Local Kickstarter Spotlight – October

Each month, GGOrlando turns to crowd-funding website Kickstarter to find cool local “geeky” projects seeking funding.

Before we move on to new projects, want to recall an earlier Kickstarter that was spotlighted here.  Earlier this year, local songwriter/podcaster Marc With a C brought to Kickstarter his project to put his album Normal Bias to vinyl.  He has returned, this time to a crowd-sourcing site specifically for musicians called Indiegogo, to get his record Popular Music on vinyl as well.  Check out his page and support local music by helping him out.

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Blackspace

It takes a special project to be singled-out by the people at Kickstarter as a “Staff Pick”.  The people behind local project Blackspace have received the distinction, and it’s well warranted.

Local studio PixelFoundry, composed of former creators at Maitland’s EA Tiburon studio, is moving away from the world of gridiron to the void of space.  And, if you watch the trailer, you can tell the game PixelFoundry is trying to create is AMBITIOUS!

The defensive real-time strategy game puts you in command of defenses of a mining colony on an asteroid.  As war breaks out, you are responsible for protecting your colonies while maximizing your mining production.

In addition to supporting the PixelFoundry team through their Kickstarter, you can also help them out by voting for the project on Steam Greenlight.  As stated last month, Greenlight gives Steam users the opportunity to select which independent games will be made available on the digital client platform.

Cool Kickstarter Reward:  For $40 contributors receive a DRM-free digital copy of the game, an exclusive desktop wallpaper, early access to the beta version of the game and the “Mechanically Challenged” mini-games, and you’ll be listed in the credits of the game.

Material Things

Director Loren Marie Story and the group at Wayward Traveler Entertainment are looking to craft a story of displacement from reality in the modern-era.  People are linked into a massive virtual world – think OASIS in Ready Player One or the Matrix in The Matrix – and become increasingly dependent on it, forgoing life in the real world.  When a player is found guilty of stealing a rare item from someone else in game, he must make a decision:  banishment from the network to spend the rest of his life in the real world, or spending one year within the virtual world in solitary confinement.

The team behind Material Things are looking for money to get their project off the ground.  They need money to film in studios,  gather costumes for the cast, and much more.  Once completed, the film will serve as a pilot for what they hope will turn into an ongoing web series.

Cool Kickstarter Reward:  For just a $25 contribution, you’ll receive a DVD copy of the finished film.

Project: Gorgon

Building the world for an MMO is a massive undertaking.  It is especially daunting for a team of independent game developers like the team behind Project: Gorgon.  Developers Eric Heimburg and Sandra Powers, two senior MMO developers with credits like Star Trek Online and EverQuest II, are taking the leap to develop a new MMO with an old-school feel.

Promising to offer a massive world of exploration with plenty of loot and an intimate online community of core gamers to travel with, Project: Gorgon aims to be “Asheron’s Call crossed with EverQuest crossed with NetHack.”

Building such a game requires lots of time and money, and the team is looking to earn $55,000 through Kickstarter.  While they have earned a respectable sum (which I’m not listing because it’s Saturday night, but this post doesn’t go up until Friday, so I don’t want to have to come back and update it later), they have a long way to go before reaching their goal.