Dog-Sled-Saga
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Pier Solar HD, Proven Lands among 75 greenlit games for Steam
Valve accepted 75 more games for distribution on Steam after approval from its community on Steam Greenlight, among which is Pier Solar and the Great Architects HD, Watermelon's remake of the Megadrive RPG. Pier Solar HD, which earned over $230,000 on Kickstarter in December 2012, is joined by a recent crowdfund hopeful, sci-fi sandbox roguelike Proven Lands. In fact, a number of this week's new Steam recruits were once success stories on Kickstarter. Dolphin exam cheating simulator Classroom Aquatic earned over $31,000 earlier this month, Trichotomy's Dog Sled Saga found modest success in May 2013, roguelike Dungeonmans earned over $43,000 in August and MURA Interactive's twin-stick shooter Dubwars received over $34,000 in July. Additionally, Will O'Neill's game about love and depression, Actual Sunlight, was among the group of games added to Steam this week. [Image: Watermelon]
Crowdfund Bookie, May 19 - 25: ANNE, Jagged Alliance, Ghost of a Tale
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the week and produces pretty charts for you to look at. This week in crowdfunding, the Kickstarter campaigns for ANNE, Jagged Alliance: Flashback, Magnetic by Nature, Theme Park Studio, an adventure mode for Guns of Icarus Online, Dog Sled Saga as well as the Indiegogo campaign for Ghost of a Tale came to a close. Jagged Alliance: Flashback earned the most money this week ($368,614), and had the most backers of the group, with 7,167 people funding the project. Theme Park Studio boasted the highest average pledge per person, with each funder averaging a $53.81. Take a gander at the results and our fancy charts after the break.
Indie, but not alone: How Vlambeer's advice helped guide Dog Sled Saga
The idea hit Dan FitzGerald in the shower last December: What about a dog sledding game? The Chicago native had been toying around with various prototypes based around a lobbing mechanic, but nothing stuck quite like this. Ideas started pouring in, and he enlisted his girlfriend of three years, Lisa Bromiel, to work on the art and help shape the exciting nugget of an idea into a fully realized video game – a concept that evolved into Dog Sled Saga. It was the first time either had embarked on anything quite like it. FitzGerald studied communications in college, and had spent time doing contract video production (including trailers for other video games) and web design in an effort to get deeper into the gaming scene. Bromiel, meanwhile, is a trained artist with a focus on material art, though she hadn't consistently worked in digital illustration. As confident as they were about seeing the concept through to completion, they didn't have much insight as to going from making an original game to actually presenting it as a purchasable product. Well, at least until Rami Ismail came to town. Ismail, the business and development half of Dutch indie studio Vlambeer (Super Crate Box, Luftrausers), stopped in Chicago in February to give a talk as part of DePaul University's Visiting Artists Series. FitzGerald and Bromiel attended, expecting to hear anecdotes about creating their beloved games, or the painful cloning saga that marked the development of Ridiculous Fishing. Instead they got a real lesson – Indie Game Business 101, if you will – defined by the lecture's catchy three-word title: "Monetize That Shit."
