Pixel Lincoln heading to DS, inspires deckbuilding game

It's been a great year for Kickstarter campaigns, and while much of the attention has been on point-and-click adventure games, there are some other videogame-related projects that are worth following as well. Pixel Lincoln: The Deckbuilding Game is designed by Jason Tagmire, who came up with the idea back in 2007. After showing off his card game at conventions, it caught the attention of developer Island Officials, who wanted to make a DS game based off the imaginative Pixel Lincoln character.

While the DS game is coming soon, Jason, who's still working on the game as a designer, launched a Kickstarter campaign on June 5 to get the card game off the ground. Asking for a mere $5,000 to get started, the goal was reached within 5 days and now sits a little over $6,000 with more than 130 backers.

"I think some of our early success was for a few reasons," said Tagmire. "I brought the game out to Origins Game Fair a few weeks ago, and I was able to show it to a lot of people in the industry. I had a lot of support from them right from the start. We also started pushing this a few weeks before the project launch, which is really important," Tagmire said in an email interview.

Some of the tiered rewards includes the card game itself, but what has been an enticing tiered offer is that for $75, you can get a custom card of your own. Island Officials were at E3 this year and made a few custom cards of industry luminaries such as Tim Schafer and Peter Molyneux.

Many Kickstarters never get funded, and it takes a lot of work and energy to ensure that the project meets its target goals. What benefited Tagmire was that he had been active on Kickstarter for the past few years and had seen both sides.

"I was involved with a few small successful projects, but more importantly, I've had a project fail," he said. "I learned more from my experience with the unsuccessful project than anything else. I learned that you need to promote the project way in advance, incorporate great visuals and high quality art (especially in gaming projects), and really capture the hearts of your backers. If you don't do your work, it's hard to expect the backers to do theirs. I learned this the hard way, but it was an invaluable experience in growing as a designer/creator."

For more information on the card game and the campaign, head over to the Kickstarter page here. Pixel Lincoln for the DS has no release date set, but it's currently in beta.