I planned on chatting about Castle Story today. It's an indie game about collecting resources, building castles, and fighting stuff—ostensibly part of that nebulous "Dwarf Fortress with a UI" genre that exploded once Minecraft made gobs of cash. Like so many Kickstarter projects I've thrown money at in the last year it's nowhere near ready for prime time, instead offering backers early builds of the game to tinker with. All part of that weirdly refreshing Kickstarter-symbiosis: developers show their hand a little early, and we get to offer up feedback in exchange for putting our money where our mouth is.
But a curious thing has happened over the last few months. A deluge of games in varying stages of completeness have popped up into the limelight, promising fantastic, engrossing gameplay and fun in spades...eventually. Consider Godus and Planetary Annihilation: both born of successful Kickstarter campaigns from well-regarded developers, both pitching access to early builds as incentives to Kickstarter backers, and both recently popping up on Steam's Early Access program, opening their floodgates to anyone with a bit of discretionary income—and increasingly, a penchant for gambling.
Photo may vary from actual product.
Because it is a bit of a crapshoot, isn't it? With prices wavering between $10 and $60, you're paying real-game prices for a pre-released project that's at some undisclosed point in its development. Sometimes you get State of Decay, which has had the benefit of percolating on the Xbox 360 for a few months. Other times, you get a convoluted mash of interesting ideas, wrapped around a fledgling game engine.
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