Kickstarter Games That Deserve Funding Volume 1 - InSomnia, The Deer God and Midora

Written By: Tyler

We live in an age of Kickstarter now, where developers flock to the website and go directly to the gamers to fund their passion projects. Whether this is a good system is hotly contested among gamers, but I thought it'd be interesting to make a feature where I talk about a few games that seem interesting and deserving of your hard-earned (or easily-earned, no judgement) money.

For any of these, it's smartest to go to the Kickstarter page and see a detailed description of their project right from the people making it, but I will use this opportunity to sell you on the game enough that you'll want to click the links.


Midora
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1867607597/midora-0?ref=category

Midora is a throwback to games like Zelda and Secret of Mana. Though I'm not a huge Zelda fan in general, I'm big into Secret of Mana. I'll just let them describe the story:

Midora is a colorful world, crafted by an ancient architect with the elements as his tools. For an eternity after this creation, those elements populated the world, fashioning cultures and kingdoms all their own. They contested each other for land and prestige, and when the world was finally overwhelmed by the strife, the architect came back down to seal the elements away, preserving the world for its lesser inhabitants.

  This harmony lasted for centuries, until even the eldest tribes had only vague memories of the conflict and its participants. The town of Seawind will be the first to remember the Inferno in earnest.
 
  Enter Snow, the lead character of this adventure. A young girl growing up on the edge of Seawind, she embarks on what starts as just a simple chore, only to uncover the catalyst in a war as old as the world she lives in. On her journey, she will encounter help and obstacles in various forms. Elderly town matrons, kings, long extinct races, burly blacksmiths, and the living elements themselves will play a role in Midora's newest story, but it falls to Snow herself to see it to the end.

The main gameplay mechanic is that you can control water. At the beginning you will be weak, obviously, but as the game progresses you will become a lot better at it. I like the idea of being able to manipulate water.

Besides that, it is an action-adventure game like we've seen before but that doesn't mean it's bad. There are no levels but your sword and shield have their own levels, and there will be little stealth elements that allow you to do critical damage.

There is also over 200+ items to get, along with 12 dungeons and 6 towns to go to. Of course, there will also be secret areas that you can find. You can use alchemy to create your own items, or just find them.

It does seem to truly blend together elements from the two main games that influence it, and that's definitely a good thing.



InSomnia
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1892480689/insomnia-an-rpg-set-in-a-brutal-dieselpunk-univers?ref=nav_search

InSomnia is a dieselpunk RPG set on "The Ark" which is basically a gigantic half-deserted space station populated by the race known as "Normans" in which you are a part of. You wake up on "The Ark" only to find that is moving to a planet only known as "The Evacuation Point," in order to start over because the "SORG Regime" are a bunch of pricks, basically.

So why is it interesting? Because it's a dieselpunk RPG, mainly. No, there's actually a lot going on here of interesting, namely:

• No leveling system but instead the game opts for a more Elder Scrolls approach where you use abilities and they get more powerful. There are perks and whatnot as well, but this is a system that is a welcome break from what we normally get (not that I hate levels because I certainly don't).
• 15-20 hours of main storyline with 20+ hours of side-quests. That's not the cool part. The cool part is that that is only the first season and there will be 20 free missions released post-release at some point.
• Did I mention that it's dieselpunk?
• Strategic real-time combat.
• You can also play with friends if you're unlike me and actually have some.
• Not only do you have to fight enemies, but there's a survival element (along with crafting). I'm a little concerned/curious about how the survival elements will co-exist with the sandbox elements because it could possibly get annoying to traverse the land while managing your food. I'm not trash talking the game, but it is literally the only gripe I have and it's not even a very big one considering the developers seem ambitious and I'm sure they'll make it work.

Those are only some of the things to look forward to in this game.

The bottom line is that if the developers can live up to their promises then it should be another great RPG to add to the already excellent canon of the genre. The planned release date isn't for a ways off, however, as it's planned for Q 2015 for PC with Mac and Linux a possibility later on.



The Deer God
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1907053239/the-deer-god-a-game-of-reincarnation-pc-mac-linux?ref=discovery

From dark and depressing to beautiful and majestic, here is The Deer God, a game in which you play as a fawn who was originally a human. Yes, the hunter gets reincarnated as a fawn. You will be a fawn until you gain experience and eat food. You can also apparently made with does.

The Deer God looks like one of those types of games that you will play and be in awe of how beautiful it is. If that sounded too poetic, then let me put it in internet meme form: you will get dem feels. A lot of games use pixel art, but a lot of them fall prey to getting by just on nostalgia. The Deer God does not look like that at all... it looks like a wonderfully crafted world that is full of life and populated by a lot of animals.

The developers say they are influenced by "Metroid, Zelda, Blaster Master, Kid Icarus, Ecco The Dolphin, Joust," and I'm down with all of those games that I've played, but especially Metroid and Blaster Master, which they bolded on their Kickstarter. They are also influenced by that pesky "outdoors" thing that I always hear about.

I know I haven't talked as much about the individual gameplay aspects as I did with InSomnia, but it really does look like it'll be fun to plat form and explore this world. You have to survive and grow into an elder deer (they say there isn't really an end, but there are things like that to make you feel like you've accomplished something), and you have to solve puzzles.

Just watch the video on their Kickstarter page and be inspired by the visuals and atmosphere. Then listen to some of the sample tracks because they've stated that music will be a big part in the game and I believe it.