Kickstarter Funding Madness

I love Kickstarter.

For awhile I was funding such an amount of projects in such a short amount of time, that I was on the verge of needing to run a kickstarter to fund my kickstarting. There’s just this great feeling of helping other people realize projects/dreams that wouldn’t otherwise be possible with crowd funding – and you get great rewards from doing so (early releases, one-of-a-kind promos, artbooks etc…)! I’ve also heard tales of Kickstarters failing horribly (yikes), but luckily I haven’t run into that yet.

I’ve been concentrating my funds towards mostly comics and video game endeavors, but there’s tons of other categories and every kind of niche.

Here are a few Kickstarters I’ve taken part in:

Reading Rainbow! How could I not support this!? I used to watch this show all the time, and I am sure it influenced my love of reading. And who doesn’t love Geordi La Forge LeVar Burton?

I think my sister may only know how much I love this movie. As a 7th grader girl, my favorite actor was Bruce Willis (yes, I realize this is strange). The movie is goofy, action-packed and full of sci-fi fun. 17 years later, there’s a whole artbook dedicated to the movie and memorable characters? YES PLEASE.

This was kickstarted on a whim. I was browsing in the comics section, and this was listed as ending soon. The artist, Josh Lesnick, had already completed a successful Kickstarter for another comic (Girly), so I felt comfortable backing this project for $15 – the print edition of the book. Plus, I really love the artwork and the story. The comic follows the main character Anna, a young woman looking for a little “spice” in her life, and a clumsy succubus Izzy, who is more than capable of helping Anna on her kinky and sometimes hillarious sexcapade adventures.

ANOTHER Kickstarter that was funded on a whim! I couldn’t really help myself here-the graphics, gameplay and character design, all looked amazing PLUS it’ll be available for PS3 which is great because I’m always behind a generation for consoles because I refuse to shell out that much money for a gaming system. RPGs are also, my #1 gaming love. The game is summarized as “A charming SNES style RPG with Roguelike elements, set in a twisted fairytale world with a cheerful, yet raging alcoholic Heroine.” How much more awesome could you possibly pack in a summary sentence!? +10 cool points for a non-typical strong female lead.

Starfighter grabbed my attention with genre alone and then I saw the GORGEOUS artwork. Visual novels rarely appear outside of Japan, and I’ve always been intrigued by them. Think of them as a choose-your-own-adventure video games usually with a romantic storyline.

Yes! Another visual novel type game! What stood out to me with Troubadour were it’s graphics. I LOVE pixel art – always have, always will. Moving past the artwork alone, the story sounded interesting as well: “Troubadour is a story about accepting the responsibilities and expectations of life in a world of toxic distractions. You’ll guide Lu as her perception of the world is wrapped in a glitch-filled aesthetic, permeated with digital toys, and moves to a striking soundtrack.“ Looking forward to the delivery of this one November 2014. 

Oh OMORI. If you aren’t familiar with Omocat‘s work – stop reading and take a look. With a unique anime influenced style and a collection of work that revolves are gaming, anime & manga and eerie storytelling, Omocat has jumped up in recognition and now has a successful clothing line. When I found out she was Kickstarting a video game based on her original character Omori, I jumped on it. I’m looking forward to the game’s release planned for May 2015.

The first Kickstarter project I received a physical copy of. One of the most beautiful deluxe comic volumes I own. Nothing, but good things to say about this comic. Read it. NOW.

AND finally, Bizenghast. The one Kickstarter I’ve been apart of that didn’t raise enough funds. This one was a little disapointing. I became familiar with Bizenghast when manga publisher TokyoPop was in it’s heyday and was publishing original english language content alongside all its translated manga and manwha. Written and illustrated by M. Alice LeGrow, Bizenghast is:

“Set in the fictional New England town of the same name, Bizenghast focuses on fifteen-year-old Dinah Wherever. Her parents’ car crash leaves her orphaned at a young age and as a result, she moves in with her aunt. Dinah can see the ghosts which haunt her aunt’s house, which was a hospital and later a boarding school; however her aunt and doctor believe that she suffers from schizophrenia. One day, she and her only friend, Vincent Monroe, sneak out of her aunt’s house to search for materials for his garden. They stumble across an ancient mausoleum and after Dinah reads aloud from a plaque, she discovers that her name is written on a contract which binds her to return to the mausoleum every night to free the ghosts. If she succeeds, she will win her freedom and a reward. If she fails, she will die and stay in the mausoleum as a corpse.”

The game was to follow the same plot and looked promising. Even though the Kickstarter wasn’t successful, the team is seeking different avenues to publish the game.

There we have it! What have you funded lately?