Tim Schaefer’s Double Fine studios have successfully Kickstarted another game, reaching the $725,000 funding goal after just six days. Massive Chalice was pitched to consumers with little more than a few concept images, some bad acting and a whole load of enthusiasm; but has been pledged $737,276 with 23 days still left on the clock.
Massive Chalice will be a turn based strategy game in the vein of X-Com or Final Fantasy Tactics, but will take place over the course of centuries, forcing the player to engage in some heavily neurotic strategy. The player assumes the role of an immortal monarch in an eternal battle with your standard forces of evil, but unfortunately your soldiers are not immortal and don’t have all eternity to be hanging around. Players will have to cultivate fortified bloodlines in order to breed more skilled and resilient troops, kinda like what Hitler wanted to do. Difficult decisions will have to be made when deciding to whether utilise your strongest soldiers in battle or to send them out to stud, breeding a bunch of little home grown heroes. Heroes lost in battle will be permanently dead so your choices will heavily affect game play.
Double Fine is a hotbed of ingenuity and witty one liners, but were forced to begin crowd funding when producers kept turning down all their neat ideas. Recently the studio successfully crowd funded Broken Age, a throw back to old school adventure games, reaching $3,336,371 which is probably too much money to spend on a point-and-click adventure game in my opinion. “You used the diamond studded cane on the caviare.”