#kickstarter knuggets

You open your eyes to find yourself standing in center of the regional combat arena on a windswept day. A gust of dry air hits your face. It's the year 6132 and you're the descendent of a colonist family on the distant planet Terra Nova and you've made the bad choice of enlisting in the world's preeminent competitive sport known as Gear Dueling. On the other side of the arena stands your opponents imposing weapon - a four meter tall humanoid robot that's holding an automatic cannon nearly six feet long. This is a Gear and they're built like tanks only with rollerskates. This is the world of MekTek Studios' Heavy Gear Assault.

Precursor Games, a development company started in 2012, was born out of faltering developer Silicon Knights. Over the course of just a year many of the programmers, artists, creative professionals and executives came over to the newly formed company. The exodus picked up especially after a multi-faceted lawsuit with Epic Games over the misuse and licensing of the Unreal 3 engine became a no-win situation for Silicon Knights in March of that year. There are two sides to the salacious story but now Precursor has set about creating a new line of games including a sequel to their cult hit Eternal Darkness.

If you're a readin' nerd like me you've probably spent a good deal of time obsessing over the late author Michael Crichton's many novels. Now because I like dinosaurs so much of all Crichton's varied works none grabbed my attention more than the Jurassic Park series. There's just something entrancing about a world world where big business and big lizards collide with "chaotic" results. As a game player I've always longed for someone to condense the experience of Jurassic Park into a playable open-world experience which caters to fans of games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Just Cause 2 or Grand Theft Auto 4. Yesterday a project popped up on Kickstarter that seems to cater to this specific subset of fans.

What do you do when you've got a comfy software development job in Silicon Valley and a home in nearby San Jose? Well if you were sibling developers Tom and Tony Cannon you might quit your day jobs and fulfill your lifelong dream to start a video game company. Using a once in a lifetime opportunity the Cannon Brothers did exactly that and set up shop in an upstairs bedroom within Tom's home. The two founded Radiant Entertainment and began working on an ambitious sandbox/RTS game called Stonehearth a project they've been working on now for 18 months. 

According to Moise Breton he has been working professionally as a freelance artist within the games industry for close to 11 years now. Moise, or "Mo" as he's known as, has been keeping busy as a concept artist and 3D modeler but late last year he decided to go about creating his own development company and came up with the name Gamesbymo. Gamesbymo is now a one man studio located in Quebec nestled in the city of Montreal, here Moise has set up a studio where he's begun working on his first self-described opus. A.N.N.E. is a melding of popular platforming mechanics and shoot 'em ups but a quick look at the game's first trailers and you'll quickly see influences from games like Metroid, Castlevania and Gradius.

Imagine that you're a more than capable soldier who's been away from his family at war. For weeks you've wanted to return home and now you've got your chance - all you want to do is make it home and enjoy a bowl of warm gruel with your family. Unfortunately your plans are quickly dashed because this is one of those days where nearly everything seems to unravel. Your path is blocked by a small mining town whose members have managed to open a hellmouth deep within the caverns beneath their village. Doesn't that just always happen when you least expect it? There's no way out but through the madness so it's time to put up or shut up as you venture into the tunnels to fight the emerging monsters.

Mark Jacobs has been an impressive presence in the gaming industry for almost 30 years now. Mark's not just known for his energy but also because of the passion he has for his many projects. Over the course of the nearly two decades while working as GM and CEO of Mythic Entertainment he was involved in a range of successful game launches Including the seminal MMO Dark Age of Camelot. 2009 brought about some significant changes following a range of consolidation moves made by EA which merged BioWare and Mythic Entertainment. In 2011 Mark founded City State Entertainment and set about creating his next big MMO project modeled on the successes of DAoC. Camelot Unchained is his new baby and with the help of an impressive team he's come to Kickstarter to rally fans.

Pathea Games' crowdfunding campaign for Planet Explorers is on track to reach its funding goals in just a few days. If it keeps up its average weekly earnings of nearly $27,000 it also means they'll have raised over $120,000 when all this is said and done. Pathea is an indie developer composed of a group of roughly 15 individuals who've been working on Planet Explorers for about a year now. Two weeks the team decided it was time to bring their hard work to Kickstarter so they could continue production. Fans responded almost overnight quickly pushing this campaign towards feasibility.

Battle Worlds: Kronos is a new turn-based strategy experience that KING Art Games has been working on as a pet-project for several years. Initially this German indie developer created a prototype and their fans lapped it up but the publishing industry wouldn't the give money needed to see a turn-based game fully developed. KING Art was forced to shelve Battle Worlds and focus on another title, The Book of Unwritten Tales, which served as a throwback to the heyday of point-and-click adventure games. It's here where they found their initial success proving that their fans would respond to the content and ingenuity of their design rather than focusing on what genre the game was released in. It seemed like the right time to delve back into Battle Worlds.

Imagine you had a great idea and you were working with the intentions of finally making it a reality. Muse Games had such an opportunity in 2012 with Guns of Icarus but due to a sour deal with a publisher they were left high and dry - almost penniless. The independent studio has pulled itself up by its bootstraps and turned to crowdfunding to get the word out about its new game. In February last year they realized success and now they're returning to seek indie venture capitalists for their expansion: Adventure mode!