RimWorld’ Hits Kickstarter, Blasts By $20k Goal In Days

‘RimWorld’ Hits Kickstarter, Blasts By $20k Goal In Days
Last month, IGM gave readers a first look at space colony sim, RimWorld.

Since then, developer Tynan Sylvester, has launched a Kickstartercampaign for the game. With an initial goal of $20,000, the game surpassed the goal and has gone on to collect over three times the amount, in just days.

“This is beyond expectation,” Sylvester said in a campaign update. “If you want to picture me, imagine me like a cartoon character after an explosion – with soot on my face and hair blasted back.”

Unlike many Kickstarter campaigns, Sylvester is apprehensive of adding on stretch goals to the RimWorld campaign.

“There are a few reasons I didn’t set traditional stretch goals. First, I don’t want to do anything that would threaten the basic schedule. Kickstarter projects can be destroyed by being over-funded. The creators feel too rich – they bloat the project out, and what was a tight and well-run project becomes an over-scoped mess.

“My other worry with traditional stretch goals is locking in design decisions. I prefer an agile approach to game design…So if we laid out a bunch of stretch goals now, the project would be locked into a fixed design with no chance to adjust to design feedback. This would be very, very bad. Everything good about RimWorld – the basic concept, the control scheme, even the Western vibe – was created observationally, [by] reacting to where the game wanted to go instead of forcing it in a pre-decided direction.”

On claims that RimWorld looks suspiciously similar to Introversion Software’s Prision Architect , Sylvester explained, “Blame my lack of art skill…I made the character art you see in the trailer as a stopgap, and borrowed the Prison Architect style because I’m not a good enough artist to develop a new one…With this Kickstarter, we’ll be able to get a real artist who can sit down and develop an original style for RimWorld. I’ve talked with the original Prison Architect artist, Ryan Sumo, and he’s fully supportive of RimWorld. We didn’t share any art or code with the PA guys.”

The funding campaign for RimWorld has twenty-four days to go.