Solo is the latest indie game to seek crowdfunding through Fig. Solo stars a sailor who sets out on an introspective journey about love.
At the beginning of the game you select your sailor’s gender and the gender of the one you love. You can also choose your relationship between solo, couple, and heartbroken. These three states change the story and content you’ll experience.
The journey is presented with a series of archipelagos, each with a number of islands. Each island has its own puzzle. Puzzles are solved by manipulating boxes, but include a myriad of different solutions. Boxes have different effects and represent different aspects of love, such as attraction, time, and fiery passion. Solving an island’s puzzle awakens its guardian totem, which opens up a new island.
Solo is meant to be a meditative experience. “Besides solving puzzles and tackling important questions, we want to create a living world which players spend time roaming around, enjoying and taking care of nature, and thinking about ideas presented in the game.” You can sit on benches, feed animals, and take pictures.
Solo is being developed by Team Gotham, a five man team from Spain. Their first game, The Guest, released last March.
The crowdfunding campaign is seeking $64,500. Currently they have raised $29, 515 with 326 backers (45% of goal). Minimum pledge is $15 for a digital copy of the game for Windows PC and Mac. There are still 30 days remaining in the campaign.
Fig is similar to other crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. Fig was created by veterans of video game crowdfunding in 2015. Unlike other crowdfunding sites, Fig only does video games. Uniquely, Fig also offers investment opportunities in addition to the usual pledge-reward model.
Fig had a big year in 2016, successfully crowdfunding multi-million dollar games Psychonauts 2 and Wasteland 3. Fig was responsible for four of the top ten crowdfunded video games in 2016, and enjoyed a 78% success rate.
