While it's easy to burn out on the cynical antics of the AAA market and the tons of freemium MMOs flooding the the Flash portals, it's still a relatively good time for indie developers, and it's easier than ever to vote with your wallet for games that will never see a retail shelf. These days it's only very difficult to make it work rather than nigh-impossible.
Looking to follow the footsteps of games like Defender's Quest and the recently-funded-and-Steam-Greenlit Super Chibi Knight, Dustin Auxier's The Enchanted Cave 2 is another game from an independent developer looking to leverage success on Kongregate to a sequel backed up by more experience and several times the developer hours going into it. (Personally, I think a Flash portal completely dedicated to free indie concept prototypes should exist and have an editorial board or something. That's just another entry to put on my "if I had X million dollars" list...)
The Enchanted Cave is a casual Rogue-lite game inspired by the Ancient Cave level of Lufia 2; fans of Desktop Dungeons will spot a lot of similarities. It's a simplified turn-based dungeon exploration RPG with random floors, simple mechanics, and simple controls in which victory is more about choosing your fights and managing your resources than it is about leveling up. While some uncommon items called Artifacts carry over from one dungeon run to the next, the rest of your gear is totally ephemeral. While it's possible to grind-to-win, the return on investment for stat-grinding is much lower than in a lot of Flash games like Learn To Fly - good decision-making is indispensable. The skill floor on guaranteed success is a good bit higher (though to me, the game feels like it's being played on the second of five difficulty levels, and I'd love to see more options).
The above is an interview featuring footage of the mobile port of The Enchanted Cave. The sequel has some sample art in place, and has a 6-month development time charted out.
Grant Kirkhope has confirmed on Twitter that he'll compose the soundtrack. (Goldeneye 64, Banjo Kazooie, Kingdoms of Amalur, some other stuff.)
The $10,000 Kickstarter has 21 days left as of this writing, and the funding is more or less exactly on pace to just barely make it, but it's hard to predict these kinds of things. Further, the $15,000 stretch goal would surely be beneficial to the final product, possibly making it possible to Greenlight the release on Steam (or equivalent; I'd be more excited about a gog.com release). He's giving away the iPhone and Android releases completely for free during the Kickstarter, so give it a shot.
Further, he's promising lifetime access to all of the games he self-produces for life to $50 backers (it's possible that he could get picked up by a studio in the future sometime, but I wouldn't blame him too much if it happens).
You can also pledge bunches extra to have vanity content programmed in. If you happen to have more money than you know what to do with but zero ideas, send him $600 or so and tell him that you want the Taur Manifester put into the game. He'll know what you mean.
Grrrr, minotaur.
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