Laika Believes, an episodic 2D action title starring the Soviet Union’s most famous canine cosmonaut, has found financial backing (but the project could still really use an extra $20,000).
Laika Believes is something of a personal darling. Ever since we were first informed that Minicore Studios was creating an alternate history/future action title with hints of Super Metroid and starring the world’s fuzziest critter to ever perish in the cold void of space, we’ve been on board with the idea. The last time we mentioned the title, Minicore had just set up a new Kickstarter fundraising effort, which hoped to pull in $100,000 to fund development of Laika Believes.
The good news here is that this effort is no longer necessary. According to a new update on the fundraiser’s official page, Minicore Studios has found private backers to fund the creation of Laika Believes. To wit, the following explanation from Minicore CEO John Warren:
Not too long after our Kickstarter launched we reached a deal to privately fund major aspects of remaining development for Laika Believes. We didn’t get those details finalized until last week, so we wanted to keep the Kickstarter up in case something different happened. This might leave you asking: “well why did you start a Kickstarter if you were trying to privately fund the game?”
A few quick notes. Aside from lots of design duties, my job is to make sure we can continue development of what we’re working on. This means, essentially, always being open to different funding sources. At the time our Kickstarter campaign launched, Kickstarter was our best option. We’re happy to be funded no matter what, but it was rather unexpected that we’d be able to privately fund what we were asking for. However, we’re not at all regretful that we started out with this campaign, because because meeting and getting to talk to folks excited about Laika Believes is awesome.
Immediately following those words, Warren explains where the company goes from here: Specifically, it’s starting a new Kickstarter campaign, which hopes to raise $20,000 to be put toward “extra aspects of sound design that [Minicore really wants] in the game (more ambient sounds, better implementation of effects in the engine, taking the time to implement sound more perfectly into the scripting system, etc.).” Further, having realized the international appeal of Laika Believes, Minicore also plans to use this extra cash to fund localization of the game, first into Russian and Spanish, and then into any number of other languages.
We’ll keep you updated on the status of that new Kickstarter effort just as soon as it appears, but for the meantime, have a look at this final bit of happy, potentially rumor-fueled news. Whether it’s legit or not, I’d love to see console versions of Laika Believes, so I’m going to remain uncharacteristically optimistic.
“As far as specific game-related updates go, we got some good news about Microsoft’s new commitment to creating a more open development platform for independent studios,” Warren writes. “In addition to their new Xbox One policies, there’s a rumor swirling around that it soon may be much easier for indies to publish for XBLA. This is great news for us and bodes very well for a timely XBLA version of Laika Believes.”
Source: Kickstarter
