[Developing] Churbles - Cute/Awesome RPG

My friends and I are making an RPG using Unity. It's called Churbles. It's about these magical creatures that are sort of like hamsters. The game is turn-based and has a lot of customization both for the appearance of your characters and their various abilities and play styles. The game is heavily influenced by the SNES and early PS era Final Fantasy games, the Mana Series, and of course, Pokemon <3 In fact in addition to collecting and raising different Churbles, the Churbles themselves can collect and raise their own pets!



In the game there are 3 main classes, or heroic paths that your Churbles can follow, and each of those has 3 distinct skill trees to level up and learn new abilities from. There are also 7 different weapons styles, and any heroic path can use any weapon style which allows you to make combination like two handed sword wielding rogues, and magical staff specialist warriors.

This is a trailer we made for the game:



There are also bad, villainous Churbles in the game that you must defeat, as well as monsters and big, crazy boss battles.









Here is an example of a Churble Rogue taking care of his pet Moon God:



And for Halloween we decided to dress up the Churbles in different costumes:





This is some of the environment art from the game:





And these are the awesome people I get to work on the game with:

http://www.churbleworld.com/team-2/

If you want more info about it I would be happy to answer any questions, and post more art from the game on this thread. If you'd like to learn more about the game you can check out our website www.churbleworld.com

So! What do you guys think?

I'm very impressed with the quality of art shown, and it looks like you and your team are almost ready to make this game a reality. However, I do have to ask: What exactly will the $15,000 go towards? As a designer, I'm aware that a lot of Kickstarter game projects are budgeted so that the team members don't have to experience as much financial stress while working on their projects, but I'm curious where the figure of $15 thousand came from, as you've acknowledged in the Kickstarter that it's a low figure for a game project, and you've incorporated a lot of stretch goals past that mark.

@Java's Missingno. Thanks for the kind words. It's true that many indies will Kickstart with a high goal that allows their team to work on the game full-time and avoid undue financial stress. We took a much more practical approach with our campaign. Having worked on this project for over 9 months we are pleased with the progress we have made and the quality of the assets being produced. While we have every confidence we could finish the game without this additional funding, it would increase production time significantly. The 15,000 will cover the additional unity pro licenses needed for our development team, additional art assets still needed for the completion of the game, specifically the GUI and menu art, and it will also cover the many costs associated with publishing a game.

The main reason we decided to Kickstart was to gauge the public interest in our project and determine just how far we should push development. Are enough people interested that we should attempt to add online multi-player support? Is interest high enough to push for a PlayStation or Nintendo platform? And so forth. With 21 days left and having almost reached the 50% mark our hopes are very high. There has been a very positive reception to the game's aesthetic and polish, though the number of supporters is smaller than we had hoped for. That's why we are trying to get the word out to as many people as possible. If you dig the project and know others who might enjoy it as well please share!

CrashGem said:

The 15,000 will cover the additional unity pro licenses needed for our development team, additional art assets still needed for the completion of the game, specifically the GUI and menu art, and it will also cover the many costs associated with publishing a game.

The main reason we decided to Kickstart was to gauge the public interest in our project and determine just how far we should push development. Are enough people interested that we should attempt to add online multi-player support? Is interest high enough to push for a PlayStation or Nintendo platform? And so forth. With 21 days left and having almost reached the 50% mark our hopes are very high. There has been a very positive reception to the game's aesthetic and polish, though the number of supporters is smaller than we had hoped for. That's why we are trying to get the word out to as many people as possible. If you dig the project and know others who might enjoy it as well please share!

Click to expand...

That's definitely no small order, so I have a great deal of respect that you've come so far before actually Kickstarter..ing.. for funds. Too many times I've seen people who think that you can just slap up a Kickstarter and get money and then the game will magically coalesce from the funding. It's a great idea to use Kickstarter as a gauge of public interest, and a low-risk way to push through that final stretch. I don't recall if in the Kickstarter anyone mentioned their prior experience in the game industry, but I'm sure you've heard of the 80-20 rule(or at least some variation) that the last 80% of the work will be done in the last 20% of the time. Do you think you'll be able to deliver if demand surpasses your initial projections? I'm definitely a fan of the project, and will refer it to my friends who would be interested as well. Best of luck to you!

Got to agree with Java here about the game looking good. If you guy's do make your Kickstarter goals, this would probably be a decent sell.

Thanks! We have a lot of talented people working on the game, some industry vets, others new to the field.

http://www.churbleworld.com/team-2/

Our stretch goals, should we manage to hit them, have been very carefully planned and priced. The stretch money would cover the cost of including the additional content. We are keenly aware of the dangers of over promising and have watched other indie dev projects fall apart because of it.

On a happy note, we just hit 51% funding! We have 20 days left to make the other half, or maybe even blow up and hit some stretch goals.

Nice to see more commercial Unity Developers coming in.
On KickStarter, I see you want to release it on Wii U too?
If you require help with Unity for Wii U specific stuff, you know where to find me.

@MKGirlism Thanks! Will do. It's gonna be a bit of a stretch for us to make it onto Wii U, but it is definitely one of our goals.

Also, an update on the Kickstarter, we managed to hit out initial funding goal! If you are interested in helping the project please go check it out.

Thanks to the efforts of our Backers we will be able to add Druids to the game:



"Churbles have always been in tune with the natural elements that make up the world. The Druid is the undisputed master of such elements, but even more than that, she is able to reshape the world around her, and even her own form to suit her needs. Druids often live apart from the colonies, roaming the wilds, living in harmony with the beasts and elementals, and protecting the borders from encroaching threats."

Just Checking in to let you guys know that our kickstarter ends in 10 hours and that we have managed to unlock access to PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One! If you are interested in backing the project please head on over to the page. I will also be updating this thread as we move forward with development of the game.

To bad Unity3D is not available for Nintendo 3DS.
But I can at least support you, once this game comes out on Wii U.