This sounds like an amazing concept, but they're proposing to do something this vastly ambitious on a total budget of 1.9 million dollars? :|
Hmm... Investigator ferret, ho!
Alright, first, Soulbound Studios. Have they made anything before? The answer is, well, no, it's a kickstarter startup company bootstrapping from nothing. This is normally not a great way to go about budgeting millions of dollars for games, and the industry at large rejects this model for many rational reasons. (It rhymes with "ET the video game" era's shitty decision making skills.) Normally one wants to have a ground-built prototype. Even if it looks like garbage and only has one level, you need to have some functional prototype to show that the basic concept works. They show bits and pieces of their game, but, notably, 90% of the scenes are empty engine renderings. It looks and sounds like they have an empty sandbox, which, makes sense, when you realize that the CEO's last programming credits were on games made in 2005. Compare and contrast to Kerbal Space Program, which, from the word go, was showing functioning rocket building, launching, et cetera--the base game was already prototyped.
So, let's look at the credentials of Soulbound Studio's founders.
You can find their website here by the way.
Jeromy Walsh is last credited with working on a video game back in 2005 (unless you count the special thanks in 2010). He's a programmer. Unless he's been keeping up with modern programming engines, he's behind on the times and his promises can't likely be considered entirely credible until he proves it. Then there's
Eddie Smith, who is an artist and who has plenty of recent functioning work under his belt to pass credentials in that department.
Alright. So how about funding outside of crowdfunding?
100% the CEO's own money, + funding from his marketing company. Wait, marketing company?
It's even reasonably successful, having Dell's subsidiaries as repeated clients... Or, so they say. I tried looking up further information about the company, but I couldn't even find a list of top employees like the CEO. Hmm... Odd.
It also notes that it's welcoming money from investment firms. This should be a notable red flag, because if the company gets heavy investor-related cash, the investors will get a say in the product and will demand that money be compensated for. Even if that means gutting the crowdfunders and forcing them to buy additional DLC materials or other such content to make money.
It should also be noted what the game is bragging about.
- A finite number of resources. (How will this scale with extra players/loss of players?)
- Constant unending conflict. (Between who? For what reason? What orchestrates this?)
- No skill trees with the ability to do whatever you want on pure skill alone. (It even lists blacksmithing in this. Does this mean there's no real progression for your character aside from better gear? Are they trying to be Skyrim-lite?)
- Construction of buildings and towns. (Are there any limitations? Can you just build stuff anywhere?)
- Assassins (can players just run around and murder each other constantly for no reason? Because if so, isn't there basically a game already like this?)
- No mention of significant pre-existing factions or NPC's anywhere. Is it just going to be a minecraft like voxel box that people get dropped into?
I mean, overall, it's not... Unachievable. It could be achieved, but, I'd keep my money in my pocket for now and wait to see them develop a stronger prototype. Show some gameplay examples of gathering a resource and building an object for example.
If you want this type of game right now, with all its glory and all its flaws in concept?
Life is Feudal exists. It is the exact same game, but you don't have to gamble on your investment being wrecked by many common issues that come up in kickstarter campaigns, or having it come out as an MMO where everyone trolls each other's creations to death. Atop the ability to construct buildings you can also farm, there are dynamic weather patterns, advanced hit detection (get hit in the arm and you bleed from that arm), et cetera. The multiplayer is server-based to start with (which is a far more realistic expectation and means you can host your own private servers with friends only with a little effort), which they plan to expand to MMO-sized servers when they game is right and ready for it.
As for the concept of living life, growing old, and dying, they have no details on how that is going to function. How long the lifespan of each character is, for example.
Hope I maybe saved you a gamble of your money. If you want all the medieval town building and warfare sandbox goodies, that game exists. Keep an eye on this title and watch it, but don't jump at it too quickly... I have a bad feeling with this one that it's trying to be Life is Feudal but massively overreaching.