The Ship: Full Steam Ahead Kickstarter asks for £128k

UK indie Blazing Griffin has launched a Kickstarter to raise £128,000 to make The Ship: Full Steam Ahead, the steampunk sequel to the 2006 murder party game.

At the time of publication the Kickstarter had raised £371 from 11 backers with 59 days to go.

The sequel is set in a steampunk Victorian England. You "dress up in your steampunk finery, travel on Victoria's finest shippage, and 'drub' the enemies of the Empire, while those self-same scoundrels, attempt to murder you," reads the pitch. That is, you have to kill the other players before they kill you.

"We have plenty of ideas for new features, but most importantly, we want to create something new and rather daring with input from YOU -- our most noble players.

"In short, now is the time to prime your gas gun and don your mechanical timepiece…"

Blazing Griffin said the money it's after will enable it to change the engine on which the game is built, rebuild the core game itself and create a content delivery platform. There's also room in there for promotion, marketing and localisation - if the money is raised.

Full Steam Ahead is in concept stage right now but will soon enter pre-production. There's no playable version yet, "but we do have the original game and we know that's fun" Blazing Griffin said.

"Our goal is to recreate the core mechanics of the Ship in a new steampunk environment. Once that's up and running, then we'll modularly enhance the game with new content.

"This form of open development will mean the game will grow rather than 'arrive' and players will be able to try out and feed into additions as we go. We should be 'building on fun' (or at least good promise) from a fairly early stage, and the whole project will be substantially less risky, as we're not holding out for one huge, distant release. You'll also be able to see everything as we go, warts 'n' all."