About this project
Pinstripe — An Adventure Through Hell
$106,729
3,780
Hi there! I'm Thomas, and I love making games. For the past 3 years, I've been working on Pinstripe in addition to college and my day job. Honestly, I've been trying to prove to myself that I can make an awesome game completely alone and self funded. It's been an exciting journey, but I've learned that Pinstripe is a much bigger project than originally planned.
So to be honest, I've been a little scared to launch a Kickstarter. But I think it's time to ask for help. I'm here to ask the Kickstarter community for support to continue and complete Pinstripe. It's not only exciting to potentially get funding from you guys, it's also exciting to get some much needed community support.
Beautiful, unique, and satisfying adventure games are a bit of a rarity, and can be challenging to pull-off. But the past 3 years have been an amazing learning experience, and I like to think that Pinstripe has slowly evolved into exactly what an adventure game should be: fun, beautiful, interesting, and personal. With Kickstarter's help, the adventure of Pinstripe can be completed and released by August of 2016.
Pinstripe is a 2D adventure game about an ex-minister named Teddy who must explore Hell in search of his daughter Bo, who has been kidnapped by a strange entity claiming to be God.
Pinstripe features bizarre and interesting puzzles, strange monsters to shoot with your handy shotgun, and unique and lovable characters to engage with in order to advance through Hell.
Simple gameplay is the cornerstone of Pinstripe, and was the goal from the start. With simplistic and casual gameplay, the player can focus on the art, music, and story, and become immersed in the beautiful atmosphere. The goal of Pinstripe is to make you feel like a kid again without being bogged down with stuff that is confusing and unnecessarily. This is achieved by picking up the controller, running around and exploring the strange world, hanging out with funny characters, and occasionally shooting your shotgun to complete puzzles. For Pinstripe, simple gameplay makes exploring Hell super fun.
Features:
- Highly polished, illustrative 2D graphics.
- An emotionally charged story about fatherhood and Hell.
- A detective styled adventure. Help your dog George uncover clues about your past.
- A moody, beautiful soundtrack reminiscent of the Zelda franchise featuring piano and classical instrumentation.
- Old-school, simplistic platforming and character interaction.
- Strange and challenging on-screen puzzles.
- 6 strange and elegantly designed worlds (forest, train, cave, canyon, lake, and cliff!)
- That wonderful feeling of adventure and exploration you used to get when you played games like King's Quest, Myst, and The Legend of Zelda.
Pinstripe has already received some awesome awards nominations and honors at IndieCade's E3 Showcase, Whippering Indie Cup in San Francisco, and Reboot 2015, and most recently, at SXSW 2016. However, it's nowhere near where it needs to be for release.
I've been making games for almost 10 years now. My two most recent games, Coma and Skinny, became viral online hits and won several awards from companies like Indie Pub, Mochi, and Newgrounds. Although they were much shorter and less ambitious than Pinstripe, I like to think that all of my games have a similar heart and style.
Pinstripe is about 60% complete. However, the remaining 40% is looking more and more daunting as I continue to work on this project. As many of you know, the older you get, the less time you have. When I was in college, I had plenty of time to mess around with this project on a daily basis. Unfortunately, this is not the case for me and my family.
I need your help to be able to quit freelancing, and focus specifically on Pinstripe. With a serious jolt from the Kickstarter community, Pinstripe will be exactly where it needs to be by August of 2016.
Before Pinstripe, Coma and Skinny received multiple awards for their distinct and atmospheric soundtracks. Pinstripe's soundtrack is no different. It is beautiful and reminiscent of the Zelda franchise, and plays a key role in the game's mood and story. This is one of Pinstripe's strong suites. Pinstripe is a unique in that the entire experience, from the visuals to the music, is intentionally crafted by one individual, resulting in one cohesive piece of art. Feel free to take a listen to some of the songs written for Pinstripe so far:
But the soundtrack isn't perfect. It still needs a ton of work.
I finally decided it was time for Kickstarter because I knew keeping this game alive and seeing it finished the right way would be extremely difficult without help from the Kickstarter community.
Ultimately, I need to focus on this game full-time, otherwise, it's going to be extremely difficult to finish. I need funds to pay for the game's production and also make up for the loss of funding due to quitting my day job. Feel free to see the budget below.
Additionally, your feedback and criticism is crucial. Seeing a project for what it is can be difficult without a community's involvement. I really just want to make a game you love, and I'm 100% positive I can do that with your help. If you don't love it, I want to know why and how I can make it better.
With your help, a beta build will be ready for testing by May of 2016, and the final build on Steam by August of 2016. By then, Pinstripe will be available on Steam for Mac, PC, and Linux, all because of you guys.
Professional Advisory Board
Without these people and their incredible industry-specific input, Pinstripe would not be what it is today.
Kickstarter Shoutout #2: Go Check Out "Knights & Bikes"!
Go check out "A Place for the Unwilling"! It's a very interesting adventure game set in a living city filled with secrets to unveil. An open world inspired by Majora's Mask and Sunless Sea! Check it out!
Risks and challenges
Developing games is hard. Developing games alone is even harder. But I have 10 years of experience and have released 3 games prior to Pinstripe. I also have the support of an incredible advisory board. Ultimately, it can take a long time to develop a game alone, and a lot can go wrong from start to finish. But this game is not at the start, it has already been heavily worked on for years and with your help it will launch this summer.
Another concern is story: what makes Pinstripe special is a unique story surrounded by beautiful visuals and music. Pinstripe's story is written, but it is not implemented. I'm concerned that, although the story looks great on paper, it will not translate well in the actual game. To overcome this, I have a team of professional advisors who are very close to me, who will play the game and be sure to highlight any areas where the story just isn't working. This will be a fluid, on-going process, and will allow me to address the issues as they come, rather than after the game is released.
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Funding period
- (30 days)