Dungeon Siege dev begins $1m Kickstarter campaign

Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander developer Gas Powered Games has begun a $1.1m Kickstarter campaign to help fund its new action RPG.

Led by studio founder Chris Taylor, Wildman is being designed to be a mix of action-role-playing and real-time strategy that will allow players to explore the game world and send their units to war.

The studio stated that all contributions will go toward developing a game engine and servers, creating the game world, a new RPG system, art, characters, animation and sound.

The developer warned in its risks and challenges however that any delays to the project could result in the title requiring additional funding, although it was confident it could meet its deadline and release the game by February next year.

Wildman is being developed for PC, although Gas Powered Games said it was in the process of making its underlying tech “more platform agnostic”, and said the title could be released on Mac and Linux in future should it be successfully funded.

The game will also likely be rated Mature or 18+.

“Making games is inherently risky, with unseen challenges that inevitably spring up over the course of development,” read a statement on the Wildman Kickstarter page.

“But we’re an experienced team, and we’re using our own proven technology and tools. We’re confident we can address these issues. Most of the costs of a computer game development project are in the salaries of the people working on it, so significant delays in its release could require an additional influx of capital.

"Without this additional money, the release date could be in jeopardy. Mitigating that risk, however, is our history of delivering projects on-budget and on-time.

“The design challenge is to blend two familiar genres in a satisfying way, and do it in a very short amount of time. We will only release Wildman when it meets our quality bar, and we intend to release in within a year of this Kickstarter. This is an ambitious goal, but we’ll have a lot of help…from all of you. Let’s do this together.”

Gas Powered Games was founded in 1998 in Washington, US. The studio has previously developed a number of titles for various publishers including Demigod and the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander series.

For more information, visit the official Kickstarter page here.