Announcing the Kickstarter Campaign & Tridek for iOS

Since we announced Tridek three months ago we got asked a lot of questions about the game: “Will I be able to play Tridek on my iPhone? Will you support Ouya?” “Are there going to be cross-platform multiplayer tournaments? And will I get a story line for the singleplayer mode?”

Today we can finally answer all of these questions with a whole-hearted Yes! - but only if you help us make it happen. Starting today we’re on Kickstarter and we have one month to gather the support needed to create all these awesome things.

To those of you who haven’t heard of Kickstarter yet: It’s a web site where creative people can propose interesting new projects. And others like you and me can then back these projects - by giving any amount of money that fits their wallet. For this the backers get really unique rewards and the creators can finally create their dream projects. It’s an amazing concept that eliminates a lot of hurdles that impede the creation of cool games. For example I’m currently playing FTL: Faster Than Light on my home PC (running Ubuntu 12.04) which was funded via Kickstarter and I’ve backed 10 other projects so far.

Today we’re starting the Kickstarter campaign for Tridek. And this will obviously lead to a couple of questions. So let’s take the time and answer them one by one:

Why a Kickstarter? I thought this game was already in development and being funded by a publisher?

That is true. The awesome posse at dreamfab is already financing a big part of Tridek’s development. In fact enough so that we can release a cool first playable version of the game to Android devices soon. But we want to do so much more than that:

1. We want to bring the game to the iPhone and iPad. We already launched Astroslugs and San Juan on iOS and had awesome feedback so the first goal for our Kickstarter is to release and iOS-optimized version of the game soon after the Android version has been done.
2. We also want to see how great Tridek will be on other platforms. Ouya comes to my mind immediately (it’s based on Android anyways). And since a lot of TCG players are sitting on a computer right now we want to release the game even to desktops - be it via Windows, Mac, Linux or the Browser (we can do all of them through Unity).
3. We want to add more features to the game. For example our story mode for the single player introduction of the game (tournaments and good AI enemies), we want to create online tournaments where players from all platforms match their skills against each other and win prizes. And we want to add a lot of new cards to the game - bot new creature species and new card types.

We don’t have the funds yet to do all of this. But we’re pretty sure that out there is a bunch of amazing people who would be very happy to see Tridek with these cool features on a lot more devices. To those people I say: Please support this Kickstarter!

How much money do you need for that? What other platforms can we bring the game to?

$30k for the iOS version and the singleplayer tournaments - more if you want extra content and more platforms. We’re going to let you (the backers) decide which platforms these are going to be once we’ve surpassed the initial goal. For now we’ve set two more stretch goals that determine what we will create with the funding once we’ve reach them (more will be added later):

I know that these are big numbers and a lot of money. But I can assure you one thing: The cash is not going to be used to get each of us a Ferrari. We’re strictly raising the money that we need to keep the development going. We’re only going to make a profit out of the game once we’ve released it and a lot of people are playing it. 

What are the backer rewards?

Reward-wise we have a lot of cool shit for you, for example:

• T-shirts & sweat shirts
• wallpapers and a digital soundtrack
• signed posters and the sound track on CD
• free card booster packs 
• early access to the game in alpha and beta
• some of the original cards from the prototype
• the ability to design a creature
• the ability to design an AI enemy
• and even the unique possibility to meet the bunch of us in real life =D

Today marks the beginning of our Kickstarter campaign. Over the next thirty days we’re going to release a lot of updates both to this blog and to our Kickstarter funders. We’ve been pretty tight-lipped about Tridek so far - it’s time to change this! Expect a lot of updates. Should you want to support us: Here’s the link to our Kickstarter again: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tridek/tridek-creatures-of-galena-digital-trading-card-ga