The Life Flashes By funding deadline has now passed, and 54 backers have pledged $1,357 to help me turn this fanciful little idea of mine into something real and (hopefully) better than anything else I’ve created up until now. I’m quite pleased with this outcome; sure, a part of me wonders if I could have tried for a higher goal amount and/or timed the funding period better so that it didn’t fall smack in the middle of a busy period at work and a just-as-busy holiday break, but for the scope of this project, I’m satisfied by what I did manage to achieve. As I’ve said before, this is the first time I’ve attempted anything quite like this, and while my project is a labour of love first and foremost and not a means to make a profit, part of that love is the ability to communicate with an audience, and so far, this Kickstarter experiment has helped with that in a way more significant than I could have anticipated otherwise.

So, what happens next? Well, right now, I’ve recruited two artists to work with me: one doing background art, and one doing UI and promotional materials. I won’t say who just yet, but will say that if you’ve been following my stuff for a while, you might recognise one or both of them. I’ve also had several people volunteer to be voice actors, who I’ll be sure to audition and put to work once I have enough of the script ready. As for me, well, I still have to wrap up the work I’m doing on DeathSpank before I can really do much else other than plot and scheme and daydream. But definitely stay tuned for more updates of both the Exclusive Video™ and the plain old text variety in the coming months!

Until then, thanks to everyone for coming along for the ride, and very special thanks to my backers — I’d give you all a big hug if I could. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for another great indie game project at which to throw your wads of moolah, may I suggest former Telltale designer Heather Logas’s “Dreamtime” game? Her project is similarly interactive story-like to mine, though interestingly different at the same time, and she’s still got a ways to go before she meets her goal and only 11 days to do so.

Ah, the 2000s: the decade I came of age, wherein I started out as an eccentric, socially awkward teenager who liked to make her own games and finished as an equally eccentric, slightly less socially awkward young adult who now gets paid to make games. Now that said decade is over, [1] everyone and their dog is making top 10 lists, so I figured it’d be fun to create one myself. Of course, coming from me, it’s inevitably a highly personal and subjective list, so hopefully no one takes it as anything other than that. I have included the games I could think of that inspired and affected me most, but that I did not work on in any way myself. So, here goes, in some random order that only makes sense to my subconscious mind…

But wait! There’s more…

Crossposted from The Border House. I’m probably going to do this with everything I write there from now on, because this blog doesn’t get updated enough as it is.

I was recently pointed to a post on Slashdot where it is suggested that women are “too smart” for tech careers, rather than “not smart enough”, as common and misguided wisdom seems to suggest. To wit, “only ‘boys’ are stupid enough to go into a field that’s globally-fungible, where entry-level salaries are declining, and it’s common to think that staying up all night for a company-paid pizza is a good deal.” This is actually a suggestion I’ve heard more than once regarding the unicornification of women in the game industry; maybe, just maybe, it’s not a matter of women actively being denied entry, they say, but a matter of them simply having better things to do with their lives. Right?

Read the rest!

I just wanted to let all you wonderful folks know that there’s a new video game blog in town called the Border House. It’s feminist and progressive in tone, and aims to be friendly to marginalised groups of all kinds, which is exactly the sort of thing that we need in the young white male-dominated gaming blogosphere. Oh, and I will sometimes be writing for it.

Anyway, do poke around and see if it tickles your fancy. I, personally, look forward to seeing how it evolves. After all, with a reference to an old, well-known adventure game in the title, how could one possibly go wrong?

Yesterday evening, I was pleased to discover some very, very good news: the $1000 goal line for the Life Flashes By Kickstarter drive has been crossed! This means that no matter what people pledge from this point forward, this project is definitely going to be funded. And with 62 days left, at that!

To celebrate this occasion, I’ve decided to make a new reward available for backers: anyone who pledges over $50 gets a devastatingly witty T-shirt, along with the handwritten postcard and boxed copy of the game I’m already offering. Those who know me in real life will no doubt know how fond I am of devastating wit in the form of clothing, so I figured, why not offer up a clever shirt of my own with a Life Flashes By theme? Hence, if you’ve already pledged over $50, do feel free to edit your pledge and select this reward, and if you would, by any chance, like to bump your pledge up… well, I certainly won’t complain!

So far, the support I’ve gotten for putting Life Flashes By up on Kickstarter has been impressive and overwhelming. At this point in time, I have $595 pledged from 26 backers, and I simply can’t express how much it means to me that there are actually people out there who would pay money to see me make a new game. Thank you all so much!

Those of you who have backed the project and/or follow me on Twitter have likely already seen this, but in case you haven’t, I’ve started posting Exclusive Video Updates™ on the Kickstarter project page, as a means to let people know how the game’s progressing and what’s going on behind the scenes. I’ve never done project updates in anything other than text form before, so this is rather new territory for me, but I thought it might be fun to experiment with this more personal approach, particularly in this age where watching videos online has become ubiquitous. So, if you’re interested in hearing a little bit about the thought processes that went into the creation of Life Flashes By, getting a sneak peek at what the game looks like so far, or simply want to make fun of my Canadian accent, do check out the video! [1]

Finally, my friend Corvus just wrote a lovely blog post of his own about my project and his thoughts on indie game patronage in general, which I suspect accounts for the slight spike in backers I received early this morning. He’s got some great things to say about the subject and how we as consumers can make an impact in creating more of the games that we want to play, rather than what huge, monolithic corporations with ad campaigns tell us we want to play. Definitely a sentiment I can get behind, and not just because I’m trying to fund a game this way myself.