DieselStörmers Do-over: Ravensdale Returns To Kickstarter

If at first you don't succeed, pause and have a good think. Do you really want to make a video game about knights with dirty diesel-powered armour and jetpacks fighting orcs and goblins? You may very well! In that case, put your head down and work, rethink your crowdfunding campaign, then come back with something people can play first. Bish bash bosh, here's DieselStörmers again.

Having cancelled its first Kickstarter at less than 15% of the $500,000 goal (£300 grand-ish) last August, Black Forest Games have now launched a second campaign for the game formerly known as Project Ravensdale. This time it's far more sensible, looking for $50,000 (£30 grand) and offering a playable prototype so potential backers can have a bash.

The game's still the same: a shooty platformer with co-op for up to four, where fancy knights leap around killing green-skinned monsters. They make and customise their own weapons from parts and also have a fancy tool in the 'Arc Connector,' a doodad which can catapult them about, convert bullets into enemy-zapping energy, boost weapon damage, and generally encourage teamplay.

Black Forest say they have "spent a lot of our own time and money to get the game up and running" in preparation for this Kickstarter, so the goal's a lot lower this time. And they now have a prototype we can play, which they stress really is a prototype, a "spruced-up merger of the different testing areas we used to experiment with rendering pipelines and gameplay features." Still, it has running and jumping and shooting and Arc Connector catapulting with local co-op t'boot.

If they land the Kickstarter cash, Black Forest expect to first release DieselStörmers through Steam Early Access this September. Here, have a gander at the game: