Antichamber is the 7th project to receive Indie Fund support.  Those with an eye on the indie scene probably know it’s been years in development, and we’re happy to provide its talented developer, Alexander Bruce, with finishing funds to help the game across the finish line.

This game has been honored with so many awards it’s hard to keep track, from its initial selections for Sense of Wonder Night and as a Make Something Unreal Grand Prize winner, through to its more recent PAX10 selection and IGF Technical Excellence award. The full list of honors this game has received throughout its development is impressive.

Truly mind bending and surprising puzzle design aside, what makes Antichamber feel very special to us is that its development chronicles Alex’s development as a game designer.  We’ve played the game multiple times over the last few years, at various states of completion, and each time the design and feel of the game shifts, and feels more refined.  Kudos to Alex for iterating on his work and incubating it until it’s really ready.

You can check out Antichamber at PAX East this week, booth 770. Alex will be there with the latest build, stop by and say hello!

The Swapper is the 6th game to receive Indie Fund backing.  It is quite literally a hand crafted game, and clearly a labor of love by its creators, Facepalm Games.  Olli, Otto, and Carlo have already a achieved a remarkable level of critical acclaim with their game, garnering awards at IndieCade, Develop Conference, Freeplay, and GameConnection.

We are very happy to announce that Indie Fund is now backing this beautiful, atmospheric, mind bending game, which has already come very far on the passion of its creators alone.

To be honest, we are a little surprised by how many people bought Dear Esther so quickly. We were expecting the game to have a niche appeal. In fact the situation is quite different; all day it was the top-selling game on Steam:

So, released among games about killing, reckoning, crusading, killing and really old scrolls (containing really old magic… for killing), the meditative beauty of Dear Esther has been recognized. Congratulations to the team behind the game, and thank you to everyone out there who bought the game or told a friend about it.

Indie Fund has a commitment to openness with financials, so here are the relevant details.

We have been in contact with Dan Pinchbeck of thechineseroom since March 2010. The original Dear Esther had already been produced, back in 2008, in the form of an inconvenient-to-install Steam mod that could be downloaded for free. The mod got many peoples’ attention at the time. Dan’s first proposal to us was to fund an ambitous game that would be a spiritual sequel to Dear Esther. At about the same time, he told us about Robert Briscoe’s side-project to rebuild the Dear Esther mod with higher-end graphics.

We talked with Dan on and off about the potential new game for about a year. Due to various interactions with the bureaucracies surrounding universities and government funding sources, it had been uncertain how we could fund the new game. Meanwhile, though, Rob’s rebuild of Dear Esther had become a full project of its own. In April 2011, Dan switched gears and came to us to fund the completion of the Dear Esther rebuild, asking for £30K. We deliberated; even though the original Dear Esther was highly regarded among the art game community, we weren’t sure if people would buy it. Here’s an excerpt from an email we sent Dan in May 2011:

One thing we are thinking as we play the demo is that the Steam audience may not be the right one for the game. We don’t think it’s a bad idea to release on Steam, but we don’t know how well the game will do there (our thoughts so far are, “maybe the game will break even, maybe it won’t, but it won’t make a decent margin of money”.) Us as the fund are not really concerned about making much money, but what we hope is that the developers get a big audience and make enough that they are set for a while. So our hope would be that you make enough that you can self-fund [the bigger game] (or else get less outside funding for it than you would otherwise, or else at least have Esther sales that serve as a demonstration that this format can work well, so that people can invest in the next game with confidence).

What we are thinking is that PSN may actually be the best audience for the game, since PSN has a tradition of doing arty stuff, and so it might be good to launch on both PSN and PC simultaneously.

We appear to have been very wrong about all this. We are happy to have been wrong.

One month after Dan’s proposal, we voted to fund Dear Esther. Since the budget was relatively small and the team needed a large chunk of the money right away, we sent them the entire investment, $55k (USD), in one lump sum. As discussed in the Q.U.B.E. write-up, we liked the way this eliminates most of the hassle that comes with monthly-milestone kinds of situations.

Dan and associates had a very solid track record, so we did not worry about the game getting finished. From the point we funded it, the Dear Esther remake was on autopilot as far as Indie Fund was concerned. We’d ask Dan for one-paragraph status updates every couple of months, offer a small suggestion here and there, and let them continue with their work. Finally, the game was finished, on budget.

The result is in your hands today!

Congratulations once again to Dan, Rob, Jessica, and everyone else who contributed to the game. It’s great to see a game like to see Dear Esther doing well and we hope this means the next game will be much easier to make!

If you haven’t heard of Dear Esther, watch this:

(Or hey, watch the trailer even if you are quite familiar with the game; the trailer is beautiful and worthy of multiple viewings.)

We expect public reception of this game to run wide: some will love it, and others will be very concerned about whether this thing can be called a game and what that means. So far, this has certainly been the case in pre-release reviews.

Game Informer scored the game an 8/10, saying: “You should consider checking out Dear Esther the same way you’d appraise a film. If you’re interested in absorbing an intellectual story and gorgeous visuals without having to exert a drop of effort, take a chance on this curious experiment.”

VideoGamer.com scored the game a 9: “Discovery is such an important part of Dear Esther, especially when everything is so phenomenally pretty.”

Meanwhile, Destructoid gave the game a lowly 4.5/10: “It’s as if it wants to be a part of this wonderful medium of ours without asking itself why, which is exactly why you should seek it out and learn from its failures as a game enthusiast, critic, or developer.”

We like that there’s such a big difference of opinion because it means the game is breaking new ground. It’s playing in territory that is not safe; there is no established understanding there.

Dear Esther is a game that no publisher would have funded. Dan, Rob, Jessica and the other associates of thechineseroom have done an excellent job putting together a beautiful game. We are happy to be backing it; we hope you enjoy playing it.

If you’d like more information about Dear Esther, here’s an interview with Dan, and here’s a link the game’s page on Steam.