#fundbetter

One of the indies we worked with during our Fundbetter programme has released their game today on PC! 

Voyageur Game by Bruno Dias

Voyageur

Voyageur is a just-released game inspired by both Fallen London and The Annals of the Parrigues. Your spaceship has a drive that only works in one direction: towards the galactic core. At each jump, you visit a new, procedurally generated planet and explore ongoing stories bit by bit.

The narrative structure draws from the quality-and-choice structure inspired by the works of Failbetter Games. Your stats, qualities, and cargo affect the results of your choices. And the small story moments often lead to other story nodes.

The planets use a system influenced by Parrigues, with an original aesthetic tarot: Chrysalis, Hammer, Star, Dome, and Ladder. I’m intrigued by the result, though I don’t feel like I’ve played enough yet to completely interpret all of their effects.

Hearts Blazing (Card game, October 2016)

Hearts Blazing is a casual card-driven storygame for 3 to 5 players who have a love of melodramatic sci-fi series. After generating a fictional setting together, players take on the roles of dynamic but recognizable sci-fi archetypes. Love, loss, betrayal, action, adventure and episodic operatics get packed into a free-wheeling, swift playing 1 – 2 hour romp.

Games by Play Date is an analog game design and publishing studio centered in southern New Hampshire.

Hearts Blazing has just been funded successfully on Kickstarter! The addition of a fixed sum from Fundbetter will enable Games by Play Date to market the game fully. Hooray!

Games by Play Date Website | Games by Play Date Twitter

Big Mike Lunchtime’s Business Training ‘95 (iOS/Android/itch.io)

It’s Jumanji, but with businessmen.

In Big Mike Lunchtime’s Business Training ‘95, what appears to be a piece of poor-quality corporate training software drags you into a lavishly illustrated nightmare world, where grotesque businessmen constantly savage each other for Deals.

This harrowing and comic adventure will teach even the most timidly non-commercial player that when it comes to corporate despair, sometimes the best way to the light is through the darkness.

Nate Crowley is an author, journalist and illustrator who lives both in London and the West Midlands. After eight years working as a business writer, he published his debut novella, The Sea Hates a Coward in 2015. His next book, Grand Amazon, is out in August. He can be found on Twitter as @frogcroakley, where he is best known for the nearly-award-winning Daniel Barker’s Birthday, a description-defying narrative project about his mate’s birthday.

Astronaut: The Best (PC/Mac/Linux, Kickstarter in Autumn 2016)

Astronaut: The Best is a narrative strategy game where you turn underdogs into presentable astronauts using lies, magic, and/or hard work. Mold your recruits. Modify their personalities.Stand up for the little guy. Acquiesce to demands by the powerful.

Most people think of the space race as a fancy way to kill dogs using explosives. In Flaustria, it is conducted with class. A model astronaut must show sparkling wit, a winning smile, and perhaps a working knowledge of what the spaceship buttons do. In Astronaut: The Best, your duty is to train a procedurally-generated team of deviant screwups into brilliant space heroes, or give the impression of having done so. Anything less, and you will be killed and left in a ditch.

Universal Happymaker make games that are moral laboratories. For their debut, indie veterans David Mershon (Banker’s Dozen) and Mike Sennott (Rad Dragon) are teaming up with a trio of talents new to the games industry: artist Julia Y, composer Matt Zapp, and communications director Marina Alighieri.

Astronaut: The Best will come to Kickstarter in Autumn 2016, with Fundbetter supporting via matched funding.

Astronaut: The Best Website | Astronaut: The Best Twitter

The Edgelands (PC, Autumn 2016)

The Edgelands is an atmospheric adventure game set in the present day, based on real and imagined folklore.

You explore an uncanny rustic twilight landscape where familiar rural landmarks overlap with otherworldly occurrences, creating a dream-like pyschogeographical blurring of the ordinary and the supernatural.

An evocative electronic soundscape responds and adapts to the players actions as they interact with the environment and its inhabitants, and the choices the player makes on their journey shape the manner in which the narrative unfolds.

Marshlight Software is a one-person game development studio created by Andre Bosman. Based in the wilds of coastal Suffolk, Andre also writes and performs electronic music under the name Hoofus, and is one half of an experimental violin duo with Laura Cannell.

Marshlight Website | Marshlight Twitter

Voyageur (iOS and Android, Autumn 2016)

The Descent Device: faster-than-light travel at speeds no human should go; an alien mystery. But it only goes one way, falling from star to star towards the centre of the galaxy.

Voyageur is a literary RPG where you take the helm of a trader-vagabond vessel, looking for adventure, wealth, and answers in an infinite galaxy full of procedural cultures and civilizations.

Bruno Dias is a games writer and designer based in São Paulo, Brazil. His previous work includes a long catalogue of interactive fiction (Mere Anarchy, Cape, Lyreless) as well as critical and theory writing about games.

Voyageur Website | Voyageur on Twitter