Darn that dream.
I probably would have scrolled right past Illo – Birth of the Cool if I’d missed the allusion to Miles Davis in the name. The connection can’t be a coincidence: there’s jazz in the background of all of the pitch videos and the concept art pieces all have a Robert Motherwell-in-3D feel to them. Illo is a “3D action puzzle game” that looks fun, if not groundbreaking – but I’m just funding these guys to see more of their art get out into the world. The devs are after a little over a quarter million dollars by the third of December to bring Illo to iOS and Android and they’ve got a ways to go yet.
Stop me when this sounds like deja vu: FleetCOMM Operation Vigrior, whose various dips into the crowdfunding bucket we’ve been covering since April, is back for more. Mercenary Games want $50,000 this time, but they’re offering a Windows demo of their sci-fi RTS as proof of progress since their last appearance on Kickstarter. There’s three weeks to go on this one but I wonder how eager punters will be to reach into their wallets again.
The pace of pledges for a new Elite game has slowed down significantly since opening day. Many people (including your ob’t servant) raised an eyebrow about the total absence of images, video or anything at all to demonstrate the existence of a game in development. Producer David Braben assured Eurogamer that the “key underlying technology” had already been built, and that screenshots would be along shortly. It’s possible that Braben’s comments were themselves to blame for the cooling off of contributions – prospective backers might now be waiting to see what those screenshots look like. According to Kicktraq, Elite: Dangerous is still on course to pull in the £1.25 million the devs are after, but that downward trendline can’t be comforting to them.
