I’ve backed a lot of Kickstarters, but surprisingly only one game-related project. That was 16 months ago, and I still don’t have the game on my iPad. I got some sweet stickers and stuff, but I’ve almost completely forgotten about it.
Enter Shaun Inman, Rusty Moyher, and Matt Grimm. They want to make six retro games in six months, and have taken to Kickstarter to make it happen.
I’ve followed Shaun Inman’s career for a while now, and I’m a fan of all his games. Shaun, Rusty, and Matt recently collaborated on the game Super Clew Land in three days for the Ludum Dare Challenge, and after coming in third place they wanted to improve the game. They worked on it for thirty days, and then came up with the idea for Retro Game Crunch.
The thing that makes this Kickstarter so appealing is that as soon as the project is funded, you’ll be playing games. Backers get to vote on themes, and then three days later a game will be playable. Then it will be refined for the rest of the month, using the backers’ feedback, and at the end of the month the game will be downloadable. Repeat that for six months and you’ve got Retro Game Crunch.
The whole time the guys will be running a development blog and a podcast, which combined with awesome rewards, really makes this Kickstarter stand out to me. The rewards are a bit more creative than your average Kickstarter campaign’s shirts and stickers too. Some of my favorites are:
- Digital download of the typefaces created for the games
- Soundtrack downloads of all the game music
- Your name as a cheat code (awesome)
My only complaint is that it seems these games will be for the desktop (Windows, Mac) and not iOS. I rarely play games on my computer these days, but with a new laptop coming in the mail that might change.
I suggest you back this because I think it’s going to be fun to play these games and feel like we’re contributing to their development a little. If nothing else, you’ll get to play six cool games for as little as $15 over the next six months, and that isn’t a bad deal.
