old way. But i am also not ok with it as i see it as a test. See what people pay for and then the next time they may do it that you have to pay for specific fatalities that you can not unlock.


They try to see what they can get away with and if they do then the next time they push it a bit further and on and on and before you know it then it is a lot worse.Look how things have gone and we now have got to the stage of.

Season passes (which are nearly half the price of the full game)

Day one dlc

Costumes that you pay for

In the end for me i never get games at launch you get the most expensive,buggiest ,least featured version of the game i always wait for either sales or the game of the year version

The way i see how the microtransactions and dlc is going is like a disease early on it is just a mild annoyance and you have people saying ahh it is not to bad why are you complaining. But if it is untreated can lead to worse things happening later on


PAYTALITY

And update a 15gb patch was released for the pc which improves performance and gives you 10,000 tokens...15gb is a bit much for a patch and to be honest would need a  100,000 tokens to really make a difference

Some more crowdfunding games and there chances

Crosscode 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/crosscode

This was impressive  had a very good video loads of screenshots and gif's gives you a idea of what the game will be like and a estimated time of next year rather then a few months and more important then all of that it gives you a demo which is good fun and has a real classic snes game type of feel while i still think the pixel art has been done to death and i would much prefer HD art most games just use it for laziness and do not capture the 16 bit feel which has been done well here. Now as it stands it has 14 days left and 58% of the goal so i reckon it will get through only just and actually i will back it.

Odds of making it's goal 60% i reckon it will be close and will keep a eye on it

Heat race pinball 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/966177306/heat-race-pinball-0?ref=nav_search

I love a good pinball game but always felt they tried too hard to capture the real pinball rather then capture of what the possibilities are in video games. Now there are a few that stepped out of those boundaries such as Dragon's Fury, Flipnic and the recent Rollers of the realm. And now on kickstarter we have heat race pinball that hopes to combine racing with pinball. Now the pitch video is well done and quite funny. From what i can gather the racing part are mini games from the pinball table but does not appear to say how many tables there would be and i am a bit concerned what the driving parts would be like and the screenshots of the tables they look just a bit to simple.As of writing they have 42 days and i really think to succeed they need to show a lot more information and designs.

Odds of making it's goal 30% (if they show a lot more information and pics could go up to 50%)

Rabbit run 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/402042009/rabbit-run?ref=nav_search

Now i saw the amount asked for and i had to look twice and then i thought perhaps they made a mistake but no it looks right $1.6million I mean that is far to much for what they are wanting to do. The game the video the idea all seem not to bad  and could be fun but i really have to ask some key questions why only on ps4 ? Surely pc would be far cheaper to make. Why only one type of reward (at time of writing they only had $20 tier. And the biggest one why so much money ?. To be honest i think it has no chance of making that goal. 

Odds of making it's goal 1% and i just gave the 1% to say if they did manage to succeed i can at least say i gave them a chance with the 1%

More internet related irks

Clickbait articles i really hate these two examples of what i mean one article said "You will not believe what this bicycle transforms into".....and it just folds up wow. Second was "You will not believe what the stars of titanic look like now" had a look and they look the same but older ...wow i would never have believed that (sarcasm).

Sites where articles are such a small part of the site and it just filled with ads for stuff or other articles.

Youtuber's who do not reply....ok if you have thousands of subs and hundreds of comments i understand may be hard but if you only get about a few comments then reply or at the least like the comment.

Partnership networks i have been with a couple my wife has been with one and i have really no idea what they actually do i went with machinima as my fav youtuber's were with them but they have done nothing not even a retweet of a vid so i am starting to wonder what the point of them is.

Search engines that are not google amount of times i have looked for something on other searches which could not find but went on to google and found straight away it

On mobile devices when a page is loading and you click on the link and at a split second before the page moves down due to a ad or a pic and you tapped the wrong link

Some Kickstarter games...and what i think there chances are

So thought would be good to browse some games and give what i think about there chances

First is Hero of legends
 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1940345106/hero-of-legends
So that i think has little to no chance ...no video...no art...designs and not really that information about the game and could find no information about the company online so i would give that a miss.

Next is Colonial Conquest https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/argonautsinteractive/colonial-conquest So this appears to be already in beta and have a decent video and description not my sort of game but i reckon it is very likely they will reach there goal....only thing that bugged me is that its scheduled for a release next month. They say the money is needed for polishing and added features but if that is the case why such a short time for release ?

Now for Omni point
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/521495553/omni-point  which has a interesting look but something seems a bit off about it the video spends about 3/4 of it just looking at the design your character and not really to much information on the actual gameplay and the fact it has the letters MMORPG....i really am not a fan of them and i think for a kickstarter a mmo is not a great idea as additional cost of servers. And there schedule to release at the end of the year so i am not to sure this will do well.


Finally Vincent the vampire
 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/783935053/vincent-the-vampire-modern-indie-point-and-click-a this is a second attempt at the kickstarter first one failed end of last year i missed it that time and i like a good point and click it has a good look to it and a sense of humour they have a good video and there is a demo to try out so i reckon the odds are good though i can imagine it just scrapping through at the end

My arcade game memories

I was a child of the 80s and 90s so arcades were a big thing then.I was born in 1979 so gaming literally grew up with me

The earlier memories i have was during the era of games like superman the arcade game and r-type i only had computers like the spectrum and arcade games were just so much better then anything they could do. I always remember the smokey environment and loads of cigarette burns and ash trays everywhere. But then the 16 bit era came and console games started looking more and more close to the arcade games.Back then my dad would play fruit machines and when he won i would help my self to his winnings :)

But then in the early and mid 90s you had games like final fight and the game that probably changed my life which was streetfighter 2 one of my fav games ever and still remember practicing.

But then things moved on you had tekken/killer instinct/aliens vs predator some really classic arcade games but i found with arcades it is not only what games they have  but how they took care of the machines ....far far to often i would come across games which had a dodgy stick or buttons and it used to really annoy me.

So i loved arcades as mentioned in a previous blog they are a shadow of there former self but i still believe they could come back but in a different form and i would love to do that ...and if i had the money i would.

Think i should mention the games that had a big impact on me.

R-type i remember seeing this in a pub and thought wow i just loved the detachable part of the ship it was so unique.

Streetfighter 2 ...amazes me that at the time i struggled to do a dragon punch but still i first saw it when we had a stop off from a school trip to london i was amazed never saw a 6 button layout and after that i saw it in every arcade.

Final fight saw this at the same stop as i saw streetfighter 2 was just amazed how satisfying the fighting was and the look of the game.

Virtua fighter first time i ever saw 3d graphics like that and it just felt so unique

Aliens vs predator i never realised there was a crossover and what i loved is there was some scope for combos so you could string some special moves together.

Metal slug i had never seen animation like that before and had great sound

Samurai showdown heard a bit about the neo geo but seeing this game in person i was blown away but how good it looked and was great fun to play

Killer instinct 1 and 2 i think as far as arcade games that had a big impact these two were the ones that affected me most it looked just so far ahead i was amazed plus i love combos so this was awesome.......also was the games i bunked off college to play

Should crowd funding for games be used just as a preorder ?

So i have been on sites like kickstarter and indiegogo and backed a few projects and i have noticed development of games fall into these categories (there are probably more though)

Development from scratch perhaps with concept or a idea that is either so new or based on something that most publishers would not touch such as pillars of eternity, kingdom come or project nimbus. This i am a fan .I get the games i really love  and do not see but because they are starting from scratch the community can often help and influence the design.

Games that have been started perhaps the basic engine is there and design but they either do not have the man power or budget to finish or perhaps it is just a few people working in there spare time so it is taking to long like with grim dawn and beasts fury. Again i can get behind this same as before you see the game grow.

Games that need the final polishing off .Game is near enough complete but due to lack of funds they do not have quite enough to get the game finished like project giana. Now this i am not to a big of fan of and while in the end it is more likely you will get a finished game what you see pretty much is the finished project nothing much will change.Community feedback will not alter what we see in the game as it is to close to completion. Now granted most of these type of projects only just make there budget but i would like to see if those games got far more money then requested they would push the development back to improve it more.


Now that final one i mentioned there is also some games that i really wonder why they need a kickstarter as they plan to release them so soon after funded one example was slain which was funded last month and planned to be released very soon.

In the end i feel funding games purely to act as a preorder is not really in the spirit of what it was set up for i feel some are just using the sites to act as there advertisement for it.