The Mega Kickstarter Review Post, Part 1

Kickstarter is a source of almost endless fascination for me. I performed on a comedy show at SF Sketchfest this year that challenged each performer to write a new set on the topic of obsession, and so I got to say a bunch of things about Kickstarter to a paying audience. Click above to see how that went. Click below to read brief reviews of the Kickstarter projects I have backed as I attempt to establish my own Kickstarter Happiness Index!

The Kickstarter Happiness Index

The Kickstarter Happiness Index, or KHI, or KkrHppdx, is derived through a simple formula: it is the ratio of projects I still happy I backed by the time they were over (denoted by the thumbs-up symbol, or 👍) to the total number of projects I backed (denoted by a number, like 51).

Yes indeed, I've backed quite a lot of things on kickstarter. I daresay it's become my number one use of irresponsibly spent discretionary income. I don't buy a lot of movies or games these days, but sometimes I buy one that doesn't exist yet for too much money. In order to simplify this process a bit, we're going to look at these projects in categories. What's more, because we're both such busy people, we're going to spread these categories over a few posts this month.

Projects I Worked On

As a general rule, I don't feel comfortable contributing to projects I am scheduled to work on. There's some kind of conflict of interest there, and anyway, I think it's weird to buy myself a job. One of these was the award-winning short film Broken Things. Others, I have sometimes given a donation of $1, just to lend moral support or get the backer updates. These include:

• Underground Comedy - a documentary about improv comedy in Los Angeles. I am, at times, an editor and a consultant on this project, which just funded a couple months ago, and is not yet complete or delivered.
• Diani and Devine Meet The Apocalypse - I originally pledged a ton of money on the first day to help them appear to have momentum on their huge $100,000 ask, then shamefully backed down towards the end to simply the DVD level. I got the last film we made together in a clearance sale at a Blockbuster Video, but I can't count on that working again. The film has been shot, is currently in post-production, and has yet to deliver. 👍 (Although this project is far from complete, I stand by my 👍. I openly suspect this movie of becoming the best feature film I've ever worked on.)
• Help The Selling get a Theatrical Release - This was that previous film. We had a lovely screening at the Egyptian in Hollywood. 👍
• Jim Bruce: I'm Dying as Fast as I Can - a stand-up comedy special. I don't have an official DVD of this yet, even though I created it and they were delivered. I did attend the taping, do a whole bunch of post production work, and get an official poem by the artist. 👍
• A Show with Ze Frank - I didn't actually work on this, but I wanted to, and I thought I ought to be a backer in order to seem like more than a mere opportunist.
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Robotic Edition - Another project from the DDMTA / Selling team of Diani & Devine. I backed this out of friendship, but ended up making their book trailer. 👍

Other Projects I Backed out of Friendship

This hasn't happened nearly as much as I might have thought it would. As a big kickstarter user, and a guy who lives in LA and mainly knows people who seem to be struggling to make things, I don't know how I've gotten off so lightly.

• Relatively Prime - An audio documentary series about math(s) by my friend Sam. Not only did this project deliver, but a campaign for a second series is underway right now!

That's it.

The Price is Right Projects

These aren't so much excellent deals as they are situations in which I bid $1, usually for moral support or just to keep tabs on how they turned out.

• Penny Arcade Sells Out - this was somewhat controversial at the time, and I wanted to follow the updates. Except, there really weren't any, and I stopped reading their site a long time ago. 👎
• Renovate the Brattle Theater - I've never been to this reperatory theater in Boston, but a friend used to be a regular, and I'd like for such things to exist. 👍
• Code Hero - A game about programming. They update sometimes, and might even mean well, but this project is widely regarded as being somewhere between a black hole of ineptitude or an outright scam. (To be fair, if I'd seen it in time, I probably would have been duped by the lockpicks too.) 👎

Today's score: 10 projects backed. With 5 happy returns, I'm going to guess that my ratio so far is better than the final score will be, but maybe that's because a lot of these projects gave some of their money to me.

Next time I'm going to cover some projects I backed without personally knowing anyone involved, and maybe how I totally use Kickstarter as a store, even though they explicitly say not to do that.

Media Monday

- Hoplite - ★★★★☆
Technically, I have won this game, but there's a lot of challenges and achievements and stuff so it doesn't feel beaten. It will live on in my iPad. I'm pretty sure this isn't "roguelike." Which is good. For me.

- Star Wars: Cantina - ★★☆☆☆
I've been cleaning out my phone, cluttered with unused and unloved apps. This was a little diner dash-type game with Star Wars-themed patrons. The whole thing's like half an hour long, and hasn't yet been updated for iOS 6. Anyway, it's been deleted now.

- Tomb Raider - ★★★★☆
My first Tomb Raider game ever, thanks to PS+. This one is basically Uncharted. Often I have this joke (or not-joke) where I feel like maybe I'm not the good guy in a game where I'm slaughtering a film crew's worth of people, but Lara seemed like a total maniac in this thing. If you play it for stealth, she's killing possibly helpful people without ever talking to them, but since she appeared to me as a bloodthirsty monster, and maybe an unreliable narrator, I took no opportunity for stealth. 87% collection.

Media Monday: Project Giant Robot, Picross, and EVOLand

Let's talk video games this week:

- The Unfinished Swan - ★★☆☆☆
A neat concept that I generally found to be kind of a chore to work through. Gilliam's cameo was a nice touch.

- Project: Guard, Project: Giant Robot, & Splattoon Demos - ★★★★☆
These were all demos I played during downtime (re: hour-long gameplay segments of Smash Bros) while working in the Nintendo booth at E3. Guard was pretty fun, and involved a crowd shouting out when they saw robots sneaking up on me. In Giant Robot, I was knocked down once or twice by the evil robots, but I always took 'em down with me. In Splattoon, my army of squidgirls (Orange) triumphed over the other, lesser team (Purple). The motion controls were tricky, but I was determined to play it as intended. (One little extra thing about these that must have been reported on somewhere by now: Mr. Miyamoto was revealed to be working on a new Star Fox game at E3 this year. Also, the two 'Project' games are Miyamoto creations. There are Star Fox-related logos visible in the Project: Guard scenery...)

- EVOLand - ★★★☆☆
I've had my eye on it for a while, and bit during the Steam summer event. Generally pretty fun, but by the second half the gimmicks have mostly faded away into actually being the kind of game they're joking about. My time was split almost evenly between getting up to the last boss, and then running around collecting everything before taking him out. Finished with 100% completion.

- Picross e4 - ★★★☆☆
This is, I think, the third picross game I've played on a DS. Back to 2D this time. I liked that you get bonus puzzles for being a loyal franchise buyer. Blasted through this one really quick though, in about a month.

- Picross e3 - ★★★☆☆
And having finished that one, I then went and wrapped up the last few puzzles from last year's installment. None of these are as much fun and addictive as Picross DS was though. Maybe because then it was a novelty. It also had the fun Nintendo themed level, which never re-appeared.

- AC-130 Air Gunship - ★★☆☆☆
It's like that level in that AAA shooting game, except a lot less fun! …I still played all 15 levels…

Media Monday: Castle of Illusion

- Dig Hard - ★★★★☆
This is a great little game jam game co-created by a schoolmate of mine. Brief, but a lot of fun while it lasted. Also, the power went out in my building just as I won, which was a little unsettling.

- Make it Rain - ★☆☆☆☆
Maybe the worst of these incremental clicky games I've played. This one's for iPhone, and spits an awful lot of ads at the player. I did not collect all the things, but I did get to the 'YOU WIN' screen that forces you to stop playing.

- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - ★★★★☆
Very nicely done short story. Explores the options and mechanics of controlling two characters at once in a lot of fun ways. Would have been fun in co-op, but I get how that sort of defeats the purpose. Pleasantly twisty narrative, lots of places to sit in-game, surprising finale.

- Pixeljunk Shooter - ★★★☆☆
Replay while watching some videos. Still mostly fun, still reminds me of Solar Jetman, but I think what I really wanted to (re)play was Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

- Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse - ★★★★★
An unexpected gem. I've been trying a bunch of offerings from PS+ and I didn't think I'd stick with what appears to be Mickey 64, but the level design is fantastic in this. In the early levels, I was impressed with how you always end up visiting and exploring the interesting scenery in the deep background. In the later levels, I was impressed by how time is truly of the essence. I ended up nearly 100 diamonds short and don't plan to go looking for them, but the way that the levels kind of reminded me of rides at Disneyland in terms of tone, or space economy, or delight, or something, was a real treat.

Media Monday: Monument Valley Not a Monumental Value!

And also browser-based "idling" games!

- Choppin' Wood - ★★☆☆☆
I'm really into this kind of game lately. The balance of attending and then ignoring fits in just right with the jobs I've been working recently. There's not much to this one though. More theme but maybe less interesting than...

- DerivClicker - ★★☆☆☆
I collected all the things in this game. I don't think there's anything else to do. It's not as fancy as Cookie Clicking or Candy Box or Clicking Bad from last year, which it occurs to me now I never even logged. I guess I never got every last thing in Cookie Clicker though.

- A Dark Room - ★★★☆☆
The best of today's bunch. It was intriguing as I unlocked new things, and surprising as I kept forgetting I was playing and returned days later to find I had tons of supplies. Combat becomes a chore towards the end, but I finished this one twice.

- Monument Valley - ★★☆☆☆
It was a really shrewd move for the developers of this game to target the Apple and graphic design / tech nerd segment of the web, either instead of or in addition to the gaming press. I liked the one level that was a box that opens because I miss The Room, but I ended up disappointed in this one.

As far as I know, I don't mind the "non-game" game genre. These are games that are generally more of a walking tour of a (usually) lovely thing the developer has made to show you, different from a book or video in that there is usually some clicking or tapping involved to keep you engaged, but there are no real obstacles present to keep you from seeing all of the carefully crafted content. My blunder was not considering the non-gamer sources of the reviews and blurbs I was reading that promised 4+ hours of gameplay. After the first 45 minutes, when I thought we were just about done with the tutorial and intro levels and it turned out the game was over, I think I felt a little cheated over the relatively high price and small amount of content.