Sometimes a game comes along that just speaks to your soul before you have even played it. You fall in love with this game through its character design and music, and marvel at its art style in screenshots and trailers. You eagerly anticipate an exciting new adventure come release day. Of course, many of these games are backed by a studio and publisher that have a budget to spend on PR and marketing, with many coders cracking out footage needed to whet the appetites of potential players. To find a game on Kickstarter that manages to create a trailer so moving, so near to perfect as you could hope for, is remote, and yet, that is exactly what Paper Unicorn has achieved with Transmission.
Prepare for contact.
Project: Transmission
Genre: Sci-Fi RPG Action/Adventure
Platforms: PC (Win/Mac/Linux), PS4, Xbox One
Funding Target: $84,000
What Is It?
Transmission has the feel of the classic point-and-click adventure from LucasArts called The Dig, but with a slew of enemies on the alien planet your character has crash-landed on. The hand-painted artwork is reminiscent of another sci-fi Kickstarter project, Elegy for a Dead World, while the top-down, slanted perspective harkens back to classic RPG entries in franchises like Fallout and The Legend of Zelda, or Obsidian’s more recent Pillars of Eternity.
The story has echoes of Flashback, where an amnesiac space explorer crash lands on a mysterious planet. Soon after exploring your surroundings, you discover an enigmatic device, and from this encounter, you are plunged into an adventure that will uncover the history of the planet’s past, as well as your own.
Why Fund It?
If you have not yet watched the trailer, I would urge you to do so. In the future, I’m sure I will point to it as a prime example of how to cut together a short, beautiful summary of your project. It mixes gameplay with cutscenes in perfect pace to the story-driven, atmospheric music created by composer Jeremiah Pena. It is like watching a trailer for a Christopher Nolan film that never was (or perhaps what we wish Interstellar had been)… a promising, beautiful blend of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, and Alien.
Another reason to fund Transmission is because the game will only come to consoles if the stretch goals are met, and I would very much enjoy this on the PS4.
Best Rewards?
- Digital copy of the game – $14 (early bird $12 limited to 500)
- Digital copy of the game, plus PDF instruction book – $18
- Previous rewards, plus early access and name in credits – $24
- Previous rewards, plus digital art book and digital soundtrack – $40 (early bird $34 limited to 350)
- Previous rewards, plus an open edition signed print of your choice – $56
- Previous rewards, plus a large, limited edition signed print – $80 (limited to 250)
- Previous rewards, plus three open edition signed prints – $84
- Previous rewards, plus three large, limited edition signed prints and the opportunity to create an in-game puzzle or challenge – $240 (limited to 5)
- Previous rewards, plus you get to work with the studio to design an enemy – $450 (limited to 3)
Until Next Time…
Such was my adoration for Paper Unicorn’s work that I tweeted my congratulations before writing up the Kickstart This! To my surprise, they responded straight away, so they are obviously on the ball when trying to push their campaign through social media. Message them, chat with them, and see if the game is for you. I know it is for me, having just come off another sci-fi RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles X. Full disclosure: I will buoyantly be backing Transmission. I hope you do, too.
