What do you get from a game that’s been influenced by Super Mario World, Ico, Limbo, Blade Runner, and … Arrested Development? You’d end up with Spate, the indy-developed steampunk platformer by Eric Provan.
What do you get from a game that’s been influenced by Super Mario World, Ico, Limbo, Blade Runner, and … Arrested Development? You’d end up with Spate, the indy-developed steampunk platformer by Eric Provan.
Eric is about as ironically “indy” as you can get. He has a wife and a daughter, with another child on the way. He’s done film work, wants to apply his knowledge of film to games, but just can’t get the right assets or team that he needs to pull it all together at the end. Eric’s Kickstarter run is coming to a close, and we feel his dark tale is compelling and deserving enough to get the final push he needs.
With just himself and another programmer running the project, Spate looks surprisingly good so far, but a little funding could go a long way to making the game reach his intended dream.
What’s visible so far of Spade is extremely intriguing. You play as Detective Timothy Bluth, your traditional sarcastic private eye, hired to determine what happened to a woman’s husband. He was last seen in the forbidden “X Zone”, an area suddenly drenched by a spate of rain, swallowing all living beings who dared to enter. As the mystery develops, players learn that Bluth carries a secret of his own regarding the X Zone, and has personal reasons for taking the case upon himself.
Gameplay is split between 2.5D platforming, flying segments, Angry Birds-like cannon segments, and Absinthe-fueled nightmare worlds. Provan is hoping to use kickstarter to get the plugins and programmers he needs in order to get both the physics and gravity segments correct on the Unity engine.
For $10, players can get a version of the game for PC, DRM free. Donators of $30 get a copy of the soundtrack and a beta version, while a whopping donation of $1,500 gets you the privilege of shaping the main villain in your likeness and name.
With just 3 days to go and only 20% of the funding left to go, Provan could use all the platformer fan funding he can get. With your help, Spate‘s dark, steampunk world could become a reality (virtually, of course).
Project Name: Spate
Platforms: PC (Mac possible)
Funds Needed: $12,000
Funding Acquired (as of this writing): $9,427
Days Left: 3
Kickstarter Picks is a series of features on Gamezebo that will profile Kickstarter projects in the world of video games. We’re doing this in the hopes of calling attention to interesting projects in need of funding, so please, if a game looks like something you’d want to play, don’t hesitate to lend it your support!
