A Kick for Kickstarters: Chicory: A Colorful Tale and Megazone 23

It’s been nearly two weeks since my last “A Kick for Kickstarters” entry for Helvetii and Alder’s Blood, both of which have reached their initial goals. The success of both projects shows that a place still exists for crowdfunding campaigns for lower-tier projects, and mid-tier ones to a lesser extent. That’s why there are more campaigns to feature — one of which, it should be noted, is not for a video game.

(I also might be writing another such post because the last one garnered good attention on social media.)

Chicory: A Colorful Tale is one of the most unique and creative-looking games to grace crowdfunding in a long time, but don’t interpret this as a jab at other games that have embraced the platform. It’s simply much easier to crowdfund games that are reminiscent of other popular titles, making this a reflection of the larger gaming market. But when more innovative titles have the right staff, in-game and page presentation, and the developers involved know people with big audiences, they can still do well. That describes this project.

Chicory is an action-adventure title that primarily stars a dog who wields a paintbrush. He’ll use the magical artifact in stages with a mostly black and white palette in order to restore a color-deprived land. The titular Chicory was the original wielder, who vanished along with the land’s color, leaving player-controlled dog Pizza to take the mantle. The brush can be used to solve puzzles and draw artwork, and more locations can be reached after unlocking new powers. The dog and brush will also have to fight back against the centrifugal dark forest, the force sapping the color from the land.

Greg Labrov is serving as the director, writer, designer, and programmer for Chicory, who previously worked on titles like Phantasmaburbia, Coin Crypt, and Wandersong. Perhaps the most well-known name attached to the project is composer Lena Raine, who previously won awards thanks to her compositions for Celeste and Guild Wars 2. The current staff is small, consisting of literally a handful of developers, but they’re dedicated to making a quality product.

The team asked for a mere $30,000 to complete the project, and thanks to how good it looks and how word of mouth has spread, it’s already raised close to $59,000 as of this writing, with 18 days remaining in the campaign. This is also thanks to the sheer number of pledging tiers. The lowest is for a digital copy of the game at $20, but a digital artbook, soundtrack, enamel pin, and more will be included with the higher tiers. The developers have a specific game in mind they want to make, so they’re not doing stretch goals, but they’ll use extra funding to potentially hire collaborators, add more languages, and bring the game to more platforms. I think they should make those the goals, but perhaps they don’t want to commit to anything specific just yet.

Should everything go according to plan, Chicory will release on Steam in August 2021. That’s a generous timeframe, so it could actually make that without delays.

AnimEigo has used crowdfunding for several classic anime releases on Blu-ray in the last few years, including Riding Bean, Bubblegum Crisis, and Gunsmith Cats. The newest title that will receive the high-definition treatment in their library is Megazone 23, which will be dubbed the “Omega Edition.” This four-episode OVA series originally released in Japan in the mid-80s, and was notable for merging two incredibly popular anime genres at the time: Cyberpunk and mecha. It also featured an additional twist that made it unlike many other anime at the time, which I won’t get into here (though the page does). The combination of those elements shows why the series is well-remembered to this day, enough to receive this very campaign.

Like previous crowdfunded releases from AnimEigo, the pledging tiers will include some great extras. The basic set will include the series with bonus features on two Blu-ray discs, along with a poster insert for $60. Higher tiers will include more physical extras, including a production artbook and a sturdier chipbox.

Additionally, new materials from mecha designer Gaku Miyao and character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto are being made for this set. Most audio tracks from previous releases will also be available, including the ADV Films English track and commentary track. They’re also working to try and include the Streamline Pictures dub of the first episode and Manga Entertainment dub of the third, along with music videos from Kumi Miyasato from the Japanese Blu-ray release. Basically, they want to include everything any fan could have wanted from the eventual US Blu-ray release.

That’s why it didn’t take long for the campaign to meet the initial goal. AnimEigo asked for $100,000, but it’s already raised over $124,000 with a whole 20 days to go. The stretch goals start at $125,000 (for a new Japanese commentary track) and go up to $250,000, several of which involve new or refined artwork from Mikimoto. It could make some of those, but hitting all of them will be difficult considering funding has slowed to a crawl since the initial goal was reached. The set is planned to arrive in September 2020, but this is a crowdfunded project, so delays wouldn’t be a surprise.

There’s been a nice batch of campaigns lately, and it’s good that all the examples I’ve seen have been funded. We’ll see if this keeps up over the next few weeks, or even months.