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Xenonauts (X-com spiritual successor) on Kickstarter-Stretch goals now being voted on

Aselith

Member

kickstarter_kickstarter.jpg


Yeah, yeah, I know. You're fucking sick of Kickstarter!

But are you sick of getting a game you were going to buy for $25 for $20? No? Then follow the link:

Riches await you!

As far as I'm aware this game is mostly complete at this point and their estimated delivery date is Oct this year. Stuff happens but this seems like a low risk kickstart if you're interested in the game at all.

I was getting ready to preorder and I though other people might as well thus a new thread was born.


Don't want to contribute to a game you haven't played?

So play it.

Or play it.
 

Corto

Member
This is a sure thing. There's zero risk in this Kickstarter folks. I have pre-ordered through Desura and they have the game running on alpha from months now. I would pledge some money if I haven't bought the game already.
 

Sloane

Banned
This is a sure thing. There's zero risk in this Kickstarter folks. I have pre-ordered through Desura and they have the game running on alpha from months now. I would pledge some money if I haven't bought the game already.
This, and it's looking better and better.
 

Yo Gotti

Banned
Wow, been waiting for this to happen. If this isn't a game worth Kickstarting then I don't know what is. They've already got a damn good product for sale right now.

and $50,000? They're going to obliterate their goal.
 

Jasoneyu

Member
Wow this is actually my first kickstarter that had some sort of playable demo, not just art assets/screenshots.
 

epmode

Member
I've been in the alpha for a while now. Aside from some UI parts being too small on high resolutions, it's good stuff. It'll make a nice companion to the Firaxis reboot.

edit: Desura is slow as hell for me though. Takes forever for even small updates.
 

19Kilo

Member
Took a quick look at the demo. Wow, this is much more faithful to the original than the Firaxis remake. I'm sure I will still get the Firaxis game, but THIS is the remake that I've been waiting for all these years. Insta-pledged.
 

Aselith

Member
Any hope for an iPad version I wonder?

I think it's definitely possible that they'll announce something like that as a stretch goal although that could cause issues for them as people worry about the mobile platform goal causing them to dumb down the PC version or leave content out due to size limits on mobile and stuff like that.
 
I think this is a genius way to use Kickstarter that I hadn't thought about before. Preorders for a nearly complete game.

All they're trying to do is bypass the royalties a third party service would charge (which can be up to 30% of sales) and use the popularity and exposure Kickstarter brings right now, only paying 7%. Throw in some expensive rewards for the most hardcore fans to basically get free money you would never have access to otherwise. Choose a really low goal to insure you get funded and it's pure win for them.

I see a lot more developers and publishers go this route from now on. Not doing so is just leaving money on the table at this point.
 

Corto

Member
So glad that their goal will be largely surpassed. They really need to overhaul the UI as far as usability goes. Good thing that's first on their todo list to spend the KS money on.
 

Aselith

Member
Damn, this Kickstart is going to blow passed its goal. Already at 49k so I expect it to be funded in the morning. It will be interesting to see what they have for stretch goals and how high they end up getting. It'd be awesome to see them hit 1M or something crazy but I can't imagine it will.
 
Damn, this Kickstart is going to blow passed its goal. Already at 49k so I expect it to be funded in the morning. It will be interesting to see what they have for stretch goals and how high they end up getting. It'd be awesome to see them hit 1M or something crazy but I can't imagine it will.

We can dream.
 

Yo Gotti

Banned
We can dream.

Even 250k would be amazing for this game. As a team of 3 they've done so much with what I believe is under 50k so far.

I finally got around to playing the demo, pretty damn good. The only things I hope they improve are some of the movement/shooting animations and the jerkiness of the camera when it hops around in battle mode.
 

Aselith

Member
They just updated after the funding was raised so here's what we can expect going forward for stretch goals currently:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/posts/224998?ref=activity

We're also thinking about stretch goals. The current thinking is that we'll do a Mac / Linux port of the game if we raise $100,000, and we'll add female soldiers at $200,000. We're still looking into the practicalities of both of these, so this is not yet confirmed.

It appears our engine will support Mac natively with a bit of work, but for Linux we'll have to bundle it with a wrapper. We're letting someone have a look at our source code with a view to porting it, but we also need to work out how we're going to handle things like development builds. Ideally we'll put out all development builds on all three platforms, but we need to figure out the specifics before we confirm the stretch goal.

For the female soldiers, these will appear on the Soldier Equip screens with female faces and more feminine Basic Armour art (all other armour is too bulky to show off the differences between the genders). In the ground combat, they will appear the same as the male soldiers, except for female sound effects (without going into too much detail, this is due to sprite issues).

The main problem with this is actually the portraits - our character artist is extremely overworked and doesn't have time to do the 20-30 new female portraits we'll need. We're doing some tests to see if other artists can match his style before we confirm this stretch goal. If one of them can do so convincingly, female soldiers will be go.

We're setting it at $200,000 because we think that it is an achievable target, but one that would be fantastic for us to hit. Even after Kickstarter have taken their cut and we've paid for all the rewards, we think it'll be enough for us to form a physical studio. Being in the same room would make life so much easier for us as we finish off the game.

Finally, we're also looking at adding a "Force Soldier" option into the game, where you can enter a name in the game options and if a pre-set soldier with that name exists, they will appear in your starting squad of 12. Should ensure that anyone who has paid to go in the game will actually get to see themselves!
 

Clevinger

Member
We're also thinking about stretch goals. The current thinking is that we'll do a Mac / Linux port of the game if we raise $100,000, and we'll add female soldiers at $200,000.

The fuck? Female soldiers require $100K more in funding?
 
Even 250k would be amazing for this game. As a team of 3 they've done so much with what I believe is under 50k so far.

I finally got around to playing the demo, pretty damn good. The only things I hope they improve are some of the movement/shooting animations and the jerkiness of the camera when it hops around in battle mode.

I didn't realize it had been that low. In one of today's updates they said that the pledged Kickstarter funds are more than they've received from pre-orders to this point. Makes what they've accomplished all the more impressive to me.

The fuck? Female soldiers require $100K more in funding?

They're using the stretch goals to get the funding to have a physical studio where everyone can work together.
 

Aselith

Member
How odd. Fifteen options, but only fourteen numbers to rank. What's the unranked one, less than one?

My highest priority was a level designer also.
 
I also voted for the level designer and then more tile sets. Even though I own both a Mac and a Linux PC I have no desire to play games on them.
 

Sloane

Banned
Gotta say "stretch goals" is the one thing that annoys me about Kickstarter so far. I get that they want more money, have new ideas, and make the best game possible or whatever but I feel it sometimes leads to adding unnecessary stuff and pushes the release date back for no good reason. Just finish the game as you originally intended and save those new ideas for a sequel.
 
Everyone, they've decided to change how they're doing stretch goals and letting us vote on which is the highest priority and whatnots. Please vote here if you're interested in the game there's quite a few options so this is going to be very good especially for people who really want a Mac/Linux port:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/posts/225770?ref=activity

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CBDTVPS

Personally, my highest priority was a level designer.
We’re still looking at implementing more of the features listed on the front page, but we can’t confirm them for definite yet. Although it is very tempting to think we’ve made it big when you see the amount of cash that has been donated, the unpleasant realization has hit us that once we take into account Kickstarter / Amazon fees, plus the costs of manufacturing and shipping all the backer rewards, we’re not likely to be left with more than 50% of the total money raised for development purposes.
Damn, they should find a way to lower the cost of the reward items.
 
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