The Crowdfunder: Hard West, Star Traders 2, and more

I’m your Great Old Huckleberry.

PT reader Mark Sable wrote in to point us in the general direction of Hard West, a currently-Kickstarting tactical game set in what the developers call “the Weird West”. I think they mean Portland.

Hard West reaches right into my brain and fervently prods the desire module: turn-based XCOM-style combat, exploration in the strategy layer, a world where George Washington Carver might play hold ‘em with Cthulhu. Here’s the rub: there’s no plans on their Kickstarter page for a mobile version, just PC. But that’s where Mark comes back in — he’s talked to Polish devs CreativeForge, and they’ve told him that Hard West for tablets is entirely possible. Hmmmm.

Watch the pitch video for Hard West and three other intriguing crowdfunding campaigns after the jump.

Hard West‘s campaign is all over but the Necronomicon-induced crying at this point: CreativeForge was after $70,000 Canadian and they’re well past $80,000 now with three days left on the clock. I wouldn’t Kickstart this one unless you also had a gaming PC, maybe, as there’s no guarantee of getting a tablet version. And when I say that I mean even less of a guarantee than usual for Kickstarters.

Long-time readers will recall my extended infatuation with Star Traders, the Trese Brothers’ lo-fi 2D Elite-like game for iOS and Android. With every new release, the Treses get a little less lo-fi, and Star Traders 2 seems their most ambitious game yet, with a big procedurally-generated living universe with a dynamic economy. This is exactly what Star Traders needs, in my opinion. I have a lot of affection for the original game but it’s quite dated now, and when you go back to it you’re struck by how small your corner of the galaxy is.

Los Hermanos Trese are after $50,000 — they’ve raised $10K of that and there’s still a whole month to go.

Boss Monster is a “dungeon-building” card game that already exists on the tabletop. Creators Brotherwise Games are going to bring it to iOS and Android — their Kickstarter to do just that has already raised the $85K they were after and is now chasing stretch goals.

I think that the idea behind the game is really clever: you have to build a side-scrolling 2D dungeon (think the Bowser levels from Super Mario Brothers) and create an attractive dungeon that lure in more heroes than your opponents’. But there’s another pressure that demands your resources: your dungeon needs to be deadly as well as alluring.

Boss Monster looks wonderful. If it ships on time, it’ll be on the App Store and Android markets next January.

Finally, I’m less convinced by Game Master, which is another one of those build-your-own-game tabletop systems made for tablets. We’ve seen a couple of these over the years (most notably the insipidly-named wargaming Lego set Wars and Battles) and it never seems to go very well.

Game Master needs a whopping £130,000 to hit its mark and it’s raised not-quite five grand with 23 days to go. This is probably not the horse to back, barring a Christmas miracle. Remember that it’s September.