Cosmic Star Heroine Kickstarter Launched by Zeboyd Games

In case you enjoyed Cthulhu Saves the World or the last two Penny Arcade Adventures titles, you might want to check Zeboyd’s recently launched Kickstarter campaign for their upcoming Cosmic Star Heroine title, slated for a 2014 release on PC, Mac, PS4 and PSVita.

Just as their previous titles, it appears to be inspired by SNES-era JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, though for this particular project the indie developers have decided to drop the comedic tone for some more straightforward writing. The project has currently already raised $62,006 of the $100,000 needed for their funding goal, and its lowest pledge tier comes at $1, though you’ll have to spend at least $10 if you want to get the game as a reward.

Here’s a snippet from the Kickstarter description:

Cosmic Star Heroine is a turn-based sci-fi Japanese-style RPG from Zeboyd Games currently scheduled to come out in 2014 for the PC, Mac, PS4, and Vita!

Alyssa L’Salle is one of the galactic government’s top agents and always manages to save the day! But when she accidentally uncovers a dark conspiracy, her own government outs her as a legendary spy and the people’s champion! Sure, now she has hordes of adoring fans but every villainous organization she’s ever crossed in her career knows who she is and is out for her blood! Can she save the day once more while she faces her greatest challenge. Everyone!?

Unique Features

• Good old-fashioned classic turn-based RPG! Save anywhere! Minimal grinding (unless you want to)!
• Brisk pacing that respects your time!
• No separate battle screen! Battles take place directly in the dungeons & areas that you explore!
• 2D visual style straight from the height of gaming’s 16-bit era!
• Animated cutscenes reminiscent of the Sega CD & Turbo Duo era!
• Soundtrack by Hyperduck (Dust: An Elysian Tail, Precipice of Darkness 4) inspired by the genre greats!
• Multi-character combo techniques!
• Intricately designed encounters make each new battle its own challenge!
• Your own spy headquarters! Recruit new agents to help it grow!

Also worthy of note is that Zeboyd has already stated that they won’t do stretch goals, citing concerns regarding possible delays and out of control scope:

What if the kickstarter gets overfunded? We don’t know about you, but we hate it when kickstarters get a lot more money than they expected, drastically increase the scope of the game, and end up pushing the release date back months or even years. What’s worse, some of these kickstarters drastically underestimate how much all those new features are going to end up costing with the result that they end up running out of money before they manage to fulfill all of their promises.

We don’t want this to happen to us!

With the December 2014 fulfillment date, we’ve given ourselves a bit of leeway as far as development time goes. If we get enough money that we decide that we can spend a couple extra months polishing up the game, we’ll be able to without pushing back that date. In addition to that, we could use additional funding to increase our audio budget and hire additional help so that we can get more done without noticeably increasing our development time.

And what if after all this, we end up finishing the game and still have a good chunk of money left over? How about using that extra money to develop some free post-release DLC? We’ve released some major free DLC for our previous games (the alternate storyline in Cthulhu Saves the World & the Epilogue scenario in Precipice of Darkness 3) so we’d be game for doing something similar with Cosmic Star Heroine. Maybe a separate mini-Roguelike mode ala Lufia 2’s Ancient Cave…