What does an independent game developer do when faced with the high cost of releasing his completed video game? Use Kickstarter, of course.
Jason Rohrer from Davis, Califonia created and developed a game based on the end of diamond trading in Angola. The game, built from the ground up for the Nintendo DS, was completed and ready for release before a publishing deal with Majesco fell through. This left the game completed with no one to release the game.
That is where Kickstarter came in.
While the game was completely finished, including being approved by Nintendo, Rohrer explained that the cost of physically producing the DS cards and Nintendo’s required production minimum, meant that it would cost about $78,000 for him to self-publish the game.
So taking to Kickstarter Jason not only raised the funds he needed to publish the game, he exceeded them.
The game, Diamond Trust of London, is now available for sale from the developer on the official website for the project. Videos and screen shots of the game are available on his Kickstarter page, as well as a video describing the game.
– two player game with one DS card (download play)
– works on any DS system, including the 3DS
While we missed the original Kickstarter fund raiser, the game sounds great and should definitely be checked out.
