Crate Entertainment decided to jump on the Kickstarter bandwagon and initiated a campaign for their upcoming action RPG, Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn is an action role-playing game for PC and a spiritual successor to Titan Quest. For the past two years a small team of former Iron Lore veterans at Crate Entertainment have been developing Grim Dawn with their own, improved version of the Iron Lore engine and tools; the same technology used to create Titan Quest.
Crate Entertainment decided to go the ‘Kickstarter’ way in order to polish their game and offer us a better game. As they developers said, they could still release it without the Kickstarter campaign but it would be rough around the edges.
“Though we have several experienced developers working on Grim Dawn, only two of us are in a financial situation where we can afford to support ourselves without a salary (albeit on a steady diet of bread and moldy cheeses). The other guys involved with Grim Dawn work day jobs at other game studios to pay the bills and contribute as they can on nights and weekends. As you might imagine, this makes for pretty slow going and it is certainly not ideal for creative collaboration. When critical team members end up in crunch at their day jobs, they can sometimes get tied up for weeks, causing certain aspects of our development to temporarily grind to a halt.
Occasionally, just to get things in-game, we have people performing jobs that are really outside their area of expertise. This can result in such things as “1990s looking”, designer-created UI and programmer-drawn lightning bolts. Even so, some aspects of development, such as art, animation, and world-building, are falling woefully behind the programming and gameplay development. We’re at a point now where we have solid core gameplay and some robust features but not enough content to release anything and we really need to accelerate that process.
While we could still finish a fine little game on our own, that would be rough around the edges but very fun, we believe there is a much greater potential that could be realized if we were more adequately funded and staffed. So we’re hoping you can help give us some proper funding so that we can get the team together, start making faster progress and ultimately release a bigger, better game for you and everyone else.”
Crate Entertainment’s goal is $280,000 and there are 31 days left until the end of their Kickstarter campaign. Those interested can visit its Kickstarter page and back it up. Below you will find the game’s key features. Grim Dawn will:
•Be DRM free!
•Include robust modding tools so you can create your own worlds!
•Be faster-paced, with much more satisfying enemy hit reactions and deaths.
•Allow you to fight house-to-house as you lay waste to enemies and the former owner’s furniture in the process. Break through walls to open up new areas of exploration!
•Feature a more open-world design with randomized elements that will greatly enhance replay-ability. Each play-through will be unique with “set-piece” spawners that can turn a patch of wilderness into different types of enemy camps, a traveling merchant caravan, etc, each with their own unique art.
•If you don’t want to follow the main story, you aren’t forced to. Non-linear progression allows you to unlock new areas by repairing bridges, defeating enemy blockades, etc, as soon as you have the resources and power to do it. Race ahead into higher-level areas and get pwned, we’ll warn you but we’re not going to stop you!
•Let you combine any two of five distinct skill classes, each with multiple skill trees in which to specialize. Spend money to reclaim skill points if you’re unhappy with your build.
•Have a refined loot system that drops far less junk-items, produces more uber randomized gear and ensures more consistent rewards from hero and boss monsters.
•Immerse you in a gritty, dangerous, Victorian era fantasy world where humankind has been pushed to the brink of extinction by warring otherworldly powers.
•Give players meaningful quest choices and the ability to visually change the starting town as they help to rebuild and secure the future survival of humanity.
•Let you ally with NPC factions to earn rewards and unlock new quest lines. Be wary though, aiding one group can make another your enemy!
•Join up with friends in coop-multiplayer through online match-making or play over LAN and experience the full game together.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email