Castle Story - Kickstarter!

Neat! It's like Minecraft, but with some RTS and tower defense elements.

http://www.sauropodstudio.com/

UPDATE 7/27/2012:

The Kickstarter is up and they are growing FAST.

Saw this yesterday. It looks pretty awesome to me.

Fully optimistic and somewhat excited. I can't wait for something playable that I can mess around with.

This game looks really interesting. I'm actually surprised I never got into Minecraft. I guess I was just waiting for the same thing, but with the added feature of having minions do my work instead.

I'm actually interested in the "defending your castle" remark he made.

I love all these Minecraft/Dwarf Fortress clones.

New official community site here.

The Kickstarter for the game went up at 10AM today (Friday, July 27th) and it is now 2PM and they're 7/8ths to their goal. There's a new trailer they posted with it, too.

I cannot believe today is Friday already...

But i can believe this kickstarter is going to be one of those few, rarified, epic, record settings....with kickstart only starting a few hours hours ago at most they've already well surpassed the funding goal and have over 3000 backers....

Including yours truely!

I have backed at $25. Welcome to the new world, new gaming studio of a few guys who quit your jobs, you are capitalism at it's finest and you're about to get rewarded.

At 15, you get beta when ready and upgraded freely to release when released.

At 25, you get prototype soon after kickstart ends, beta, final, free lifetime updates (i think they mean updates like DLC, not like patches).

IMAGE(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/3016/capturefcy.jpg)

I decided to kick in before it hit $100k. The $15 description still says free updates until the final version. It looks the same except getting the prototype, to me.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

The $15 description still says free updates until the final version. It looks the same except getting the prototype, to me.

Yeah, the only difference between the $15 and $25 reward seems to be access to the prototype. I backed for $15.

See that's the thing about these kickstarter games. They show you all these awesome things and then you have to wait for the game. I want it now...

Someone needs to make a kickstarter for a time machine, clearly they won't as it hasn't arrived yesterday.

I'm unclear what it means but there's definitely different wording between 15 and 25....one says free updates "forever untill release" and final version on release.

The 25 has the unique language that the 15 doesn't have of "free updates for life"

I get the impression there is a difference, but it could use clarification of language.

If it helps, this is from Kickstarter as a response from my $25 contribution.

Pledge Summary
AMOUNT PLEDGED
$25.00
REWARD
Get the original PROTOTYPE soon after the Kickstarter is over! You also get the BETA at a pre-release price with free updates for life and get your name in the final game. (see reward above)
ESTIMATED DELIVERY
Aug 2012

After about 36 hours, it's approaching $230K, which is nearly 300% funded. Surprisingly, the devs have not yet posted an update message.

I can see several updates dated yesterday and today at the top of the original post. Maybe they just don't know how to post actual update messages.

UPDATE July 27th - 5pm : We can't believe we reached our goal in under 5 hours. Heartfelt thanks to everyone and your amazing generosity!

UPDATE July 27th - 6pm : We are now working on answering questions! We will also clarify the reward descriptions as well as setting up a FAQ. Thanks for your patience!

UPDATE July 28th - 5pm : CLARIFICATION - After a large amount of questions regarding the first reward, we'd like to clarify that for 15$ you OWN the game! You will never need to pay anything ever again. Unfortunately, we cannot reformulate the reward description.

Orphu wrote:

I can see several updates dated yesterday and today at the top of the original post. Maybe they just don't know how to post actual update messages.

Ha! Yeah, I should've scrolled down. All I saw was the zero next to "Updates" at the top. Now that the project is 300% funded, they should post some stretch goals to encourage people to continue backing it.

I'm glad they clarified those two rewards. $25 was too steep for me to get a "complete" game when there's very little to go on. I'm still not sure even at $15. I'll have to check out some gameplay videos. It's not like they need the extra support now, but as a pre-purchaser, and to generate even more goodwill, I would've thought they'd release the prototype to backers ASAP, and not lead them along with a tease. A good business tactic, but on the line of sleaziness I think.

cyrax wrote:

It's not like they need the extra support now, but as a pre-purchaser, and to generate even more goodwill, I would've thought they'd release the prototype to backers ASAP, and not lead them along with a tease. A good business tactic, but on the line of sleaziness I think.

For every backer who gives $25 or more...

Get the original PROTOTYPE soon after the Kickstarter is over!

Est. Delivery: Aug 2012

I don't see any teasing or sleaziness.

I'm not interested in playing the prototype, so I only backed for $15.

update on the kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

New video update.

Credit Island - Part of the most recent update. I really like this idea!

EDIT: The Kickstarter ends Sunday at 10AM Eastern (they flubbed the timing according to the latest update), so show your support now if you were waiting. They also just got the Paypal system working.

The kickstarter completed and is funded at:

27,060
Backers
$702,516
pledged of $80,000 goal

Very cool. They say prototype will be released to backers NOT LATER THAN, and hopefully earlier than, October 17th.

Heh, I like how releasing the prototype "soon" in the rewards translates to almost 8 weeks. These guys have already mastered that part of game development!

Yeah, I figured 'soon' meant like a couple weeks, while they set up download servers at Amazon or something. Sigh.

Malor wrote:

Yeah, I figured 'soon' meant like a couple weeks, while they set up download servers at Amazon or something. Sigh.

Their speed at getting things done makes me think it'd be a good idea to try and forget about this game until I get an email from them.

I didn't back the project, but I'm sure I remember them saying they already had the prototype done, and were waiting until after the Kickstarter to release it. That's basically the reason I didn't back it.

The prototype is released now.

Very much a prototype, but hopefully a beta will be ready soon as they seem to be making crazy fast progress now.

Prototype can be impossible to figure out without a guide..thankfully one is being put together.

http://castlestoryonline.com/threads...

Prototype barely even runs on my machine -- I get about 1 frame every ten seconds. And the forums are a maze of annoyance, so I can't even reasonably register to let them know that my very fast machine isn't running their game well.

Malor wrote:

Prototype barely even runs on my machine -- I get about 1 frame every ten seconds. And the forums are a maze of annoyance, so I can't even reasonably register to let them know that my very fast machine isn't running their game well.

Bummer on the FPS, i've been browsing the forum but havn't registered yet far as i know.

It's running very smoothly on my laptop with a nvidia mobile 530 at top settings...so:( sorry man.

edit: oh yea, that's after it actually loads up the world, which part appears slowly..on a I7 with 8GB ram.