Istanbul – August 12th, 2013 – Monochroma, the platformer game which has been in development for 18 months by a Turkish company named Nowhere Studios, has managed to collect 40 thousand dollars in 33 days on the Kickstarter web page, where it was submitted to collect donations. If it can collect an additional 40 thousand dollars in the remaining 11 days, the game will be a first in various fields.
“Monochroma is actually a criticism of consumer society,” state the development team who work in Cihangir/Istanbul. “But to make such a criticism, we used a fantasy world in the 1950’s and a robot factory in our story.” Monochroma is the first game in the world, which tells such a criticizing story through games, and which does not use any words in speech or text while doing that. Therefore, this makes for a great reason for people from all around the world to support Monochroma, in addition to its beautiful atmosphere, gameplay and soundtrack.
In recent years, independent games throughout the world are doing what big budget games cannot do, enabling gamers to play deeper, more unique and especially gameplay focused games. Support platforms such as Kickstarter help small and creative teams, who want to stay away from publishers’ and game investors’ fixed template games, make the games of their dreams.
Stating that half of the 40 thousand dollars of donations are from Turkey and the other half are from abroad, the Monochroma team highlight that especially the support from Turkish gamers and other Turkish game developers make them incredibly happy. They go on to state that they want to use their financial earnings and experience from this project to help develop the Turkish video game industry.
Nowhere Studios, who in order to reach their goals, expect the support of gamers who want to see games that focus on unique storytelling and has a criticizing aspect to them, are looking for charitable individuals in Turkey to help the Turkish video game industry make this leap.
A variety of rewards await donators on Kickstarter, that range from 5 dollars to 5 thousand dollars. While you can have a copy of the game and a special “thank you” note for 15 dollars, 300 dollars would land you the t-shirt of the game, the Collector’s Edition of the game, your name in the credits as “Co-Producer” and your own portrait which will feature in a part of the game. Stating that even a dollar’s worth of donation means a great deal to them, the team point out that without thinking big or small, everyone who supported a beautiful work in production should consider themselves as a part of the game, and the team, and be proud of it.
In order to make Monochroma reach more charitable individuals, a YouTube video contest is being held for the last two weeks. All that someone needs to do to join the contest is to make a video clip using the concept of Monochroma, upload it to YouTube with the www.kickstarter.com/../Monochroma link in the description part and finally to send the link to their video to [email protected] . The video can be a gameplay video, a Monochroma themed experimental short film, a promotional video or an intro for Monochroma.
The contest, in addition to gifting a copy of the game when it’s released to every contestant whose video gets over 1000 views, offers these rewards to the top three places:
- 1st place: An invitation to the Launch Party, Monochroma Crate Box(Collector’s edition with Monochroma hat and scarf) and a Monochroma t-shirt
- 2nd place: An invitation to the Launch Party, Collector’s Edition and a Monochroma t-shirt
- 3rd place: An invitation to the Launch Party, boxed edition of the game and a Monochroma t-shirt
Meanwhile, Monochroma is awaiting the votes of gamers at the Steam Greenlight process, in order to enter the Steam market (which is the largest online distribution platform of the world) without a publisher. So far, this process has been very positive and it is thought that the game may enter Steam in a few months.
Monochroma, is a puzzle platformer game, developed by a group of experienced game developers at Turkey. It takes inspiration from several puzzle platformers developed so far, such as Limbo, Deadlight and Braid, and from movies and folk tales which tell dark and expressive stories. The soundtrack of the game is performed by Gevende and the game will be playable on Windows, Mac and Linux PC’s by December. Following that, Wii U, Playstation and Xbox versions will also be prepared.
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