Kickstarter

Overview

As described in the video above, Samson's Quest is about three roommates who have to beat a video game in one night.  

The interesting thing about games in the early 90's was their strange mythology of secret levels, secret items, and secret bosses.  This was pre-internet, so it was impossible to check the validity certain fringe rumors, lending these cartridges an impression of infinite content, as if they contained their own inexhaustible universes.

The film is set in a 1993 where all the rumors we heard as kids (including those about professional, competitive gamers in Japan) are true.  Though these characters are adults, they represent what we thought we'd grow up to be.

Contributors and Aesthetics

The film's props, sets, and wardrobe will be in a limited NES 56 color palette...

...with a dash of 90's punk/grunge.  The soundtrack will be entirely chiptune, scored by Disasterpeace (composer for FEZ) and featuring other guest artists from the 8 bit community.  All retro gaming gear is being provided by Space Cat, a fantastic store in San Jose.

While most of the drama unfolds outside of the game, we are still going to need some in-game footage.  We will be featuring some recent indie throwback titles, such as Jamestown (Final Form Games) and The Iconoclasts (Joakim Sandberg).  We'll also be working with pixel artists from the 8-bit community. 

Budget

We've made our entire production budget public so you can track every dollar and see that it's spent responsibly.  Half of our crew are working for free-- the other half are working at extremely discounted rates (documented below).  Our costumes, props, and set pieces are donated, purchased from the Goodwill, or salvaged from a dumpster.

You can take a look at our budget here!

Why Donate?

Firstly, there are some rad rewards to be had, including preorders for digital copies of the film and soundtrack, special edition DVD's with rad box art, and our awesome T-shirts with pixel art by HELM.

Look at the attractive humans wearing these shirts!  Do you not wish to be like them?  Will you deny yourself such gaudy apparel?

You won't just be supporting independent film, but also a new movement in the way independent film is made.  With tools like Kickstarter, people like you can directly support films that relate to your interests and tell your stories.  You're basically paying for the creation of a film that YOU want to see-- no middle-men, no gatekeepers.  This is why our film will be released online after a run in the festival circuit, free for all to enjoy.  If this is something you can get behind, please contribute!

Thank you for your interest!