Lab Zero Games has started an Indiegogo campaign for their next game, Indivisible, with the help of 505 Games.
Lab Zero Games is looking for $1.5 million dollars to fund Indivisible, and has a demo for the prototype available now — only available for Windows. Lab Zero says that Indivisible is inspired by action RPGs akin to Valkyrie Profile and Super Metroid, but will have the signature art and animation that they are known for — seriously, their animation is ridiculously good.
Indivisible relies on a combination of platforming, combat, exploration, and a score by Secret of Mana composer, Hiroki Kikuta. Lab Zero is promising varied environments for Ajna, the games protagonist, to explore. In addition, Ajna will receive weapons that can be used both in combat and traversal throughout the game.
The combat, like previously stated, is inspired by the PlayStation classic Valkyrie Profile. At first glance it resembles a turn-based combat system, but after further explanation by Lab Zero it is more than that. There will be four characters that are mapped to the face buttons of the controller, and tapping the corresponding button for a character will result in an attack; this is where Lab Zero‘s experience making Skullgirls surface — the attacks can be linked to create combos.
Later in the game more complex inputs will become available by using a combination of face buttons and either up or down on the d-pad, which will extend the combo mechanic.
Included in the Indiegogo campaign page for Indivisible is an outline on the relationship between Lab Zero and 505 Games, who published PayDay 2, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Turns out $1.5 million isn’t enough to develop Indivisible, and the real budget is $3.5 million. Upon raising the $1.5 million 505 Games will kick in the remaining $2 million dollars for Indivisible‘s budget.
Lab Zero is trying to be forthcoming about the relationship given the stigma surrounding crowdfunding lately:
After accounting for pre-production and ramp-up time, the full budget will support a spending rate of around $10,000/man-month – this includes employee salaries, benefits, office rent, utilities, equipment, legal costs, and all other business overhead. This is widely considered a sort of baseline average spending rate for the games industry.
Indivisible looks promising. Of course, this isn’t a game until it is funded and then made, so cautious optimism is appropriate. But Lab Zero has been transparent in its partnership with 505 Games, the budget for Indivisible and already have a working prototype; Indivisible‘s crowdfunding campaign looks honest and promising.
You can get a more in depth look at Indivisible here.
