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Spellirium hits $10K in pre-order fundraiser
Spellirium – the graphic-adventure, wordsmithing puzzler from Ponycorn overseer Ryan Creighton – successfully raised $10,000 through a pre-order fundraiser that he describes as a "Kickender." Pre-orders at all tiers – $15 to $1,000 – get into the Spellirium alpha for PC and Mac. The game is almost done, and all funds go toward finishing the final cut scenes and adding sounds and polish. "That was the hardest ten grand I've ever made. And I was a paperboy," Creighton tweeted. Pre-orders are still open, and the Kickender is now on goal two, which is "Act 3, Adequately Animated." Check out Creighton's pre-order pitch video on the Spellirium site, but be warned – once you open the page, it auto-plays some intense medieval folk music. Spellirium is also up for a run on Steam via Greenlight.
Ponycorns creator('s dad) Ryan Creighton talks funding fun, family
Ryan Creighton makes sure to acknowledge precisely how average he is, but it's not a self-deprecating point. Creighton, the man behind Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure and dad of the designer, then 5-year-old Cassie, led a panel at GDC titled "Ponycorns: Catching Lightning in a Jar," which focused on tips for building a brand and marketing a product as an indie developer.For an "average" developer, Creighton makes some exemplary points.For example, build a game-specific blog or website and publish the story behind any game's development; personalize the process and make is easy for people to give you money, Creighton suggested and we completely agreed with.Even though Creighton offered some wonderful tips for emerging developers, he also pointed out that there isn't a guarantee for success, at least not in the traditional sense.Creighton's studio, Untold Entertainment, is in the hole at least $6,233, but it's raised more than $3,000 for Cassie's college fund, Creighton said. He didn't make Ponycorn to get rich -- luckily -- but had clear reasons: Creighton believes kids should learn to code, that there should be more women in the games industry, and he wanted to spend more time with his children by involving them in the family business. In these areas, it appears he succeeded.Creighton works on Untold contract projects and develops games for under-funded, lackluster Canadian television spin-offs to support his family, he told Joystiq after his presentation. Creighton had hoped to develop original titles for Untold full-time, but "it's been a rough three years," he said. He then turned to a circle of developers waiting to ask him questions and offered another piece of advice: "Here's a hot tip, fellas. Don't start your own company in the middle of a global economic collapse."Creighton is currently developing Spellirium, a "trashpunk" graphic-adventure, world-puzzle title for Mac, PC and mobile devices, which he is, of course, blogging about.
IndieCade 2011: Sissy's Magical Ponycorn misconceptions
Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure may be one of the weirdest anomalies in gaming lately -- it's a LucasArts-style point-and-click adventure game that was actually designed by someone who wasn't even alive when any of those games were released. 5-year-old Cassie Creighton designed the game with her father, Ryan, at a Toronto game jam, and when it was published online, it started spreading like wildfire around the blogs and Twitter accounts of game developers and fans, leading all the way up to its current status as a finalist at this weekend's IndieCade Festival. Dad Ryan Henson Creighton does enjoy all of the attention that his daughter's game is getting, but he told me at IndieCade that he's far from an innocent bystander. "People think that I'm some sort of oblivious dad," he says, "that sort of slammed it together using GameMaker or something, but we actually spent a good chunk of our money building a framework." That framework is called UGAGS, which Creighton originally designed for educational games, and while yes, Sissy's voicework, graphics, and plot were all designed by Cassie, her dad did most of the technical work with his own engine. "Sissy's Magical Adventure was the fourth game we've used it on, and we're using it on a fifth game called Spellirium. So we're not new at this."
