Kickstarter is now a thing in Australia. It exists! And with that come the video game projects. With that in mind I thought it might be a good idea to let some of Australia’s local developers talk to us about their Kickstarter projects. First up is Defiant from Brisbane, who gave us the skinny on their current project Hands of Fate.
Hand of Fate is an interesting one: it’s a card game, but a card game that comes to life as a third person RPG/Action game of sorts. Described as a ‘card based roguelike’ it ticks a lot of boxes, there’s an interesting crossover between people who play card games and video games. This caters to both. Very cool idea.
So give us the high level pitch for Hands of Fate
Hand of Fate is a card game that comes to life on your screen. You build a deck, and then that is dealt out as the dungeon floor that you explore. When you reach an action encounter, the cards fly into the 3D world, along with enemies and the items you’ve collected. Then the whole thing turns into an action adventure that you play through, before returning to the card table. It’s a pretty unique blend of card play, rogue-like, and action.
Tell us a bit about yourself and the studio working on the game
Defiant is a team of about 15 veteran developers based in Brisbane, Australia. We’ve worked on a variety of games, primarily mobile. This is our first big push into the PC/Mac/Linux space. You might have heard of us from titles like Heroes Call, or Ski Safari (Ski Safari : Adventure Time comes out next week, which we’re pretty excited about).
What would say is the most unique thing about your project?
Definitely the way that the card play interacts with the action. There are cards that let you draw other cards, or put cards back, or stack the deck, or enhance your weapons, or … well, there’s a huge amount of different items that do different things, which really makes every playthrough unique.
The other thing about it is, it’s close! We will be finished by April next year, and Alpha and Beta are even closer. That means that backers will get the game really quickly, compared to a lot of other Kickstarters.
What are the funds going towards with this Kickstarter?
Primarily helping us to finish the game, and run through an exhaustive Alpha/Beta/Release cycle that will be long enough and detailed enough to integrate all the feedback we get. We’re big believers in the final polish phases being what makes or breaks a game. This is a way to make sure we both have the time and funds to polish everything up as much as is needed, and also to make sure that we have enough eyes on the project to find everything that needs attention.
Why use Kickstarter?
Well, Kickstarter is great in terms of reaching an audience who are already excited about the process of making games. People who are happy to fund, but also give feedback. We’ve already got a bunch of great suggestions from our backers, which is really helping the process flow through. Kickstarter seemed like the best place to go to find the sort of people who’d be excited by this sort of game.
What are some of the more interesting things backers can get for backing the project?
Well one of the coolest rewards to my mind is the custom tarot deck, based on art from the game. However, in terms of interesting rewards, we had one person email us because they were keen on backing the game at a high level, but none of the rewards appealed to him. We ended up designing a custom card with silver printing that he’ll get (in a playable and frameable fashion) as well as the in-game abilities that correspond. That was a really cool partnership, so we’re definitely happy to work with people individually to make sure they get really satisfying rewards.
What do you think the introduction of Kickstarter means for the Australian games community as a whole? Is it something you’re excited by?
It’s awesome. It’s a huge platform for getting people interested and excited in your game before you ship, and also for testing how your ideas are received by the audience, which is really important.
You can donate to Hands of Fate here on its Kickstarter page.
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