If you enjoy listening to the amazing sounds of a symphonic orchestra, with rock music tied in, playing nostalgic video game music, then chances are you are one of the many people that have seen or heard Video Games Live over the past few years. After 2 successful albums/Blu-Ray/DVDs (Level 1 and Level 2), Tommy Tallarico has reached out to KickStarter to to get funding for the third installment, Level 3.

Some of the rewards for the various tiers are quite unique and include things like:

• Ttour and lunch at Blizzard Entertainment by the Blizzard Audio Team
• 30 second personalized recording of Solid Snake by original Snake voice actor David Hayter
• Tron Light Cycle blue-prints signed by Tron creator/executive producer Steven Lisberger
• Signed sheet music from game composers all over the world
• and lots more

If you would like to donate to the cause, you can do so at the official KickStarter page here.

In the wake of the cancelled OZombie Kickstarter campaign, American McGee has returned to the crowd sourcing platform to try and fund a series of animated short films inspired by the “Alice: Otherlands” concept. The long term goal would be to develop and produce a feature length film version of Alice’s story.

If you are interested in contributing to the campaign, check out the Kickstarter page.

Independent French developer Lexis Numérique launched the first Kickstarter campaign by a French game studio today.

The game, Taxi Journey, follows the exploits of Gino, a down-on-his-luck cabby.  After picking up a strange fare by the name of Zoe, the pair embarks on a voyage across a charmingly dismal land where they encounter quirky allies and sinister foes hatching a mysterious plan.

The game is inspired by the works of Tim Burton and Hayao Miyazaki and aims to pay homage to titles like Limbo and Braid.

The Kickstarter campaign is set to run until July 27 and hopes to raise $230,000.  The game is planned for release on PC and Mac, but with increased funding the team intends to develop versions for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and mobile devices.

Contributing $20 will net you early access to the game, but throwing down a little extra can earn you anything from a place in the credits to an all-expense-paid trip to the Lexis studio is Paris.

Check out Taxi Journey’s Kickstarter page and head over to the Lexis Numérique website to brush up on their other projects (if you can understand French, that is).

If you managed to get to PAX East 2013, you had the chance to check out and play Qbots. However, that version of the game was just a proof of concept. Now, Qbots executive David Forbes is moving the project to Kickstarter to secure the funds it needs to get a proper release. Here is how Qbots describes the project:

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, check out the Kickstarter Campaign to see video, stills and read more about the game.

After just five days on the crowd-sourcing site, Double Fine’s Second Kickstarter project, Massive Challace, is a success. The funding target was set at $725,000 but that turned out to not be much of a challenge for Double Fine’s fans. It should be noted that Double Fine’s first Kickstarter project, Broken Age, hit its target of $1,000,000 in under a day. If you want to contribute to Massive Challace, there is still time. You have until June 27th to get in on the ground floor. Just click here and give as much as you see fit.

After its smashing success of the Double Fine Adventure game, the folks at Double Fine are back at it. Dan Muir (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, and Iron Brigade) is going directly to the public to fund a tactical strategy PC game on a fantasy timeline. They describe it as the possibility of “If turn-based tactics and feudal fantasy had a lovechild, and that offspring founded a mighty century-spanning dynasty”. If you want to know more or fund the project, check out their Kickstarter page here.

Kickstarter campaigns have been monumental in the past year for helping projects get off the ground and while many indie dev’s use it to get the starting capital they need, the big boys aren’t afraid to ask for help either. Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British, wants to go back to the fantasy realm with his upcoming game Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. They have currently raised more than $2 million through crowdsourcing, with the original Kickstarter goal of $1 million.  After the Kickstarter campaign drew to a close, more than 20-thousand backers had pledged $1.9 million, while the game’s own crowd funding store located at ShroudoftheAvater.com, Shroud of the Avatar raised a total $2.030 million from 23,096 backers.

I am incredibly grateful to all the fans who backed us during the Kickstarter campaign and those fans are now part of our design and development process going forward with Shroud of the Avatar. We will be listening to all of them as we go about making the kind of fantasy RPG that I really enjoyed making in the earlier part of my career. But this is really only the start. We will continue to keep our own crowd funding store open to bring in more funds to help us add even more features to the game.

-Richard Gariott

During the Kickstarter campaign, several major announcements were brought to light about Shroud of the Avatar including

• New York Times best-selling author Tracy Hickman has joined on as the lead story designer
• A serialized prequel novel based on Shroud of the Avatar storyline and authored by Hickman will be released
• The game will include a pet system with animal taming, guild houses, banks, city theaters for player performances, castle merchants with unique merchandise, and more.

Look for Shroud of the Avatar to launch in 2014.

If you haven’t heard, Ultima Forever is an Ultima MMO coming to iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and iOS platforms later this Summer 2013, developed by Mythic Entertainment and published by EA. It will hit other platforms like Android and PC later on, and potentially console downloadable services as well, but that hasn’t been announced.

Fully titled “Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar”, the game is a remake of Ultima IV, but takes the series in a drastic new, modern direction. The base game is being built upon Ultima IV (although set 21 years into the future), and will update, improve upon (well, your mileage may vary), and add many new features so as to play like an all-new title.

The illustrious 30-year legacy of the Ultima franchise continues with Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. Return to one of western gaming’s most beloved series and become the Avatar. Set twenty-one years after the events of Ultima IV, the world of Britannia is slowly being engulfed by the Black Weep. It is a faceless plague that consumes the spiritual, instills fear in the valorous and corrupts the honorable. Lady British has called forth for heroes like you to help save the world before it is consumed by the endless dark. It’s up to you and your fellow players to help save the land. Delve into this expansive saga as you search for a cure to the Black Weep, and meet many of Britannia’s inhabitants along the way. Choices are a big part of the experience in Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, and decisions should be made wisely as they may have a later impact. Meet hundreds of other players in city hubs, form parties, and set forth on grand adventures. Explore dungeons to uncover the cause of the Black Weep, and take down enemies in fast, explosive combat. The rewards are great, with the chance to uncover rare items and treasures that unlock your fame and fortune. Become the Avatar and save Britannia from the Black Weep! • Play the ultimate mobile RPG for FREE • Enjoy hundreds of hours of quests and dungeons • Embark on epic adventures across a vast open world • Explore dungeons and defeat enemies in fast paced, co-op action combat • Personalize your adventure with special abilities, epic gear, and cosmetic items • Choose your actions wisely, as every choice may have a later impact • Experience immersive storylines as you help Britannia’s inhabitants

The game looks pretty nice graphically. No longer an 8-bit sore to the eyes, the graphics have been completely redone in a modern style with beautiful hand-painted backgrounds and 3D models. Layered on top of that is an updated UI and Inventory build, new quests and quests with different timelines than the original set far in the future that will give new perspective on events, and all-new gameplay elements, among other things.

The biggest new feature, of course, is the fact that this will be a Massively Multiplayer Online title with action-RPG gameplay (yes you read that right), allowing you to group together with your friends and complete quests and dungeons as a unit. As such, you will see people adventuring in your game world as you’re playing, and can chat and team up. All-new stories and quest-lines abound, which will ensure that both veterans and new-comers shall be enthralled with this new version and have something to look forward to (or at least that’s the idea).

EA plans to pack the game with content to give it a long shelf-life. To that end, numerous amounts of loot and equipment abound, and the game features a complex leveling system that belies it’s portable nature. You’ll also have your reputation, honor, honesty and other attributes to keep track of and build upon too.

Of course, as is often the case with online games today, especially MMO’s… some of this will come at a cost. No it’s not a subscription, but it’s the dreaded Freemium model. Those who are annoyed by the urging of videogames these days to get you to buy something as you play, will most certainly be turned off by this feature. In particular, the keys you find in dungeons will always be “low-level” and thus give you low-level loot for the chests that you do have access too. The high level keys? You guessed it. You’ll need to pay for the rarest ones. You’ll also need to pay to unlock “frustration-removers” like more ability slots.

Loot can also only be found in treasure chests, which require a Bronze, Silver or Gold Key. Gold Keys can only be purchased with real money, whereas Silver Keys can be purchased with ten Bronze Keys in-game, or purchased with actual real money. Instanced areas trigger the Action RPG combat, with clicking and tapping to target and attack enemies and area-of-effect damage placed on a cooldown. You can also perform more advanced attacks like backstabs or flanking in order to take out tougher enemies. And thanks accelerate if you are working with three other friends.

As is often the case with the many, many, many free-to-play MMORPG’s that exist these days, you’ll need to decide for yourself whether these nickle-and-dime schemes completely tarnish your childhood memories, or whether the updates to the gameplay, story, graphics, and overall modern remaking is enough to get into the game regardless. There is always the chance that EA could still put in enough content to make the game worth playing even if you never buy anything… but that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt. So “not bloody likely”. But that’s the reality we currently find ourselves in, alas…

That being said, there is a huge audience of gamers who never played Ultima, and probably couldn’t even get into it even if they tried thanks to the outdated graphics. To them GOG is of no help, cause the game is too old (1985 on PC, 1990 on NES/Sega Master System) to appeal to them. In that way, this game may be able to satisfy modern gamers and give them a touch of the classic Ultima world and story.

Ultima Forever will be released this Summer, and supports cross-platform play between the iOS version and the upcoming PC and other platform versions (Yet to be announced).

If this game drastically turns you off as an Ultima vet, then you’ll surely want to back  Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues Kickstarter-funded videogame that is the true spiritual successor to Ultima, as Lord British (aka Richard Garriot) himself doesn’t have anythign to do with this new EA game. In fact Lady British is due to Lord British having the rights to that title. If you want a game that is more in the style and feel of the original Ultima, then this is definitely the title for you. Shroud of the Avatar has already met it’s $1,00,000 dollar goal and has exceeded it! There are still three days left for you to back the project, so that amount will certainly increase! Right now the project has a whopping 18,205 Backers!

If you are a fan of 2D side-scrolling run-and-gun games like Contra or some of the earlier Duke Nukem or Serious Sam games, you may want to check out Empire Eden. They are currently looking for funding on Kickstarter and they need your help.

The game promises to include a ton of features like weapons, mech suits and include more levels and game mechanics. We could go on but who better to describe the game than the developers. Check out the video below and support the effort to get this game made. Click here for the campaign.

At the $1,100,000 mark, the team at Red Thread decided to create an Interactive Graphic Novel to help assist and refresh newcomers and veterans alike with the story so far in the Dreamfall and The Longest Journey series. The funding reached other goals as well, including an improved soundtrack, more voiceovers, and a director’s cut edition. Recently, the game became available on Steam Greenlight, Valve’s new service where you vote on games you wish to see for sell on Steam. Without a doubt, fans will make sure this becomes a reality much like with the initial funding of the project. The trailer, which you can also watch at their Kickstarter site, has an overview for the game, explaining the basics and lore of the series’ story. For more news on Dreamfall Chapters and its imminent release, keep it right here.