The idea behind OUYA was to offer the console-gaming experience for the type of casual games usually played on mobile devices and tablets.  Recognizing that social gaming is the home to much of the innovation in the industry but that such games rarely find a foothold in the console market, OUYA sought to bridge that gap.

OUYA games must be at least partially free-to-play, and the console is designed to offer an affordable alternative to expensive console games.  The device itself is easy to modify and can be rooted without voiding the warranty, a feature welcomed by many.  Additionally, OUYA offers an open design to developers, providing a built-in dev kit to make building and releasing games accessible.

Essentially, OUYA seeks to usher in a future that welcomes innovation and tears down the road blocks experienced by many indie developers who want to see their games played on the big screen.

To boost the number of titles released on the console and reward independent game designers, OUYA launched its “Free the Games Fund” program in July of 2013.  This program gives a serious boost to games being funded by Kickstarter: If a game reaches $50,000, OUYA will match the funds if the developer agrees to release the game on the OUYA console.  OUYA has $1 million set aside to back this program.

Funded games can be released on PC, Mac and Linux, but must be console-exclusive to the OUYA for the first six months after release.  This exclusivity clause includes mobile devices.  To follow the revolution and see what games are being supported by #FreeTheGames, check the company’s website http://freethegamesfund.com/ or follow the hashtag “#FreeTheGames” on Twitter.

Yet, for all these success stories, many more Kickstarters fail. Many people have been talking about “Kickstarter fatigue” almost as long as video game Kickstarters have been a thing, yet recent successes like Hyper Light Drifter and Mighty No. 9 seem to prove otherwise. Perhaps the problem isn’t Kickstarter fatigue, but a lack of coverage. Crowd funding campaigns like Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, and Torment: Tides of Numenera had major industry names attached to them, so getting the coverage they needed wasn’t an issue. This is an edge that many indie developers looking into crowd funding don’t really have.

My goal with this article is to highlight some promising games I found on Kickstarter that could use a bit of a boost to reach their funding goal, much like a crowd funding version of my Greenlight articles. Considering the sheer number of games that turn to Kickstarter and Indiegogo these days, it will likely become a somewhat regular series

Paradise Lost: First Contact by Ashtree Works

Paradise Lost has a funding goal of $70,000 and, at the time of writing, is sitting at 83% of its goal with 20 days left. It also has stretch goals going all the way up to a Wii U port at $250,000. In this 2D stealth/action game you play as an alien plant that has been captured by an organization called GER and transported to a bio-engineering lab for study. It features some Metroidvania elements in the form of acquiring new abilities as you progress that allow you to access previously unreachable areas, and some RPG elements in the form of evolution paths. It seems to be primarily a stealth game along the lines of Mark of the Ninja, but there appears to be some combat-focused abilities like spore bombs and armor plating. The minimal tier for a copy of the game is $12, and also includes a PDF with some artwork.

STASIS by Christopher Bischoff

STASIS is currently hovering at around 53% of its $100,000 goal with 26 days left. At its core, STASIS is a traditional point-and-click adventure game played from a 2D isometric perspective. The game promises a mature sci-fi horror storyline with an aesthetic and atmosphere heavily inspired by Alien. The game puts you in the role of John Maracheck, a man who has just awaken from stasis on a repurposed mining vessel called the Groomlake, a seemingly abandoned ship that is secretly used to hide horrifying and illegal experiments conducted by the massive medical conglomerate the Cayne Corporation. At the $20 tier you’ll receive a DRM-free copy of STASIS, a wallpaper, your name in the credits, and access to the backers only area of the forums.

Confederate Express by Maksym Pashanin

This game is already at 308% of the $10,000 goal, but I’m including it so they can hit some more of the stretch goals before the campaign ends in a week. Confederate Express is an isometric tactical shooter where you play as a member of a sort of high risk delivery service in a future filled with zombies and rogue androids. Your goal is to deliver packages and earn money to build up a crew and purchase more advanced weapons and upgrades to tackle increasingly difficult deliveries and even bosses. As with many indie games lately, Confederate Express also features permadeath. The fairly impressive lighting effects deserve a special mention in this 2D pixel art title. A mere $10 is enough to get a Steam key of the game once it’s finished.

The Mandate by Perihelion Interactive

I mentioned The Mandate in my last Release Valve, but this extremely ambitious title is still at only half of its $500,000 goal with 20 days left. The Mandate looks to be a really odd space opera that blends mechanics and elements from several different genres. You have a very story-driven RPG with character interaction, relationship-building, political negations, trading, and galaxy-changing choices to be made, yet there is also ship-based RTS combat as you slowly build up a fleet and XCOM-style battles during boarding operations. Part of me worries that the sheer amount of different mechanics in the game could easily cause the game to fall apart somewhere during development, but the more optimistic side hopes that the developer’s ambitions are fully realized as an excellent and complex space RPG. The $20 tier for this game is very generous, including a DRM-free copy of the game, the soundtrack, digital artbook, wallpapers, backer exclusive ship decals, and avatar profile pictures to use on your favorite social media websites.

The Girl and the Robot by Salim Larochelle

This charming adventure game is at 83% of its $15,000 goal with 17 days left. The Girl and the Robot looks to be a more combat-focused version of Ico, made by an international indie team that includes beautiful artwork reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s work. As the title suggests, it is the story of a girl and a robot who must work together to find a way out of a mysterious castle ruled by an evil queen. Gameplay is divided into puzzles that require the unique abilities of each character to solve, and combat as the knight-like robot. The combat looks slow and deliberately clunky, not unlike Dark Souls, and even promises to have very hard difficulty settings. At $9 you receive a Humble Store key for a DRM-free copy of the game, access to the current alpha build, and a digital artbook.

Dwarven Delve by TinkerHouse Games

This game is currently at 35% of its actually rather modest goal of $30,000 with 18 days left to go. Based on the videos I’ve seen, Dwarven Delve looks rather far along in development and is targeting an early 2014 release. As for what it is, Dwarven Delve is a unique blend of puzzle gameplay and dungeon crawling where you control a band of six dwarves through maze-like caverns full of monsters. The most unique aspect of the game is the ability to rotate corridors to change the layout of the dungeon, avoiding really strong foes or leading pursuing monsters into traps. As the developers describe it, the goal is ultimately to reconfigure the dungeons in a way that maximizes rewards while minimizing risks. For $10 you get a copy of the game, your name engraved on the “founder’s stone” on the official website, and an art pack containing wallpapers, avatars, and icons.

That’s it for now. Even if you don’t plan on actually pledging money to these games, still remember to at least check out their Greenlight pages. Most of them have one, with a link to it somewhere on the Kickstarter page.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

This morning’s press release from Ouya also boasts $15M in new funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, most of which will be used to better meet anticipated retail demands, as well as improve the Ouya game development community.

Ouya will be available for purchase in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. on June 25th. The console will sell for $99, with additional controllers selling for $49.99. Ouya consoles can be pre-ordered through Amazon and other retailers. (Note, Amazon is still posting the June 4th release date.)

As we get closer to the June 4th consumer release date for Ouya, the question on everyone’s mind is about the games that will be available. It’s well known throughout the video game console industry that what games are available at launch or soon after can make or break a successful console. We saw the value of an established catalogue of exclusive software during the last console wars when Microsoft was able to release their Xbox 360 way before Sony’s PS3 hit shelves. The lessons learned that will apply to the long-term success of the Ouya game platform are all centered on the software available – there has to be a collection of really good games or the console will fade away into technological obscurity. While the business and tech-savvy individuals behind the scenes have been great about creating a developer-friendly platform to publish on, none of us want to sift through a ton of mediocre games in the Ouya store. This issue has plagued certain mobile platforms and can leave a potential customer thinking that the console is not worth the price because none of the games are very memorable. I’ve put together a short list of some titles that will no doubt make the console not only worth the low price but also a great living room gaming experience to compete with the already established “big guns” of the console industry.

Final Fantasy III
This wonderful slice of the well-known series was originally released in Japan in 1990 on the Nintendo Famicon (known as the NES in the U.S.) A full 3D remake was done for the handheld Nintendo DS system and released in the summer of 2006 and it is this remake that will be available on the Ouya at launch. I know this will be one of the more reliable titles for Ouya because the Final Fantasy series wrote the book on replay value. It is titles like this that will continue to sell Ouya consoles.

The Ball
Tripwire Interactive’s shooter/puzzle hybrid The Ball will be a welcome addition to Ouya strictly because of the beautiful visuals. Built on the Unreal Engine, this title will push the Ouya hardware with its impressive graphics. The Ball belongs on this list because there aren’t very many Ouya games that succeed in replay value as well as top-notch graphics. Portal was an extremely successful title and this game captures some of the same feel. The Ball should be a great addition to the Ouya!

Saturday Morning RPG
This game from Mighty Rabbit Studios began as a Kickstarter project and does some interesting things with narrative and the “episodic” release timeline. SM-RPG is chock full of side quests, neat places to explore, and a bunch of 80’s pop culture references that will provide many hours of enjoyment for us gamers that remember what was popular in the 80’s. RPGs in any form are a good genre for the Ouya because they take time and offer different play-through options. I look forward to this one just because of its mis-matched, eclectic art style.

Stalagflight
This simple little Indie game is a direct product of the mobile game boom which means that it is easy to learn and difficult to master. Simple games like this are a blast to play with your friends when you are chilling out at home and they will have their place on the Ouya console. The home game console has become a center-piece in the living room entertainment and having fun, fast-paced competitive games to play with friends or family is a must. With a simple objective of “jump…. and don’t stop!” this will be the game I challenge my wife to when we don’t want to hook up our SNES and boot up Mario Kart!

Legend of Dungeon
This great title from the husband and wife team Robot Loves Kitty will be available at the Ouya launch. LoD is a great combination of true co-op gameplay, beat-em-up style combat, and RPG elements all smashed together underneath some amazing pixelated artwork. I am looking forward to this title because the devs moved into a treehouse in order to afford working on it full-time. That is dedication. All natural living arrangements aside, great gameplay and artwork will make this a hit on the Ouya platform.

Canabalt
Adam Saltsman’s indie hit Canabalt will be available for the Ouya from the launch and this will be another great living room multiplayer like Stalagflight. With a very simple control scheme of jumping when you’re supposed to, this game will port to a console with a controller really well. Similar to the way the 2D platformer genre worked so well on the early consoles, I think Canabalt will be a very popular download.

A Fist of Awesome
This game from Indie developer Nicoll Hunt features the familiar mechanics of basic beat-em-up titles such as Final Fight or Double Dragon with the addition of a lumberjack….. who fights homicidal forest creatures. Sign me up for two, please! The style of gameplay here will make it a blast to play over and over and I think there is a unique sense of humor about this game that will make it a diamond in the rough. Seriously, at what point in life will you get to punch a wild bear in the face?

StarBound
This one is my personal favorite title coming to the console and one of the main reasons I will be getting an Ouya myself. Starbound is the spiritual successor of Terraria, one of my favorite Indie game experiences of all time. Starbound developer studio Chucklefish were one of the lucky developers to win an Ouya console during the developer giveaway and team members tweeted about adapting the control scheme to the Ouya controller the moment they won. Starbound will take the best building mechanics and aesthetics we have seen from the likes of Minecraft and Terraria and add different planets to explore and quests to complete. Tiny little social life that I do maintain = gone!

Ouya and the independent game scene

The summer of 2013 will bring us all something that we haven’t seen in a while: the breakout of a new game console to compete against the big three that have ruled the console market for years now. Ouya, the difficult to pronounce new hardware contender, is centered on bringing gaming back to the television and the living room. Ouya is the brainchild of game industry vet Julie Uhrman who put together the most successful Kickstarter campaign the online pledge system has ever seen. With an initial goal of $950,000.00 to get the development process moving, we all got to watch in amazement as they raised almost ten times that goal in a very short time. While gaming innovations over the last five years have almost always been geared toward the exponentially expanding mobile market, Ouya seems to take the best creativity we have seen in that realm and put it back on the living room television where it can be enjoyed by the massive demographic that is the hardcore console gamer. Based on what we have seen out of Ouya so far, this will be a wonderful platform for the independent game scene and many of us are excited to see how its release will reverberate throughout the entire industry.

With a recently announced retail launch date of June 4^th, 2013 many Kickstarter backers and development studios began to receive their brand-spankin’ new Ouya consoles during the last week of March and into April, 2013. There are quite a few hardware reviews and “first impression” articles out there to check out if you are interested.  Some familiar names from the indie scene are amongst those that have backed the project since day one; Notch and Mojang studios are on board, Canabalt developer Semi Secret Software have their flagship title already included in the game lineup, and other major players such as Brian Fargo of Interplay and Robert Bowling of Robotoki are all providing the needed support to make this indie console a reality. Indie smash hits such as Minecraft, Canabalt, and Terraria’s spiritual successor Starbound currently in development by Chucklefish in the UK will all be part of the Ouya experience. I already have a small spot cleared off my desk next to my monitor that would be perfect for the tiny console.

In tune with what today’s console gamers expect with their purchase of a game console as an all-around media machine, games are not the only interactivity the Ouya will offer. Twitch TV, a network/community of broadcast gameplay and tournament coverage, is already included on the console as a native app. Iheartradio is proudly wearing the badge of the first confirmed radio app for the new console and hopefully we will see the likes of Hulu, Netflix, and even Facebook available on Ouya in the future. While this plethora of games and apps put together in one piece of technology sounds suspiciously like every other game console on the market, there is an underlying independent spirit and philosophy behind the development and eventual release of this platform. The complete development tools are available with the purchase of each console and the ability to get your game published on Ouya is going to be drastically easier than other platforms that allow the same avenues. The Ouya homepage even boasts that you will not void your warranty by tinkering with the hardware itself and they even express interest in seeing what hardware mods are created by the users. For us console gamers, it has been a long time since we have seen a company truly embrace what the user community is capable of and the nod in our direction is much appreciated. It is the reason that I will be preordering this great console to be a part of this experience. Directly from the Ouya website, “The revolution will be televised!”

More about the OnLive news from General Manager Bruce Grove:

What does that mean for OUYA backers?

• OnLive will deliver a full console-class experience, bringing hundreds of top-tier games from more than 80 publishers to the OUYA console for play on demand.
• OUYA owners will be able to jump in and play any of these games both at home on their OUYA console, and on the go on PCs, Macs, tablets and phones, never leaving a game behind.
• Instant demos will be available for nearly every game in our ever-growing library—from eagerly anticipated indie titles like Ravaged, to hot blockbusters like the upcoming Darksiders® II. Players can experience up to 30 minutes of each game for free before deciding what to buy. If they like it, they can continue playing where the demo left off.