A new promising Kickstarter project is in town and it’s called Minion Mania
We all know that Kickstarter is a place that helped many good titles launch. Recently, while I was browsing on it, this particular project caught my eye. It’s called Minion Mania, a heavy hybrid between many genres that will try to satisfy both genders. The whole concept is all around this idea, a game that will be fun to play for both genders. That is a difficult task which doesn’t seem to have a solution, at least for now.
Minion Mania is a hand-drawn game set in a 2.5D world developed by Modun Games, a game studio founded in February 2018 whose lead devs are Johan van Buggenum and Wouter Cox. Buggenum took the creative director role in this project, while Cox is the programmer (especially C derived languages, such as .net and C#). Both of them are not new in this business, having created many freeware application and 3rd party tools for different games.
Buggenum and Cox embarked on this adventure in order to create a unisex game appropriate at every age. The idea was thoroughly researched for over two years before launching it on Kickstarter. Furthermore, it wouldn’t have been possible without the full support from their families. “[T]he spark was the fact that we both found enough support from spouses and family, leading to enough financial stability to be able to dedicate most of our time to something that is very likely to make us no money for a very long time” says Buggenum.
The team is working on an intricate supportive AI system which will give you the possibility to micromanage everything and automate the things you’re not interested in managing. “[I]f you just want to focus on exploring the world and gathering exotic resources, you will only need to do minimal base building and your minion crews will do most of the work, however, if you really want to focus on your base and tweak every building, road and position everything perfectly for maximum production levels, you can do that too and send crews of minions out to do the exploring and gathering for you” says Buggenum.
It is clear that the developers really want to make players enjoy their stay and not punish them by having to complete tedious and unwanted tasks. As Johan van Buggenum mentioned, their motto when designing is “Carrot, not stick”. There will however be difficult parts in the game, in order to maintain the sense of progression, such as: finding certain resources, continued search for exotic resources and dungeons with some incredibly dangerous monsters.
Regarding storyline, there is no direct story progression when it comes to this title, as it is more oriented towards exploration, survival and colony builder. We will have the possibility to raid dungeons, similar to what World of Warcraft offers. Furthermore, the game will feature a “unique expansion and researching system, NPC minion factions that roam the map that you can trade with, or that try to raid your colony from time to time, and a ton of other events that we have planned” says Buggenum.
The end goal of the game is to create a colony that can persist without any micromanagement. In order to reach that goal, the entire world will have to be explored and secured.
The online co-op mode will feature the possibility to visit worlds of other players by using a portal which you create. You will basically raid other players for their resources or create a party to raid dungeons. If you’re more a pacifist, the devs left the option to not create a portal in order to not get raided.
The devs are dedicated to making the project happen, however there’s a great deal of pressure. “We have the skills to create the whole thing, but with the two core developers (art/code) and some support from friends we have that are «in this business», it just takes a long time” notes Johan van Buggenum. Minion Mania is expected to enter Early Access within 1 year from its launch.
The game will initially launch with the single-player mode only on PC (Steam), however there are also plans to release it on iOS and Android. If there will be enough backers, online co-op will be added at a later date, which is the main purpose of the game.
There will be additional content created for the game that “will add more gameplay to the game, with a system of corruption that needs to be cleansed” notes Buggenum. The devs plan to release many DLCs from which a maximum of three DLCs will be payed, the rest of them will be available for free. The payed DLCs will have the approximate cost of 25% of the full game.
When asked about microtransactions, Buggenum laughed and answered that they were thinking about adding a system where, if you die, you have to pay 10 bucks to come back alive again (of course a joke).
Minion Mania will feature a calm and relaxing music with no more than one or two instruments. “I’ve been known to hit a note on the piano myself” adds Johan van Buggenum.
Minion Mania will be available for a price of approximately 15-20$.
As for requirements, the game will pretty much run on any low end machine.
For those who enjoy playing games with their loved ones, Minion Mania seems to be a great choice. As Johan van Buggenum noted, “my girlfriend could make sure the minions are happy, well fed with food that gives them bonusses and keep them productive, while my maniac friend can just run around and hunt things and bring back their hides, meat or trophy’s”.
Modun Games is working on an interactive web platform in Azure, that once finished will have all the information you need regarding Minion Mania, as well as a forum. At the moment, devs welcome everyone on their discord channel. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the game, you can always access their channel and get in touch with the guys: https://discord.gg/SvJSZbz.
