Blazing Griffin Launches Kickstarter Campaign For ‘The Ship’ Sequel: Full Steam Ahead

Edinburgh’s Blazing Griffin studio is creating a sequel to The Ship and is using the brand new UK-friendly version of Kickstarter to fund the game.

The Ship: Full Steam Ahead will be a steampunk-themed sequel to the incredibly popular murder-em-up, placing players in a thrilling Victorian environment and allowing them to do one another in a variety of fiendish ways with ray guns, solid brass pokers and whatnot, all while bedecked in top hats and goggles.

The company has created a very slick, professional and generally awesome video to support the project.  None of your cynical-developers-in-crap-t-shirts-sitting-at-desks-feigning-enthusiasm in this puppy.  No sir.  This is a veritable masterpiece of the filmic arts and suggests that the company really gets the whole steampunk ethos.  You should watch it.

The company is looking for £128,000 in funding to create the core game experience and get the game out onto the market.  The company has given itself 60 days to pull in this total.  It looks as though the project is off to a flying start, with well over £1000 invested in the first 24 hours alone.

The is a significant new project within the UK games market.  Crowd funding has been a huge success for many projects across North America, especially those based upon existing intellectual property and well loved franchises.  From this point of view, The Ship: Full Steam Ahead stands a very good chance of pulling in supporters and getting the project underway.

The Ship, for those unfamiliar with it, was created by the late, lamented Outerlight Studio.  The game was an art-deco themed title, which placed players in a gran ocean liner and challenged them to take out, remove, liquidate, erase or otherwise do bloody murder upon other players, without getting caught, being spotted, or falling prey to another player.

The game’s unique blend of stealth, black humour and the ability to use almost anything as a murder weapon, ensures that The Ship was hugely popular with the online gaming crowd in the early days of the Steam platform.

Outerlight then started work on Bloody Good Time for Ubisoft, a game with a similar mechanic to or inspired by The Ship, but in no way a sequel.  The project was tempestuous to say the least and ended up with Outerlight going out of business

You can find out all about the kickstarter campaign for The Ship: Full Steam Ahead on the project page.  You can chip in any amount of money, from £4 upwards.  There are a variety of rewards, treasures, trinkets and trophies for those who choose to participate.  Alongside copies of the game, copies of the ship, the undying gratitude of the development community AND a sense of satisfaction from helping to create new Scottish intellectual property and boost the interactive entertainment sector, you can also achieve lasting greatness with badges, t-shirts, your name in the game, your FACE in the game, or indeed a title such as Colonial Explorer, Agent of The Imperial Secret Service or, our favourite, Vice Regent of The Martian Colonies.

We’re delighted to see a company trying the crowd funding route and as fans of The Ship, steampunk and martian colonies, we would really like this project to succeed.  As with all crowd funding projects however, it will come down to momentum and how far and how effectively Blazing Griffin can push the project throughout the games media and social channels.

If you would like to know more, or have any questions, the head over the The Blazing Griffin forums and ask, dammit.

Sirs, we salute you and wish you well in your endeavour.

Now go give them some money.