After 30 days and an insane amount of updates and revelations - we are thrilled to announce that you helped us take in nearly $18,000 and have assisted us in already scheduling 20 meetings for the Game Developer Conference.
We cannot tell you how surprised, humbled and excited we are for the way our KickStarter promotion turned out. We cannot thank you all enough for all of your support, contribution and helping of spreading the word. This success is not only bound to us - but shared with you through updates, competitions and what will be an incredible game. We salute you.
REWARDS
You guys are probably wondering about the rewards and the estimated production date of those. Right now we are severely swamped with the GDC deadline and the game build - so we hope to start cranking away on the gift creation process in the middle of March - and start sending out the awards by the end of March and early April.
If you have any questions we encourage that you shoot us an email over to: kickstarter@spiralgamestudios.com
We cannot wait to show you what we have been working on - and it’s only a few more weeks until we are able to!
What a month! Not only were we pumping away internally with our GDC deadline - but also externally with you guys through our insane amount of updates and consistent levels of interaction. We couldn’t have hoped for a better result from all of this and would like to take a (quick) look back and reflect on everything that we revealed. There was a lot - so go get a drink.
THE INDIE DREAM
“The Indie Dream” was an incredible experience for the entire team. It allowed us to connect with KickStarter as well as our entire audience and give an extremely intimate glimpse as to who we are, what we do - and what we want to change. It also allowed us to show you tons of never-before-seen artwork, footage and information. It’s 5 and a half minutes - and it’s completely worth it!
CARRIER REVEAL TRAILER
We spent quite a few weeks redesigning The Carriers (human race) armor. We completely scrapped the old designs and went back to the drawing board with quite a few concept artists. We re-defined the style and aesthetics and came up with something that blew us all away.
We were heavily influenced by the small panel and modular designs of Isaac in Dead Space as well as the more near-body style featured in Mass Effect. But the overall touch was heavily influenced by many different iterations of the Iron Man armor. It all came together in one beautiful new character featuring the best of all worlds.
ALTAIR REVEAL TRAILER
When we went back to the humans - we also took it upon ourselves to redefine the ever-mysterious Alien race in the game - The Altair. This is one of the coolest races ever invented and we drafted a trailer together to match that level of awesome-sauce. We stuck closer to the original designs (more-so than we did with the Carriers) and just perfected the elements that were missing. You will be learning more about the Altair in the coming months - but not too much more - so try and catch as much as you can:
“BE THE VOICE” (Win an NVIDIA GTX 480!)
We recently announced an incredible new competition. We love our community - and we love interacting with them. What we love even more is finding new inventive and creative ways of including you guys into the game development as well as hooking you up with awesome rewards.
Thanks largely to my girlfriend for the incredible idea - we are now letting you (competition goes until April 1st, 2011) have the opportunity to not only become one (of 10) official “Game Announcers” for ORION - but also hooking you up with free copies of ORION: Prelude, access to the Multiplayer Beta, signed artwork, digital soundtracks, T-shirts - and one lucky winner will receive a brand new NVIDIA GTX 480 video card!
GEODE& REACTOR RE-MAKE LEVELS REVEALED
On top of revealing characters - we also revealed two remakes of fan-favorite maps from our previous experimental title - ‘Geode’ and ‘Reactor’. Fans will instantly recognize key areas of these environments - and also the insanely beautiful new visuals that accompany them. Click below to check out more of them:
“DINOSAURS IN 3D”
Speaking of incredible announcements - we are extremely thrilled about one of the more recent ones. While we haven’t released many details about it yet, we are going to be releasing an incredible 5-minute long 3D video - with dinosaurs.
This will be running in real time with the technology behind ORION: Prelude. We will be showcasing not only incredible graphics, environments and dinosaurs - but doing it with the power of 3D. Thanks to NVIDIA, this video will make the most out of the 3D Vision Technology. This will be released this summer before the PC Multiplayer Beta (http://www.orionprelude.com)
CARRIER & ALTAIR WEAPONS REVEALED
Not only did we reveal the characters and new environments - but also the new weapons for each race. Like the armor counterparts - we spent just as much time and attention towards redesigning all of the weapons for both the Carriers and the Altair.
This included defining each weapons personality as well as the overall style for each of the race’s weaponry, items, grenades and vehicles. Check all released designs below:
ORION: SOURCE ON DESURA
We were extremely pleased to announce that our previous experimental prototype was also accepted and released on Desura - the indie way of downloading and playing games. This allows a much easier way of obtaining the game, playing the game and staying connected. We encourage all current ORION: Source players to upgrade to this method as it allows for automatic updates and patches.
KICKSTARTER - GAMEPLAY REVEAL (TRAILER)
When we kicked off the KickStarter promotion - we kicked it off with a bang. We showcased tons of gameplay footage from one of the early builds here at Spiral. We demonstrated the ideas and functions that we wanted to bring together in a virtual gaming environment.
This game build was created only in 6 weeks - and it showcased the vehicles, the jetpacks, the dinosaurs. We have been hard at work since then and cannot wait to show you what we have been cooking. For now, enjoy this:
INTERVIEWS & PREVIEWS & PRESS
Over the course of this event we did tons of press. We participated in a handful of interviews, contributed towards plenty of previews - and supplied game sites all over the web with tons of exclusive media. We encourage you read them as they contain massive amounts of relevant information:
So enough of the already posted content. We want to show you something new. While we are not allowed to show you TOO much (yet) - we wanted to give you a glimpse at some of the Alien weaponry that is floating around in the game right now. We have a lot to show for GDC - and many people to show it too. We have tons of meetings lined up thanks to all of your support. We cannot wait to get back and share everything else under the hood. Until then, enjoy this:
KICKSTARTER - AND REWARDS
We cannot thank you all enough for the support and contributions you have made. We have not only exceeded our pledged amount - but with your help we were able to reach out to and attract new fans and meet new friends.
As for gifts, which I am sure all of you are curious about. We will be gearing up and creating these gift packages in March. The funds from KickStarter will help finance these gift packages - so we must wait until we have said finances before we can start creating some of it.
The funds will hit the company bank accounts in early March and we will be getting into contact with every single one of you as well as posting updates on our main site. By the end of March and early April we will have hoped to ship out all available (not the games or betas) gifts and rewards. If you have ANY questions about this, please email: kickstarter@spiralgamestudios.com
Spiral Game Studios intends to bring the fun and excitement back to the action genre, by focusing on its core values: intuitive gameplay, tight controls, frustration-free designs, and competitive, skill-based challenge. These elements are found in some games; sometimes a game incorporates a few of them. Rarely will you find a game that focuses on every aspect of a "fun" game, and those that do are the games that players still come back to decades after they were made. We hope to stay true to these values by introducing our first project: Orion.
