Defense Grid 2 being funded by Kickstarter
Been hoping for a sequel to the indie tower defense darling Defense Grid? Now is your chance to directly contribute to the possibility, as funding is now open for Defense Grid 2 on Kickstarter. "But wait," you say, "wasn't the original Defense Grid super popular?" According to developer Hidden Path's CEO Jeff Pobst, Defense Grid: The Awakening was definitely a "success, even beyond what we had hoped." That said, Pobst adds that a Defense Grid sequel is just "too small" for publishers to care, hence the Kickstarter.
It's important to note, however, that the project's goal of $250,000 will not fully fund Defense Grid 2, but rather an expansion to the original game, featuring the first part of the Defense Grid 2 story. At $500,000 the original Defense Grid will be "remastered" in the Defense Grid 2 engine and will receive a multiplayer mode. At $750,000 will fund a level editor for Defense Grid along with Mac and Linux versions. In order to fully fund the sequel on PC, Hidden Path is looking for a cool $1 million.
Of course, there are lots of rewards up for grabs, notably those offered by some rather high-level partners, Razer and AMD. Razer is offering its Naga Hex mice while AMD is putting up some Radeon HD 6770 graphics cards (not exactly AMD's high-end solution). Both companies are "helping out" on the project and will be "supporting" it throughout. Whether this is limited to technical support or includes financial support as well is unclear. We've contacted Hidden Path to learn more.
As of this writing, the project has passed $130,000.
Update: Hidden Path has informed Joystiq that, while AMD and Razer are providing Kickstarter rewards and technical support, they are not providing financial support to the project.
