Hi Friends,
The game has come a long way in the past year. We have just a few scenes left to build before we can work on fixing bugs and polishing the game for release and we’ve taken a hard look at our budget and decided that we need to raise more funds to finish game in the way we believe it should to be finished. This also means that we will be delaying the release until mid-late 2015.
The most important way in which the design has changed in the last year is how we’ve incorporated and encoded interaction with Joel into the experience. We did not start out the design of our game with much animation. In the demo scene we showed last year, we didn’t represent Joel visually at all.
That has changed drastically. We have Joel dancing, and clapping, laughing, and playing in the park or playing catch with a dog. Our newest member of the team, Ryan Cousins, who has been working with us since January, has brought the expertise we needed to be able to do this and we find the interactions we get to create in the game very rewarding.
That’s just one example of how the game has grown since we started. We also have a few more scenes than we planned, but we believe they are necessary because they tell a more complete story, the story that needs to be told more than the one we set out to tell. We started this project while Joel was still with us. Joel’s death this year made us realize that the details of what happened to Joel do not matter as much as just being with Joel mattered, and we desire to reflect that truth in every scene of the game.
Our Kickstarter is live right now, along with this campaign and with help from OUYA, Indie Fund and a private investor loan, we feel that we will be able to finish this game well.
http://thatdragoncancer.com/funding
We’ve been given this amazing platform to tell Joel’s story and we want to tell yours too, so we’ve made space for you in the game through our backer rewards. We want to enable you to really participate in the creation of That Dragon, Cancer.
We need about 3,000 backers who will contribute $30 to our campaign in order to be fully funded. Will you be one of them?
We’re Launching on OUYA, Windows, and Mac Simultaneously!
Also, we are very happy to announce that, in association with OUYA, we will be releasing the game for PC and MAC download through Steam on the same day we release on OUYA. OUYA has been really great about working with us and our desire to bring this game to as many people as possible as soon as possible and were willing to change our exclusivity terms to do that. I’m not sure how many companies would be open to that so late in a project, but I believe we’ve found a special partner in OUYA. They believe in games, they believe in indies, and they believe in us.
So please, share the kickstarter page on your social networks and with your friends and family, and be a day one backer. We need your help to make this happen. Thank you.
Love,
Ryan