With eight days left in its Kickstarter campaign, Big Blue has only managed to receive about $52,000 in pledges against its $665,000 goal. The likelihood of the game receiving its full funding at this point is pretty low, and realizing this Ed Annunziata, the game’s creator, has published an update to announce some big changes.
The Ecco the Dolphin creator plans on creating “a slice of the whole game based on a new Kickstarter campaign” with a much lower monetary goal. The new campaign promises to have “clarity of gameplay, better rewards at a finer granularity and a less ambitious scope but a fully playable game.”
The “slice of the whole game” Annunziata described is called Little Blue and will be free. According to the update, it will include a fully controllable dolphin and another unannounced creature, song mechanics, two “very large” environments, your very own private ocean environment, 10 or more significant creatures, including at least one Leviathan and quests, which he described as story and goal-based gameplay.
Annunziata hopes that once people play Little Blue, they’ll have a better understanding for what he’s trying to accomplish and will be more willing to support the second Big Blue Kickstarter campaign. This problem isn’t new to Annunziata, either, as he told us in an interview that SEGA representatives were initially skeptical of Ecco the Dolphin when he originally pitched the idea. He said it wasn’t until he brought them a playable build that they fully understood his vision.
He also added that he received his Oculus Rift development kit, which he plans to use to make Big Blue become the “de facto underwater title for Oculus Rift.” Lastly, a Big Blue forum has been created at www.playchemy.forumbee.com for people to follow the game’s development.
While this announcement isn’t surprising considering the lukewarm response from the gaming community, it’s hard not to be bummed out by the news because I was saving up for the $20,000 reward to get a real dolphin. Oh well, we’ll keep you informed of future developments and hope to have Annunziata on an SEGA Nerdcast show very soon.
