Welcome back to Fanboy on Kickstarter, the column that tries to clue you into the can't-miss fanboy fantastic opportunities in the world of crowd sourcing. We're eight episodes in, and several of our earlier recommendations have already completed and are in the process of development and delivery, which is always exciting to monitor. For more information, check out the archive!
I don't always find something really worthy of you, the reader. And typically I want to give a couple of suggestions in a single episode. Which made me almost miss passing this one along!
Popup Dungeon is simply charming, an adjective not often used in describing the dungeon crawl, hack and slash genre. But it's the first word that comes to mind to describe the simple, but not simplistic, environment and characters you'll encounter therein.
So let's take a look.
Popup Dungeon
Expanding the "Retro Like Retro Never Was" genre of games we've grown to love in titles like Minecraft and Rogue Legacy, Popup Dungeon provides us with blocky heroes fighting blocky monsters in beautifully rendered dungeon hallways and rooms. Of course everything looks like it was cut from cardboard, folded, tab a inserted into slot a, to create a digital diorama of painstakingly detailed stagecraft.
I'd recommend this on the basis of the graphics and theme alone, but there's so much more here to endorse. Incredibly customizable, it takes on sandbox qualities that just don't seem to end.
But let's check out the stats to give you a background in the game first.
Name
Popup Dungeon
Summary
A retro dungeon crawl with charming characters, incredible depth of customization, and
Sweet Spot Donor Level
The Crawler: $15 gets you the game, which will be delivered on Steam, and early access to the game, and an exclusive in-game charm: The Crowd Source. For $5 more you can get into a level that gets you a Steam key for Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages, an action-packed space shooter RPG immediately upon funding.
As a matter of fact, I just upped my funding to the $20 level.
Funding Status
Current funding at over under $75,000 around $5,000 under their goal of $80,000, so it's a close call here. Their first stretch goal starts at $100,000, which is high but likely to happen with 22 days left to fund.
Background
Triple.B.Titles is a family operated studio based in Dallas, Texas. Their first game, Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages, was successfully Kickstarted in 2012. Today, they are hard at work developing Popup Dungeon for PC/Mac/Linux.
Some early video displaying environments and character movement.
Now if this isn't charming, I don't know what is.
A sample of the uniquely dry humor we'll be getting in the game. (Skip ahead to the :30 mark.)
So here's the challenge. They haven't made their pledge yet, and as of Monday, May 12th they have only six days to go! If you like what you see, get in there and pledge now. Get the $15 for the game, or go for $20 which gets you the Ring Runner - Flight of the Sages game as well, and on May 18th!
That's it for this month. Again, send us your feedback and your own Kickstarter picks via the Fanboy Planet Facebook page!
Note: For simplicity's sake, these articles typically refer to delivery conditions and pricing within the US. Most Kickstarter projects handle world-wide delivery, which you can review on the individual project pages.
