That’s 27,000 backers of $25 each. And plenty of people will take the minimum $10, and a few wealthy and awesome people will take the very high packages - so far the highest package anyone has pledged is $500, and there’s at least a couple of people in all the packages between $50 and $500. 

What’s needed is to get this campaign out of Tumblr. It deserves it - yes, it’s great to have awesome female leads and poc (both in-game and on staff!), but I don’t support just any game that’s got ladies in it. Aberford has an interesting premise, intriguing combat for tactical players and great artwork, and I want people who don’t give a fuck about “sjw stuff” to support thinking about how you would use a Le Creuset and a well-timed kick to take out a former quarterback who’s literally feeling no pain. 

Also I really, really want to see a sponsorship deal with Home Depot or Bessemer now. 

Support Aberford here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/910316779/aberford-a-game-of-zombies-and-50s-housewives

^ what I said

Do these ignorant jackwads think that video games are easy to make or descend rom the heavens 90% finished or are plucked from trees in a games orchard or something? They take time, hard work, talent, and a bunch of money to make. Like a lot of money.

What do they think programmers, artists, and support staff work for? Love? They have families to support and rent to pay like all of us do. That’s what the money does, it pays people, and pays for equipment and rent on a building. It keeps the electricity on, and the phones working. It pays for security and publicity. Games aren’t made entirely of wishes and dreams. Work is paid for!

The Aberford Kickstarter isn’t a budget pad: it’s literally the production budget.

Your pledges pay for the art team to keep building the rest of the city (one cul-de-sac is not a game). For the character artists to keep modeling the 50 or so significant characters and hundreds of minor characters in the game. For the animators to animate a whole engine worth of combat animations and five chapters worth of conversations and dialogue. 

Your pledges will pay the programmers to write the million+ lines of code that let you fight zombies. They pay the cost of recording and editing hundreds of pages of dialogue.  They pay for a soundtrack and SFX so you don’t fight zombies in silence. They’ll pay for someone to jump 300 times in every single spot on the map with every single character just to make sure that nothing is broken and that you have a polished game to play.

Your pledges build this game.

Having worked for indie game devs (guess what my day job is?) 600k is not too much. 1mil is not too much. These are people who need to eat, pay rent, live and function  This budget is expected to support the nine core staff, expenses for the company itself, and a budget to outsource content. Shit’s solid. Go support a cool game with a cool concept, damned nifty art style, and amazing mechanic. 

I dunno if y’all remember but one day I mentioned to sketchypandagames how awesome it would be for there to be a Rose Knife in their game (At this point everyone knows how much I love that knife, right?). And I can’t believe it, I’m blown away. The Rose Knife is available as a backer reward for their Aberford Kickstarter.

Good job, sketchypandagames, you’re getting $75.

I posted this on Twitter and Facebook first, but now it’s your turn. Here are the updated character models for Aberford. These ladies will be your main four avatars for bashing zombies in the Aberford story mode.

Models by kat-yu

Kitchen concept art for Aberford, to help us make the room look a little more “lived in”. Drawing by spikievstheuniverse

This makes me want a video game about a zombie apocalypse that only affects men so it’s up to the housewives of 50s’ America to save humanity.

…saving this idea for class.

i would play the heck out of that game, it is an amazing idea.

Also can there be a character design screen so you can make your little housewife?

I think it’d be entertaining to see what guys could come up with for making their female-selves. If you ask me.

I would so play this game. 

I would suck at it but I would play it.

I’ve never played a zombie game, but you got me at 50’s.

Hngggggggg I love 50s clothes give it to me

OMG I already thought of some sort of premise:

In 1953 a certain laboratory on an undisclosed location developed a serum that could genetically modify humans, giving them enhanced speed, agility, strength, and brainpower.

Scientists found a way to modify the serum such that it could only activate itself in the presence of a Y chromosome, thus isolating the effects to men, mostly because of female discrimination at the time.

The serum was a success, and sales skyrocketed just a few weeks after its release.

What the developers did not anticipate, though, was the human body’s incapacity to handle the serum. The mental and physical over-exhaustion triggered a mental decay which starts out slow, but speeds up exponentially within a few months after usage of the serum. The brains of the users are left with only the most basic survival reflexes, transforming the users into strong, fast, agile, emotionless human shells, devouring any mobile life form in their path.

Bites from the affected individuals could place copies of the rogue serum into the bodies of the bitten, giving them the symptoms. Shortly after, the serum evolved into a sort of genetic virus, causing mental decay in just days. No one was safe. No one…

…except the women.

*cue in epic music*

Can you imagine the shitstorm this game would cause. I’d laugh pretty hard.

Would still play it though.

Not gonna lie, I’d play the shit out of this.

I approve of this concept 100%

I want a montage in the beginning of the housewife getting ready to kick ass

She puts on her best dress, a string of pearls, does her hair taking out the curlers, puts on her most stylish flats, and the finishing touch, her engagement ring with the big diamond in it, and when they fight, they look fabulous and kick ass like they were trained by Catwoman and Harley Quinn

Lipstick the shade of the blood of my enemies

Who has some skills or connections? Make it a Kickstarter and I’ll throw money at you.

the tutorial should start with a back and white cutscene with a woman in the kitchen, (not a sexist joke but roll with me on this.) she has the radio on and soon hears the virus outbreak notice for the drug, and remembers her husband had some. 

“i need to find a weapon" 

*objective 1: find a weapon* 

now you have control of the girl and are able to walk around the kitchen, till you are able to find 

1: butcher knife

2: a fire axe

3: a Wrench 

you choose one and procede to the next area which will tell about combat and dodging, with your husband as the “tutorial dummy" 

when you kill him you learn about looting and raiding chests (loot the body and get your necklace/earrings/whatever) 

then lastly you step into the closet to get ready to kick some ass.

afterwords it should be something like fallout with many sidequests and a main storyline.

So like.

This is in production? It’s called Aberford?

Like, here, have a link (because I’m on my tablet and the UI is shite)

http://sketchypandagames.tumblr.com/

sketchypandagames

Bahaha. That’s awesome.

Help Needed!

Hey Team,

We’ve decided to get started on the process of getting Greenlit on Steam, just so we can have that duck in the row when we go to Kickstart. 

As a first step, we’re proposing Aberford as a concept to build an audience within the Greenlight community. And it will help us a lot of could go in and share Aberford, or start some discussions or even just like us.

In gaming terms, we’re building a second base and we need troops from our main base to make sure everything goes well.

So if you’ve got Steam (and/or are willing to pressure you friends who do), we’d really appreciate the help. Just follow the link http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=455037901

THANK YOU!

Go check this out, give it a thumbs up, support it in any way you can. It’s gonna be amazing, the developers are awesome (read their blog too, it’s great, you get novel-length answers to all of life’s hardest questions ;D), so… go check it out!

you get novel-length answers to all of life’s hardest questions

I laughed myself to tears over that because it’s so, so true. I am deeply sorry to everyone who didn’t sign up for my massive rambles on gaming, writing, story-telling, and social issues. And I’m very grateful to those of you who enjoy them.

-A

The Aberford Cast (in one post)

The Main Four (The playable characters from the story mode)

Peggy Whitman

Former professional baseball player. Current housewife, mother of three, and terrible cook. Married to Arthur Whitman, Captain in the APD. Peggy is outspoken, tenacious, and strong-willed. Treats being told no as a personal challenge. Peggy’s planned AI personality is aggressive, attacking the nearest targets.

Betty Smith

Exceptional homemaker and chef. Also works as a nurse at Aberford General. Married to Phillip Smith, security liaison with Edwin Voorhees Industrial Laboratories. No children. Betty is kind, protective, and extremely competent at everything she does. Betty’s planned AI personality is Protective, targeting the zombies who are targeting the player.

Doris Baker

Doris worked as riveter during WWII while her husband Ralph fought in the Pacific theater. Now she waits tables at the local diner. Mother of four. Doris is tough, assertive, and committed to doing her duty as a citizen of Aberford and of the United States. Natural leader. Doris’ planned AI personality is Defensive, targeting the strongest or most dangerous enemies first.

Sylvia Hornberger

Sylvia’s fierce intelligence pushed her towards cutting-edge biochem research, where she met her now-husband Carl. She worked at Edwin Voorhess Industrial Laboratories for six years until she was terminated after becoming pregnant with her second child. Ruthless and tactically minded. Sylvia’s planned AI personality is Predatory, targeting the zombies that can be defeated the fastest.

The Expansion Characters (Play important roles in the main story and are playable in freeplay/multiplayer mode, with full side campaigns as stretch goals. Story details may still change for some of them.)

Norma Thompson

(I’m going to let a real artist do the concept on Norma, but Norma has strong facial features that people sometimes mistake for being severe or strict. She is, in fact, very warm once she opens up to people.)

Norma is the manager of Ms. Butler’s Boarding House for Girls and Young Women. She fought in WWII before transitioning and takes an experimental anti-androgen that she gets from a friend at Edwin Voorhees Industrial Laboratories. Norma is smart, practical, and very protective of the girls in her charge.

Mary Kuroki

A third-generation Japanese-American who spent her teenage years in a wartime internment camp. After relocating to Aberford, Ohio, Mary’s father sent her to college, where she earned a degree in Engineering. Mary builds rockets for Edwin Voorhees Industrial Laboratories and, much to her mother’s irritation, is unmarried.

Patricia Baker

At sixteen, Patricia is Doris’ oldest daughter. She’s a cheerleader at the local high school, where the zombie outbreak is particularly bad. 

Alejandra Rasmussen

Alejandra fell in love with a Mormon missionary in Mexico and married him shortly after he completed a degree in mathematics at BYU. Alejandra speaks very little English, but is a talented painter and is very self-reliant. She and her husband chose a really, really bad day to begin their new life in Aberford, Ohio.

The more I hear about this game the more amazed I become. Let’s face it, the 1950s was not a very diverse time in America, especially when we consider the limited opportunities for women and the “non-white” population. The fact that the cast is made up of strong women from various ethnicities and races (including a transitioned male to female and a teenager) is a HUGE and positive step for not only survival horror gamers but all gamers tired of playing stereotypical macho men or scantily clad heroines with huge breasts. I truly hope that this game not only becomes a success, but also that it may start a trend of giving ALL gamers strong and positive role models

^ Gets it.

Invested in Aberford

honestly i am already so invested in sketchypandagames‘ aberford and the game hasn’t even been completed yet. how am i gonna manage when i actually play?

Honestly, there’s probably going to be crying. Not chapter one so much, but chapter three is a doozy.

“as for women looking like pinups it shouldn’t be shamed”

I will objectification-shame the video game industry in hell

This made me laugh. I feel like I should issue a challenge for people to post videos of themselves saying “I will objectification-shame the video game industry in hell!” in the most intense and over-the-top way possible. Maybe it’ll go viral and the gaming industry will get the message.

With Aberford, it’s been very important to us not to sexualize the characters any more than we have to. Not because we think women should be ashamed of their bodies, but just because of how rampant objectification is in video games. Any sexualization tends to become over-sexualization in this industry, at the expense of almost everything else about the character. So we’re trying to give it a wide berth to compensate for that tendency. We want to prove that female leads can carry a game, and they can do it WITHOUT being aggressively marketed to horny middle-aged men.

We want the player to focus on these women as people. As human beings. And that’s hard to do when they have impossibly large breasts, impossibly tiny waists, and are always portrayed as either helpless waifs or bloodthirsty dominatrixes/librarians. Could we sell a game of sexy ‘50s pinups fighting zombies? Absolutely. But I don’t think the gaming industry would be any better for it.

“…bloodthirsty dominatrixes/librarians.“ 

Really, though, it’s beyond refreshing to see the constant stream of progressive thought coming from sketchypandagames. I know someone said it before, but it’s wonderful to see a video-game company responding to actual feedback from the community and showing the right attitude about things just like this.

Video games have become something beyond simple “entertainment”. They’re an important social/cultural medium through which we can explore heavy topics like racism, sexism, homophobia, class, gender, sexuality, emotions, war, famine, etc.. the same way that any other previously-regarded art form has. Games like Abeford are meant for more than just zombie-bashing, they’re meant to make you think about the issues at hand in an accessible, engaging way. Other games such as The Talos Principle, dys4ia, The Stanley Parable, Papers Please, This War of Mine, Never Alone, etc have shown the viability of video games as a serious art, and it’s exciting to see that the future holds even more of that.

I really hope that we’re in a renaissance of gaming, where indie studios can make good, mid-range video games that really take advantage of the medium’s teaching and thought-provoking qualities. I’ve said it before, but I really feel that games are the new books in many ways, and I think the devs of most of those games you mentioned would agree (at least in concept). And tools like social media, crowdfunding, and digital distribution let developers who want to address important issues reach audiences who want to explore them. 

It’s all very exciting.