This time, the audience gets a much bigger say. Double Fine has published 26 game pitches, and backers are asked to pick their top three. The four most popular ideas will be turned into prototypes during a two-week development sprint, after which the community will vote again to choose one project for additional development.
Pitch examples
Architactics sounds a good bit like Into the breach, except with mobile buildings instead of mecha, and humongous elementals instead of bug kaiju. It’s also a city-builder. Neat!
Bard Crawl is a pub crawl, except instead of going from bar to bar, you gradually awaken to the fact that the bar is a dungeon with a nefarious plot to uncover.
Plot Armor plays into the tropes by turning narrative tricks into gameplay mechanics in a visual novel/RPG story about writing stories, it seems.
And then there is Brütal Legend 2
Double Fine has also attached a spectacularly unrealistic stretch goal to the campaign: if funding somehow reaches $100 million, the studio says it will put Brütal Legend 2 into production.
The studio is not pretending that figure is reasonable. In its Kickstarter FAQ, Double Fine points out that the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever raised around $46 million, making $100 million very much a stretch goal in the literal sense.
For context, Brütal Legend is Double Fine’s heavy-metal action-adventure starring Jack Black as roadie Eddie Riggs, who is transported into a fantasy world inspired by metal album art and mythology. Combat mixes axe-and-guitar action with real-time strategy elements, while the wider game leans heavily into open-world exploration, absurd humor, and a huge metal soundtrack.
So no, Brütal Legend 2 is probably not about to become the most expensive Kickstarter reward of all time. But Double Fine has made one thing clear in its FAQ: if the campaign really does hit $100 million, it says the sequel will happen.
Brutal Legend
Release Date: February 26, 2013
Genres: Music, Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Adventure