Tag Archives: indie games

Falling Up: Downwell Review

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you’re supposed to go up and down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom.” – Haruki Murakami

I picked up Revolver Digital’s Downwell during a flash sale fully expecting to pick it up for 15-20 minutes and put it down forever. Instead, I was treated to a masterful take in minimalist direction that I couldn’t put down for hours.

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Additional Pylons – Kickstarter Fatigue

Kickstarter is amazing. It’s a wonderful site full of ambitious (and not-so-ambitious) projects seeking funding to turn dreams into reality. Anyone can use it, from people looking to make chinos or make comics. It’s even brought fan-favorite shows back from the dead. And for some game developers, it’s a new way to succeed. Some game developers come to Kickstarter to fund passion projects, small projects just outside the means of the creator. Other come seeking big bucks, and, at first, it’s hard to fault them. Even Potato Salad can net you a cool $50 grand. Games are the highest grossing projects on Kickstarter to-date with a calculated $250 million successfully raised as of November 12th

But as more projects pop-up on Kickstarter (and other crowdfunding sites) the more we see projects failing to meet goals. It would be easy to say that these failed projects didn’t carry enough clout to succeed, but the problem is more elaborate than that.  Many of these projects are constructed by proven talents, have solid engines and entertaining premises, and yet they still come up short.

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