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[Shakkara]

Yep, another game on kickstarter, what's new?

Well, I happen to be one of the devs on this game and think its one of the most ambitious projects on kickstarter yet. Panzer Pets is all about collecting and trading robot parts and using them to assemble your own robots. These robots are then used to explore the game world, battle against hostile robots and navigating through randomly-generated dungeons to loot its treasures.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and has both a single-player campaign and multiplayer features such as guilds, arenas and tournaments. Players are free to trade their robot parts with others until they have the combinations of parts that they need to build the most powerful team of robots.

If you have to compare Panzer Pets to others (which I don't like to, as we tried to be unique and aim for a niche, instead of copying other games like everyone seems to do nowadays), you can imagine it to be a combination of Pokemon, Fallout, Scrapheap Challenge and Magic the Gathering. In addition to that, the game is massively multiplayer, meaning that you can meet other players and trade and fight with them, or form guilds and have a guild house built directly into the game world for all to see.

All the info about the game can be found here, including a movie:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamundo/panzer-pets-customizable-robots-mmo/

I'll be happy to answer any question you might have.

[Meta]

My only question will be blunt: why now?

I may be the only one thinking that, but there are too many Kickstarter game projects going at the same time. We, customers and/or backers, don't have infinite money.

[Shakkara]

We've been trying for more than 2 months to get our project up, but since Kickstarter is US only and we're based in the Netherlands, we were met with a wall of bureaucracy from kickstarter, the US govt and Amazon Payments and couldn't get it up sooner 

And trying to get an investor (that isn't a loanshark) in this economic climate is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That is, if you can find one willing to back a project that isn't a direct copy of [insert one of top-10 apps in appstore here].

Thanks for the interest anyway.

[miauw62]

Well, the fact that its located in the netherlands makes it a bit more intresting for me, since i live in belgium, but i see you're going to do an semi-sandbox MMO, and if you browse the internet, you see that many, many of those have failed. (WoW, SWTOR, Wurm)
So please, i beg you, do this right.

[Meta]

We've been trying for more than 2 months to get our project up, but since Kickstarter is US only and we're based in the Netherlands, we were met with a wall of bureaucracy from kickstarter, the US govt and Amazon Payments and couldn't get it up sooner 

And trying to get an investor (that isn't a loanshark) in this economic climate is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That is, if you can find one willing to back a project that isn't a direct copy of [insert one of top-10 apps in appstore here].

Thanks for the interest anyway.

A quick and honest answer. I like that.

As I'm already a backer on too many projects on Kickstarter I won't back yours, but I can wish you good luck!

[Lord Dullard]

My only question will be blunt: why now?

I may be the only one thinking that, but there are too many Kickstarter game projects going at the same time. We, customers and/or backers, don't have infinite money.

On the contrary, I suspect this is probably an ideal time for launching a project. Yes, there are quite a lot of games up, but on the other hand, interest in Kickstarter itself has been newly awakened by some of the more prominent projects that went through (i.e. Double Fine, Shadowrun, Wasteland 2, etc.), which means the site probably receives many more visitors now than it had prior to those events.

Edit: I threw you up on reddit, which should hopefully help to generate some buzz for you. I may consider donating later.

[Rakonas]

Can you be a robot, who builds other robots?

[Shakkara]

Well, the fact that its located in the netherlands makes it a bit more intresting for me, since i live in belgium, but i see you're going to do an semi-sandbox MMO, and if you browse the internet, you see that many, many of those have failed. (WoW, SWTOR, Wurm)
So please, i beg you, do this right.

We used to have a sandbox virtual world in the past, Club Galactik. It failed, and we learned from that mistake. In fact, we tried to correct quite a few things in the gameplay as we developed, but our investors wanted none of that; they insisted on having a hybrid rip-off of Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin. When we released it didn't work, it was seriously lacking in gameplay and things to do, people (especially children, which was the target audience) at that time simply didn't have the mindset for sandbox games, but had grown accustomed to on-rails experiences such as FarmVille and other social games that guide people with endless quest chains and progression. We got some unique features in Club Galactik later on, such as a tradable card game, but it was too late to turn the tide. We were using the funds we expected from Hero World (a Guitar Hero MMO which we were developing for Activision) to fund the changes to Club Galactik, however Activision shut down the Guitar Hero franchise and left us out on the streets.

Not all was lost though, as we bought back the back-end technology from Club Galactik and Hero World and expanded on that to create the Panzer Pets backend. Club Galactik had over 100k users and ran for a year, so at least a large part of our code and all the network technology it is based on has been stress tested. That's why we know we can deliver Panzer Pets.

On the contrary, I suspect this is probably an ideal time for launching a project. Yes, there are quite a lot of games up, but on the other hand, interest in Kickstarter itself has been newly awakened by some of the more prominent projects that went through (i.e. Double Fine, Shadowrun, Wasteland 2, etc.), which means the site probably receives many more visitors now than it had prior to those events.

Edit: I threw you up on reddit, which should hopefully help to generate some buzz for you. I may consider donating later.

Thanks for that, it's indeed getting quite some attention there!

[Shakkara]

Can you be a robot, who builds other robots?

We're still undecided. We thought at first that having a human character appealed to most people, but people like you and me like playing as a robot much more. And the big robot mounted in the spider is kinda cool.

If it was up to me, you can play both!

And if there is serious demand to play with a robot avatar, we will have to do it, because we will do whatever the community wants (as long as it is sensible).

[Ozyton]

You cannot play as a robot assembling humans?

=P

[Shakkara]

What do you mean, robots like lt. commander Data, or Cylon infiltrators? 

We will have nice implants and stuff for hummie avatars to wear. I love cybernetics

[Sirian]

You cannot play as a robot assembling humans?

=P

How about a robot disassembling humans ? 

Edit: Much more important than having robot avatars, is, in my opinion, having content !
Stuff to do, stuff to learn, stuff to discover, etc..

Build a solid gameplay and expand upon it, the fluff can wait.

[Xanatos Jr.]

I just want you to know, Panzer Pets is an awesome name.

I want a Panzerkitten.

[DeKaFu]

Medabots MMO? Medabots MMO!

If you've never played those games, you get medals (the "soul" of the robot) which have stats for speed, melee/ranged attack, etc. and gain experience and level up as you battle them. These medals are placed in frames ("tinpets") to which are attached different mix-and-match parts (head, legs, right arm and left arm), each having its own attack or ability. Each part has seperate HP and can be temporarily destroyed in battle, and the robot is knocked out of battle when its head part HP reaches zero. Winning battles means getting a random part from the loser, and losing means losing a part from one of your own robots.
Depending on the game, the medals can "evolve" into stronger forms as they gain levels.

I wouldn't be surprised if you'd never heard of the series since it barely left Japan (only one of about a dozen games came out in English), but it's funny how many similarities there are. I have some friends who'll be pretty excited about this...

By the way, just to confirm, you'll be able to build non-humanoid non-mount robots, right?

[Shakkara]

You cannot play as a robot assembling humans?

=P

How about a robot disassembling humans ? 

Lol. I like Cyberman 'upgrades' better.

Edit: Much more important than having robot avatars, is, in my opinion, having content !
Stuff to do, stuff to learn, stuff to discover, etc..

Build a solid gameplay and expand upon it, the fluff can wait.

Yes, we're working hard to get the basic gameplay as solid as it can be, plenty of time to add fancypants stuff later

I just want you to know, Panzer Pets is an awesome name.

I want a Panzerkitten.

At the moment the free minipet is a doggie, but we might have the models of this one lying around somewhere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxKWbPeVmF8&t=4m30s (the robot version, after it transforms, the sneaky thing got a built-in camo device)

Could modify it to build you a Panzerkitten - we'll need more minipets eventually and cats are pretty high on the list.
If this project is succesful and we get cats in, drop me a mail and you get one for free.

Medabots MMO? Medabots MMO!

Not heard of, but it looks nice. It is hard to make something that is 100% unique nowadays. Some people compare us to Pokemon and Final Fantasy. And yes, we got similarities with those and I can't deny that I have had some inspiration from other games like Pokemon, Fallout and Diablo when I designed this stuff. But I always tried to build something unique and that's why I'm focussing so heavily on robot customization and user-created stuff like guild houses and even entire settlements. I'm sick and tired of companies and investors that want me to make rip-offs of existing succesful games, like every small studio is doing nowadays.

By the way, just to confirm, you'll be able to build non-humanoid non-mount robots, right?

If we get to the point where we can get the battles to include terrain, then I definately want flying robots too, and those won't look like bipedal human.
At the moment, I plan to have robots divided in brands, each with their unique style and parts that can be combined together. The robots of some brands will be quite humanoid, while others are not. But as said before, we focus on content and solid gameplay before we go wild with fluff and other fancy stuff. If we are succesful, we can go as wild as we like - and we will certainly listen to you and the rest of the community to see what you want in next.

If it is up to me, we'll open up our issue tracking tools to the community so there is total transparancy what we are working on and what we plan to pick up next. If you don't like it or want to raise an issue, you could communicate that directly. That is my dream, no bridges between the community and the devs.