The developer of artistic games such as Sleep is Death has a new DS game on the way, with a little help from his friends.
A new DS game by independent developer Jason Rohrer has been approved by Nintendo, and has appeared on Kickstarter.com as a way of raising the manufacturing costs to produce retail cartridges. The game, which has been in development since 2010, was at one point to be published by Zoo Games. It seems as if that deal is now off, with Rohrer self-publishing the game.
According to the development blog, Rohrer wasn't interested in pursuing a digitial distribution due to the limited availability of DSiWare among gamers. Rohrer noted in his blog: "I did some research about DSiWare and was disappointed: it had a narrow reach (only 10 million units) and poor sales numbers. Not only would my game likely not sell well on DSiWare, but my existing fans would be unable to get the game without buying DSi units. You know, everyone has a DS lying around. Very few people have a DSi."
The game is a board game-style strategy game about diamond trading, and features single-cartridge download play. The Kickstarter is attempting to raise $75,000 to produce DS cartridges for the game. There are multiple points of entry for contribution, with the minimum to actually receive the game being $35.
The fundraising campaign is set to go through May 26, and is currently sitting at $57,995 out of $75,000.