I first saw Aquamarine at Play NYC 2018. It was there that I met Patric Fallon of Moebial Studios and got hands-on with the game. It's an interesting little turn-based strategy game where you crash-land on an aquatic planet and have to make it back to your wrecked ship in a dinky little escape pod.
Aquamarine primarily focuses on the player's careful management of resources. Precious crystals are the fuel that keep your ship going, but there will be a variety of hostile alien fauna in the way that are all too keen to chomp on your little yellow submarine. Throughout the game you'll move through different sections of this aquatic planet, upgrade your ship, and (hopefully) make it back home without becoming alien shark food. Check out the Kickstarter trailer to get a sense of the game's aesthetic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGG4OpXZY7w
This will be the first Kickstarter campaign for Moebial Studios as a company. With that said, they have a pretty tight package put together for their inaugural campaign. There's a whole bunch of different levels for pledging towards the development of Aquamarine, so we'll be doing our best to break them down with some brevity.
You can simply support the game with a $1 "Well-wisher" pledge if that's all you'd like to do. A $15 pledge at the Curious Onlooker tier is very straightforward; it gets you the game when it's finished and nothing else. Upping that to the $20 Friendly Support tier will throw in some neat digital wallpapers. The $25 Invested Patron tier will get the previous tier's rewards and your name in the game's credits. The $30 tier adds in Discord access, and the $40 tier will include a digital OST and your name featured somewhere in the game world. A $50 pledge will throw a digital art book into the mix and get you access to the game's beta.
From this point forward, the campaign's pledges enters the realm of physical rewards. The limited $75 Adventuring Companion tier will get you everything so far plus a small art print based on the game's hand-drawn graphics, and the $125 Enthralled Explorer tier will throw in a cassette tape with the game's soundtrack. Similarly, a $100 Courageous Sidekick pledge (which is also limited in number) will get you a large art print rather than a small one and the $150 Enchanted Explorer pledge tosses in the OST cassette tape.
Finally, we have four big-ticket pledge tiers, all of which are limited. A $300 Guided Searcher pledge will get you everything in the $50 tier along with one of two photo prints of the Norwegian landscapes that inspired the game by photographer (and Aquamarine's art director) Tonje Thilesen. The $500 "Fearless Mariner" level includes the contents of the $50 tier and lets you help design your own creature for the game. The $1,000 "Omnipresence" tier includes absolutely everything from the previous tiers. Finally, the $2,000 "Soul Creator" tier will get you everything from the $50 pledge level and an original piece of art in the style of the game commissioned to your specifications.
Aquamarine currently has no Stretch Goals at this point in its campaign. What it does have is a playable demo for anyone to grab if they want to see if this is a project worth pledging to. Speaking for myself, I enjoyed what I played of the game at Play NYC 2018 and I think it certainly executes an interesting concept with style. You can learn more about what inspired this game's aesthetic by reading my interview with Patric Fallon of Moebial Studios.
The game's current release is pegged at around May of 2019. If Aquamarine sounds like the sort of game you'd like to support, head on over to the Kickstarter campaign page and consider kicking in a few bucks to a pretty interesting indie title. The Kickstarter campaign ends on October 30, 2018, at 10:00 PM Eastern Time.
What do you think of Aquamarine? Does the game's aesthetic appeal to you? What do you think of games in this particular genre? Let us know in the comments below!