Ushi No Tane - Harvest Moon

I've backed a lot of games on Kickstarter. Some are wonderful gems, others I'm pretty disappointed in. I'll go in order from what I backed first to the latest entries and whether I've received them or not. Spoilering because it's a long list!

[spoiler][u]Re:Legend[/u] (Not received)
It looked like a great game to have on the Switch, but over time the updates have gotten me less and less excited for it as have the reviews on Steam.

[u]My Time at Portia[/u] (Received)
The first game I ever got and loved it so much. Can't wait for the sequel!

[u]The Good Life[/u] (Received)
I liked the premise of the game, but when I got it I didn't have a lot of fun with it.

[u]Temtem[/u] (Received)
MMO Pokemon? Heck yeah! I just beat the last update they have for the game and I've pretty much completed the encyclopedia.

[u]The Waylanders[/u] (Received)
It got out of early access yesterday and was inspired by Dragon Age. Unfortunately, it's not as fun nor has decent pace. Plus, the game runs poorly on my beast of a PC

[u]Hazlenut Bastille[/u] (Not received)
The art reminds me of Link to the Past and I think that was the aesthetic they were going for.

[u]Monster Sanctuary[/u] (Received)
I liked the idea of a metroidvania Pokemon, but ended up not liking the gameplay very much.

[u]Little Legend[/u] (Not received)
I forgot about this game. The developers haven't provided many updates to the game as of late.

[u]One Step from Eden[/u] (received)
This is when I realized I don't like roguelite games much.

[u]Littlewood[/u] (Received)
Cool concept, I liked the premise, but the gameplay and characters weren't for me.

[u]Combustion[/u] (Not received)
I forgot about this game as well.

[u]Grand Guilds[/u] (received)
I was looking for more Fire Emblem games with a deep story and I thought this would provide. Sadly, it didn't for me.

[u]Spleen[/u] (Not received)
I keep forgetting about some games I've backed honestly; kind of hard to when there are hardly any updates on some of them.

[u]Monster Prom 2[/u] (received)
I knew what I was getting into when I backed it: more of the same and I love it.

[u]Ada: Tainted Soul[/u] (Not received)

[u]Creature Keeper[/u] (Not received)

[u]Other: Her Loving Embrace[/u] (Not received)

[u]The Wonderful 101 Remastered[/u] (Received)
I wanted more Platinum games and I thought I'd give the remaster of this game a try. It wasn't for me.

[u]Sea of Stars[/u] (Not received)
It has a release date soon; can't wait!

[u]Sword of the Necromancer[/u] (Received)
I backed this before I realized roguelites weren't for me.

[u]Black Book[/u] (Received)
I loved the lore and characters, but an optional mission forced me to quit because I found it impossible to beat in a certain number of turns with limited card options.

[u]Snacko[/u] (Not received)
Can't wait to play as a cat and farm!

[u]Lonesome Village[/u] (Not received)
More Zelda like games please!

[u]One Lonely Outpost[/u] (Not received)
I thought the premise of raising mechanical animals on an alien planet is a cool concept.

[u]Sun Haven[/u] (Not received)
I tried to change my console to PC, but they couldn't anymore, so now I'm just waiting for this to release on Switch

[u]My Time at Sandrock[/u] (Not received)
AHHH!!! I can't wait for this game; it looks so improved over Portia.

[u]Coral Island[/u] (Not received)
AHHH!! Can't wait for this game either!

[u]Ova Magica[/u] (Not received)
Pokemon x Farming looks so good!

[u]Roots of Pacha[/u] (Not received)
Prehistoric farming looks like a cool concept![/spoiler]

[quote="simside"]Semi-related, because I got my end-of-the-month Kickstarter updates and thought of this topic again: for anyone that does PC games, have you gotten burned by Early Access games? Something that never finished, or came out terrible/a different game? I figured it was a similar enough question that I could just tack it onto this thread.[/quote]In my case, it was [i]Darkest Dungeon[/i] on Steam. There is a lot to the game, so I'm just going focus on what bothered me the most. [spoiler]All heroes must be leveled up and upgraded manually (no rare candies like in Pokemon). The stronger heroes refuse to go into easy quests for reasons, so using strong heroes to power up weak ones is not allowed. Assessories can be equipped to heroes to make them stronger, so the game has multiple mechanics to make them disappear, potientially forever, at random for using some of the healing services. [i]Darkest Dungeon[/i] also loves permadeath and RNG and it autosaves like every turn or something, which makes the whole experience very tedious. I "beat" the early access version. (The final boss and dungeon weren't in the game yet, but all the other levels and bosses were, so I beat those.) I resist tedium, but am not immune to it. Then the game came out in full.

The last dungeon is an absolute slog. Heroes will only finish a run once before refusing to enter again for reasons, and the final level has to be completed 4 times. A new team of heroes must be prepared each run. Effective insta-death and status effects are kind of everywhere. The dungeon, its layout, and required quests change every time players go through it, and players may not know what to do the first time around. The ending sucks, in my opinion, as it shows that nothing that the player character did actually mattered in the long run. It was not a satisfying conclusion for me to say the least.The whole thing metaphorically was a slap in the face, so I dropped the game and never came back. Later patches made the tedium [i]worse[/i], by adding a random event that randomly levels down the town where the heroes get their upgrades, forcing the player to grind resources to upgrade the town again.

I remember agreeing a lot with this review on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Buwei6ZWqU . The video probably contains spoilers - it's been a while since I last watched it.[/spoiler]I stopped following the game and have no intention of ever going back. It may have gotten better, but I don't care anymore.

Yeah, the Re: Legend folks clearly have no idea what they're doing. (It was funny in an unpleasant way when at Xmas they posted this very chipper 'hey merry happy lovely good holidays gang, we've got an update for ya!'...and then they posted a link to an update that really only said...[i]'um yeah, DELAY. Again. We're not gonna get the game out when we said. We dunno when we'll get it out, and we don't have anything else to tell you, either. Yay happy holidays!!'[/i]) Glad I didn't back it. I do think it WILL come out...eventually. I just wouldn't want to put any money down on when. Nor would I want to wager on the quality of the game once released. They completely stopped updating it on PC and none of the stuff in there on release will have been beta-tested at all, and I'm betting it'll be pretty buggy. Hope for the best but expect the worst, I do.

Mara really wasn't fun. It was tedious. I loved ONE character in the whole game and got interested when there were side-quests with him in, but other than that, I was pretty bored. Everything about it was 'okay' but nothing was special, for me. (However I've seen plenty of people who love it within the sim and farming fandoms.)

Man, I forgot that I supported Summer in Mara. I never got far in it because it ended up being not very fun.


I recently got updates for both Re:Legend and Chicken Wiggle (which I forgot got renamed to 'Hatch Tales' awhile back). Re:Legend is still blundering around a possible console release date and the dev of Chicken Wiggle is posting videos of a podcast instead of gameplay. Yippie.

Semi-related, because I got my end-of-the-month Kickstarter updates and thought of this topic again: for anyone that does PC games, have you gotten burned by Early Access games? Something that never finished, or came out terrible/a different game? I figured it was a similar enough question that I could just tack it onto this thread.

I had two bad Early Access experiences that soured me on ever buying games before a 1.0 launch:

[b]Towns[/b]: It isn't currently in early access, but I don't think it's been updated since I bought it in 2011/12, so I don't know if the status changed or I'm misremembering. There is a lot of stuff in it, but it wasn't finished and was super-unpolished and buggy. I decided to take a more serious dive after they updated it, and was increasingly upset when that never happened. At the time, I was shocked that you could sell an unfinished game. I'm still sad this never updated, because I always kinda like these not-an-RPG-type games that are about things other than the adventure party.

[b]Starbound[/b]: I was SO EXCITED about this, I bought it as soon as it was available in early access. I put around 30 hours into it, even when the only gameplay was exploring limited sections of map/terrain. I was a little impatient, thinking that early access meant it would be finished within a year (again though, I can't remember if they kept blowing release dates or I just assumed). They finished in three years, which is pretty good, but the finished game was completely unlike what I thought it would be, and I couldn't get into it when it finally finished.

And the better, more recent experience:

[b]Super Animal Royale[/b]: My partner was the one who decided to break the early access ban on this one. I think it went into 1.0 about 1.5 years after we got it, but the game was almost unchanged. Our account (most of our games are on a ridiculous shared login, but this one's my partner's game) has a boatload of cosmetics, animals, and other things from the limited events over the years. I've thought about getting this on Switch to play duos with my partner, but I almost never like to play this type of game, and I would have to start from scratch. :(

There's a couple games I probably could have played in early access (I held out on Rimworld until 1.0), a few games I am dying to play (Timberborn! Settlement Survival!), and a couple games I'm glad I took a pass on that released buggy and with most of the features missing.

I backed one game. Wicked Love, a planned otome visual novel, was first on Indiegogo, which is where I backed it. From what I recall, it had steady updates and lots of communication with the developer until it suddenly stopped. It did not get fully funded on Indiegogo, so the stop in updates wasn't too surprizing.

Some time latter, the project appeared on Kickstarter, where it did get fully funded. I did not back it there, but I followed anyway. It went like the Indiegogo campaign, with frequent updates and communication followed by nothing after like a year after the kickstarter finished. Some of the people who did back it on Kickstarter started accusing the creator for scamming, a discussion that only intensified when it turned out that one of the artist that the creator claimed to have hired was actually never hired by the creator. Others were pleading for the creator to say something. Instead, the creator at some point deleted all of her social media, the official website for the game, and the demo for the game that was on itch.io. This digital absence did not go well with the few users that were left following the project. Then there was silence.

The creator did eventually respond, but like a year later after remaining followers had basically left. She posted a sob story about being hit by a hurricane and that the hurricane was why she deleted all of her social media. (Don't ask me how that makes sense. I was following her social media before its deletion. She never once mentioned being affected by a hurricane or any other storm. I cannot figure out why her supposed first response to a disaster was to basically commit digital suicide instead of letting her family friends know that she was okay or something.) She apparently could not understand why people thought she was a scammer, despite the evidence being clear to seemingly everyone else. (I personally think that she was just trying to get people off her back after getting caught.) She then offered refunds, but considering how her last update about the project was about 2 years ago, barely anyone was following the project at that point and most people probably didn't get the message. She never did update the Indiegogo page either, if I remember correctly.

(To be clear, if she was hit by a hurricane, then she has my sympathies; however, I still think she was a scammer. The creator of Wicked Love can both be a scammer and someone who survived a hurricane.)

A fun topic! I’ve been very wary of backing Kickstarters over the years. I’ve noped out of a few at the last minute, and never regretted it.

[b]Shantae: Half-Genie Hero[/b] was my first. I love this series, and this is my absolute favorite entry. Lots of alternate modes and short stories to play, and it has my favorite levels and the right powerup/item mix. This one gets a lot of bad reviews even ten years later, which is lingering sour grapes for taking longer to release than they said. It only took three years, which is pretty good for a kickstarted game!

[b]Heart Forth, Alicia [/b]- THIS GAME. It was a really fun-looking metroidvania with really solid-looking design and polish that I backed in 2014. It hasn’t come out, though the studio still updates regularly. I stopped reading them some time ago, though I think there is an alpha/closed beta now. Sometimes, they’ll hype it, and I’ll see folks that don’t know it’s an 8-year-old Kickstarter getting excited. It may come out, and be an okay game! There are a lot of metroidvanias now. I backed this as a physical game for 3DS, so that will probably be a Steam key now, and I don’t really want to play on Steam. I have a lot of sympathy for development delays, I really do, and these folks have been super communicative for all these years. But time has absolutely killed this one for me.

[b]Wonderful 101 Remastered[/b] - This was a bad impulse purchase from me - I like the older titles from this studio, but I’m almost never in the mood to play this type of game. I thought their effort to port and preserve this themselves spoke pretty highly of it though, and I had few Switch games at the time. They delivered it super-fast, I got it within 6 months in mid-2020, which is very impressive.

[b]Siralim Ultimate[/b] - So excited for this one! The PC version came out late last year, so I’m just waiting for the Switch port. My partner played Siralim 3 and loved it, so we’re planning to play this one together. This game was a low-risk purchase, since each Siralim game is basically a larger, better version with more stuff.

[b]Everafter Falls[/b] - This looks very cute, and I appreciate the updates and honesty from the dev. I will absolutely play this when it comes out, but it suffers a bit from being overshadowed by larger, similar games that Kickstarted right after.

[b]Coral Islands[/b] - I backed the hell out of this game, and I am so excited to see every monthly update. It has a ways to go before release, but I absolutely cannot wait. I am planning to play this on PC ASAP when the 1.0 version hits, and I hate gaming on my PC. I’m worried, because it sounds [i]too[/i] good, and had a lot of feature bloat during the campaign. But they’ve been adding and integrating content at a really good pace so far, and I have my fingers crossed against Portia-like bugs.

[b]Roots of Pacha[/b] - I would be more excited for this if I wasn’t in love with Coral Islands, but I’ll still play this day one on Switch. They update at least monthly and look on track to release late this year. Another bonus is that the devs are working with a publisher that promos a lot of similar games, so I like seeing their newsletter.

Hmmm...I haven't backed many. I don't like the process. I do NOT want to be in on an alpha or beta phase...I am not a play-tester. I don't want to help catch bugs. I want a complete, polished product only, thanks! In general, then, kickstarting games really isn't for me.

I have done some, though. [b][i]My Time at Portia[/i][/b] comes to mind first. I regret backing it, tbh. If you were a backer for the PC version, it was a great project! But console lagged way, waaaaaaaaay behind, and they never updated us on progress at all...they only ever posted updates that pertained solely to PC developments, never any mention of the porting progress. Then they released it (due to investor/stockholder pressure) months before it was ready. The console version was missing like 25% of the content that PC had, on top of having scaled-back visual and audio contents. Console did not get any of the voice acting that they added to PC. It was a mess on console, really. Even some bug-fixes that had been done on PC were not available on console. It was more than a year after release before they finally got around to updating the console version of the game with the missing content and improvements.

Is it a good game? Yeah, actually...it's really good. In spite of the problems, it's got a very cool feeling and the gameplay loop is addictive and compelling. The looks are quite charming.

Would I back a Pathea project again? NO. NO NO NO. Never again, not for console! I did not back My Time at Sandrock, and I won't back a third project if it comes up some day, either...they learned a bunch, but not enough, and much is still the same with them. If you can back for a PC (steam) version, then yeah, Pathea does a really good job and does lots of updates and communicates well. But if you want to play their game on console, being a backer for them is like being shoved into the back of a dark closet and just left there, unable to get back out.

I will buy Sandrock when it releases on console, though. But no backer process for me with Pathea, not again.

Other projects...

I backed [b][i]Littlewood[/i][/b], too. It turned out well. A single-man dev has no one to answer to, I guess. It was pretty fun and I never had any glitches, either.

I also backed [b][i]Summer in Mara[/i][/b], which went pretty smoothly, but I didn't enjoy the game. Not that it had problems, but it just wasn't very interesting or fun for me. *shrug*

I 'piggy-backed' [b][i]Kynseed[/i][/b]. They've been following their fully-laid-out plan all along and I feel they're doing well. They're currently adding backstory for all the NPCs. I could be playing it on PC already, as it'd probably run even on my laptop, but again...no beta-testing for me. I will wait for full release. I think I'll like it WAY better than Stardew Valley, though it has a lot of the vibe, for me. Kynseed is more magical, with more features (interactive cooking, for one) and spiffier pixel graphics, at least to my taste...though I'll never truly like pixel graphics no matter what. You can even live out your life and then pass the story on to your children...become your child and play their story. That's quite the thing! It still has quite a lot of content coming. They're hoping to release this year, and I think they MIGHT be able to get to full release for PC at the end of the year...maybe. But I really doubt we'll see console release this year. I'm betting on summer of 2023 for console release.

And I'm confused about whether I backed [b][i]SunnySide [/i][/b]or not. I get backer updates via Backer Kit, which suggests that I backed that way (not during the Kickstarter but afterward via an external extension.) but I am not signed up with Backer Kit, so I can't have. I don't get it! Am I a backer or not? I can't figure it out, lol. But they look like they're doing well, though I think they're losing the fight to feature-creep. It may end up taking longer because of that but it'll be a really good game once they get it done! It's looking great.

I would hazard to guess that I'm not the only one on Ushi who's given a Kickstarter game their money. From something new and exciting, to localizations, or maybe giving it to a dev you trust to deliver - Kickstarter games can be a really mixed bag. I was looking at my list of games both delivered and still in limbo and thought to myself it might be fun/interesting to chat about the experience overall. What games delivered? Did someone run off with your money? How the development going on some of your more anticipated projects? Ectect. Without further ado, I'll start. I'll be posting mine in order of what I backed first.

[u][b][url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1723653856/re-legend-co-op-monster-raising-rpg]Re:Legend - Co-op Monster-Raising RPG[/url][/b][/u]

Oh, Re:Legend, how excited I was to play you! At the time the Switch lacked the gameplay you were so readily offering and I gladly threw money your way. Now I'm so disinterested as your excuses continue to pile up and there's still no 1.0 for consoles. In the literal YEARS I waited to play you the Switch eventually delivered what you were selling to the point that I no longer care for you. IF it ever does get released, I'm not sure how much I'll even care any more. Like, yippie? I have Stardew Valley and Rune Factory now, get in line.

[b][u][url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2029149553/chicken-wiggle-workshop-for-nintendo-switch/description]CHICKEN WIGGLE WORKSHOP[/url][/u][/b]

Here is a project where reading the comments on the updates is more entertaining than looking at the game itself. I'll admit that I was never super invested in this game, but I happened upon it and there was ONE spot left in the lowest tier and I nabbed it because it was only $10. Without getting too detailed, the dev has restarted the game once, started adding new features no one really asked for, got mad at the backers for asking questions and told them "you're not investors so you have no right to ask about results", and has overall been pretty unpleasant to deal with. It's been over 4 years now and there's no gameplay to show (says he doesn't want to show off too much of the game) and he's gotten into the habit of blocking people asking about the game's progress on social media. I'll probably just give my copy away to someone if/when it releases.

[b][u][url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sekaiproject/my-girlfriend-is-a-mermaid-on-pc-and-nintendo-swit]My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?[/url][/u][/b]

Finally, a game that delivered. What was both a Kickstarter for a translation of the original game and an enhanced port with improved visuals, I got both in good time and with minimal drama. The game itself was a pretty decent visual novel that I have no strong opinions about. Worth my $15 and time regardless.

[b][u][url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greglobanov/chicory-a-colorful-tale]Chicory: A Colorful Tale[/url][/u][/b]

Another game that delivered. There was a lot of talent behind this game that had me giving them money with no questions asked. They were transparent, their updates informative, and the game came out in good time. I played it last year and enjoyed my time with it. Not much else to add!

[b][u][url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/squarehusky/everafter-falls]Everafter Falls[/url][/u][/b]

A project with a lot of heart that I'm enjoying watching the development of. I'm not really waiting for it with bated breath, but I intend to play it when it releases. The Dev's transparency with their situation and great work ethic is wonderful to see and I can't help but root for them.

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And that's it from me. There are a few games that I only gave a buck so I could watch development with no loss on my side, but they're not really worth mentioning on that alone.