One of the biggest issues with crowdfunded games these days is that the money raised is often used purely to gauge interest for silent investors behind the scenes. In a refreshing move, the upcoming game Indivisible has been nothing if not transparent about how it will be funded.
To clarify, the developer behind the game Lab Zero Games has openly stated how much the game will cost to make. At $3.5 million they are in the ballpark of most indie type games these days, as the upper limit tends to be around the $5 million mark.
Of that budget, Lab Zero needs to raise $1.5million and 505 Games will contribute another $2 million, with the latter acting as the publisher and distributor in this setup.
Personally, I am really glad to see budgets openly disclosed like this. Not only is it useful for future investors but shows to gamers how much games, even at the indie end of the scale, cost to make.
The game itself looks wonderful and there’s even a playable prototype available too. In the same vein as games like Valkyrie Profile and Metroid, Indivisible will also leverage Lab Zero’s prior work on the thoroughly excellent Skullgirls.
The other big aspect to the game is that they have secured the talents of Hiroki Kikuta for the music, who also scored the wondrous Secret of Mana among many other games (with my personal favorite of his works being for the PSone game Soukaigi).
Currently the crowdfunding campaign is at $1.3 million but it is set to end in four days, so they should be able to hit their final target with any luck. The fact that Lab Zero are being this open about the game’s funding and their prior track record on Skullgirls I am optimistic that they’ll be able to pull this off.
Disclosure: I know members of the development team personally. However, I have not contributed financially to the game nor worked on it.
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