The Banner Saga Kickstarter Project Update #6, $400,000 and Counting

The folks at the Stoic team have issued another update for The Banner Saga Kickstarter drive now that the project has reached the impressive sum of $400,000 and is therefore 400% funded, and instead of setting new milestones for the project like most other similar drives have done, have decided to focus on explaining what they are doing with the extra money. It’s quite impressive:

We’ve gotten a lot of emails saying we should chase more pledges by telling what we will do if you give us this much money or that much money. Having just tipped over to 400% (are you serious?) we’d rather tell you what we’ve been hard at work to give you, based on your donations.

MUSIC – Austin Wintory

We’ve teamed up with Austin Wintory, composer of the critically acclaimed 2012 game “Journey”, who will bring his incredible talents to The Banner Saga. Yes, for real. Austin won the Hollywood Music Award for “Best New Film Composer” and winner of “Best Original Score – Video Game”. If you haven’t heard his work before I recommend watching this video as soon as you can.

Guess what? If you’ve already pledged $25 or more you’re getting the soundtrack for free.

SOUND – Kpow Audio

We’ll be working closely with the amazing sound studio Kpow Audio to give you the best possible sound quality and ambience. You may know them from their work as the entire sound team on the blockbuster hit L.A. Noire.

ANIMATION AND CINEMATICS – POWERHOUSE ANIMATION

To accomplish the huge number of unique frame-by-frame animations we’ll be producing for The Banner Saga, we’ve enlisted the help of Powerhouse Animation. Powerhouse is made up of animator veterans who have been creating top tier work for games including Epic Mickey, DC Universe and Starhawk.

While they’re experts at a whole range of animation styles they’re just as excited as we are to produce animation in the classical, traditional style of Sleeping Beauty; one frame at a time. This is a labor of love for both of us!

NEW PRIZE – THE RELIC Pledge $800 or more:

Immortalize something meaningful to you in The Banner Saga. Send us a photo of your own heirloom, memento or just something you’d like to show your friends and we’ll turn it into a relic of value and power. We’ll work with you to come up with a unique name and description that could include anything from a mysterious inscription to giving off a certain aura. You’ll personalize it and make a coveted piece of gameplay by choosing from a list of rarities and in-game bonuses it provides. Doesn’t look very viking-themed you say? That’s ok, the marketplaces trade in items pillaged from all over the world. This new prize includes all the other prizes below it!

NEW PLATFORMS – iPad and LINUX Oh boy, it’s finally official. We’ve heard your massive outpouring of support and will officially be porting to the iPad and Linux. Let’s be up front here: the Kickstarter campaign is officially for PC and Mac, and we can’t change that now. However, we can now promise that your donations will be used to port the finished game to these new platforms within a reasonable timeframe. We’re committed to it.

And that doesn’t mean we’re done porting. Depending on what amount we end with other platforms are absolutely still on the table.

NEW PROGRESS REPORT Somehow, production continues to happen!

‘¢ We’ve done the concept work for each of the major characters in our first release, some of which you can see in the above piece of concept art. This is the sort of production piece you’ll see in the collector’s edition art book. We’ll be talking more about the history of these races soon!
‘¢ Now that design is done we’ll be spending the majority of next week filming character animations and getting them ready to be animated into the game.
‘¢ We continue to refine our many interface elements and adjust numbers in combat for our working prototype.
‘¢ Now that we’ve gotten the green light on working with all these incredible artists we’re setting up the framework to integrate their work (no small endeavor) and let them work at their full potential!

NEW THANK YOU

As we’ve mentioned before, when we originally mapped out this game it was on a much more modest scale. Who could have known there would be this sort of demand? Thanks to you we’re going to be able to bring this game to a level we never imagined and we think it’s obvious at this point that without you it never would have happened. If you’re excited about it just imagine how we feel. Thank you.

Alex, Arnie and John