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[burningpet]

As many of you read by now, Jon Shafer, he of civilization and to some extent also Fallen enchantress has started a kickstarter for his own take on the 4x formula.

The premise of the game is that you take the role of one of the barbarian tribes and start a race to be the one sacking Rome and overtaking the empire.



A few interesting takes on the formula is that the terrain changes according to the season (1 turn - 1 month) so having situations like rivers freezing and farms stop producing food during the winter can have some impact on how you plan a head.

Another mechanic change he is bringing is that all resources deplet so you either have to act as a semi nomadic tribe, or build a large enough empire to have several sources of each.
The main premise of having a race to the throne also suppose to create a kind of tension on the player so he doesn't drag his game, but it will also be a constrain because rome is all too powerful at start.

All in all, the game sounds promising and i do think the guy deserve the chance to prove once and for all if some of the complaints he got during the launch of civ 5 was because of him or because of the burden of a publisher/existing franchise.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonshafer/jon-shafers-at-the-gates?ref=live

[pilgrimboy]

I'm just confused. They say that they only need $40,000 to finish it, yet they expect it to take a year. How can $40,000 fund a team for a year?

But I should also say that it looks like a game that I will play. Debating on the Kickstarter.

[Keita]

This really does highlight a problem I have with Kickstarter which is the transparency of how companies are going to use the funds they are given.

Why do they want 40,000 bucks? What will this 40,000 do? Pay for developer wages? Will some of it get new equipment?

Also $40,000 really doesn't sound like much of a salary unless it was a one man company.

[pilgrimboy]

That's my issue. If they are a three person team, I would expect them to make at least $40,000 each for the year. That's $120,000 in funding. Then hiring the part-timers, etc. Kickstarter should actually make the projects show a budget. I just don't think that $40,000 is enough unless this is just a side project for all of them. I would say that they need $200,000, but I could be way off.

[burningpet]

Jon is working full time, the other two part time, unless they get more than 40k.

All tree are living in the same house in a forest or something.

40k is reasonable, not a lot, probably the bare minimum, but its a enough. Its probably more than what Toady live on.

[Sharp]

Kickstarter is like pre-ordering games so they can be developed, im guessing he has other backers or is self-backed. This isn't like Dragons Den where investors are looking for a financial return, especially when you consider the rewards for some of the higher tiers are pretty poor for the payment, it's practically donating money. Either way you the kickstarter contributer doesn't need to know the budget or what they are going to do with it.

This looks like Civilization meets Battle for Wesnoth

[Keita]

Well... from what can I glean from the kickstarter page they've got the majority of it done.

This is my guess, the game it's self they think it will take a year to finish but they don't have enough money to cover all of the year, they're asking for 40g to cover the last few months of the project?