Festival of Magic

Earlier in the year we told you all about Festival of Magic and conducted an interview with developer SnowCastle Games. Confirmed for Wii U, it's a game that promises to deliver a throwback JRPG experience — with some tweaks — that'll include turn-based battles, while also incorporating elements such as farming. It looks like a visually appealing and rather interesting title.

It seems that the strains of development have impacted on budgets and plans, however, as SnowCastle Games has now launched a Kickstarter campaign for the title, with the pitch making no mention of the previously-outlined episodic structure and giving a target release of January 2015 — an initial aim for early episodes was Q4 2014. Thankfully the Wii U is still a standard platform alongside PC, Mac and Linux, and the game looks largely the same. The following was posted to outline the funding still required to complete the full project, though the initial Kickstarter target is $250,000.

We have currently spent over $1M and will need a little short of $900k to complete the game. $250k we hope to get from all of you through Kickstarter, another $50k will come from the Norwegian Film Fund provided the Kickstarter is successful. Finally, the remaining $600k will have to come from stretch goals, pre-orders on Steam and finally, if we have to, from investors.

If the two main challenges are overcome, keeping the deadline for launch requires hiring at least one additional programmer and a game designer. This is something we have budgeted with in order to maintain the production schedule. If we don't find those two people in time, we will still complete the game, but it will take longer.

The least expensive incentive to back for a Wii U copy is currently the "Early U" option at $20, which is limited to 300 backers — at the time of writing 173 of these are still available. From that perk onwards all options require an extra $5 to secure a Wii U version rather than a Steam equivalent, so those that aren't quick will need to back to the tune of $30.

You can see the pitch video below; at the time of writing the campaign has reached just over $22,000 of its $250,000 target with 26 days to go. Has this been on your watch list since announced earlier in the year, and are you tempted to back the project to support its completion?

[source kickstarter.com]