Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for August! We’re still a little bit in the post-GenCon hangover, but there are definitely a lot of things to talk about and games to look into.

Before getting into the games, this seemed like the right place to reiterate the news that Gamefound has acquired Indiegogo, mixing Gamefound’s newer tech stack with Indiegogo’s massive subscriber base. Gamefound has been very successful in board games, though they haven’t broken into RPGs to the same degree. Still, these two companies joining forces means we will likely have a third viable crowdfunding platform after Kickstarter and Backerkit in terms of network effects and value for project developers. Will we see more RPG projects from Gamefound in this list? Possibly. The site still trails in terms of reach and backer-facing quality of life features, like requiring disclosures for projects that use AI art. Still, more competition is generally better in the space, and I look forward to seeing the newest iteration of Gamefound roll out.

And with that, on to the games! We’ve got horror, we’ve got dragons, and yes, we’ve got another attempt at writing a tabletop roguelike. Onward!

It’s July! The weather is hot, and the RPG crowdfunding is…at least a little air conditioned. It’s the month before GenCon, and that means all the big design houses have their sights elsewhere, at least for the most part. Even so, there are plenty of games around and even some worth throwing money towards!

Speaking of GenCon. The biggest crowdfunding-related news in the last month was Kickstarter’s announcement that ZineQuest 2023 would be held in February, even though ZineQuest 2022, moved to August at the beginning of this year, hasn’t even happened yet. I don’t exactly know why this announcement was made so early; if it has any effect it’s probably to take the wind out of the sails of the event that’s scheduled for next month. It is possible that pre-launch metrics aren’t looking pretty, or that the GenCon co-marketing opportunities that were purportedly the reason for the time switch in the first place didn’t materialize. No matter the reason, we’ll be here next month covering ZineQuest 2022, just like we have for the last few years.