I thought this was pretty cool, especially as someone who is waiting on the PC version, I hope it isn't seen as spam.

Link to Indiegogo

Basically they are asking for $150,000 to create Squigly as DLC, and will release her for free to everyone on all platforms for 3 months should it get funded. It's already 1/3 of the way there at the time of this posting. They have stretch goals for other characters as well.

They even break down the costs of everything so you know what your money is going towards, which is pretty neat.

More importantly, contributing at least $30 will get you a pre-order/beta access of the Steam version of the game, and an exclusive TF2 hat only available through this campaign. There are more rewards past that tier, but this was the one that stood out to me personally.

I hope this succeeds, I think it's neat that DLC can get crowd funded like this, instead of putting it out on someone else's dime and then being in a tough spot should there not be enough interest or something.

Having the Steam version of this game would be pretty rad...

They only need $5k right now to reach their goal and they still have the full 30 days left. That's intense. I'll be honest, $150k sounded like a lot to ask (to me at least, even with a breakdown of how the money is used, it still seemed like a lot) but the community for this game continues to surprise me.

I hope they bash through all their stretch goals and we get to see all the new characters in game (and hopefully enough interest to get another game funded by a publisher, maybe?).

Also, the "mysterious character" thing is pretty neat. In case you aren't aware: they are revealing a character design every $20k and if they reach $600k a fan vote will be held for another DLC character based on these mysterious reveals. You should give 'em a look see if you dig the art (I know I do). The most recent one released, Stanley, looks pretty sweet.

Does anyone even play Skullgirls anymore? I am not bad mouthing a game I haven't played but I stopped seeing it pop up on twitch.tv like a week or two after it was released. Is there still an active community and will it be at EVO?

@bartok: Was #1 on PSN in Japan recently (apparently) and this got funded in a couple of days.

I don't play the game myself, but seems there is reasonable interest still.

@bartok: There will be a side tournamentat Evo. Since it just lost to Melee during the fundraiser and it still raided about $80k, the Evo guys decided to throw $1000 bucks into the prize pool and will stream the top 8.

I am really happy to see the support pouring out for this game. I love it, but it just seemed it was plagued with so many problems at the start. It released and everyone griped about the lack of moves list, then they promised a patch which never came. It finally came out on PS3, but still not out on 360. They all lost their jobs and it seemed that the game was dead. But the community has shown major support between this and the Evo donation drive. I really hope people begin to dive back in when the PC version is out, which seems like it will be the definitive version.

@bartok said:

It was one of the games that was competing in that donation drive to be on the main stage. It didn't win but I believe it got second. I do know it will be there for people to just play.

As for the indiegogo fund, I really like Skullgirls and would love to see continuing support for it. I'll probably donate some money towards it.

If Big Band is not funded I will hunt each and every one of you down and blow a saxophone very loudly directly into your ear.

Forget Big Band. I need all of you to help this reach $600k so I can play this guy:

SCIENCE SHARK.

Any word on how far along the PC release is, or when the beta will open? I always thought that Skullgirls looked really cool and that I'd pick up the PC version when it's out but it never came.

In any case I really hope it reaches 600k and that the team can continue working on the game. With a lot of the less than fortunate news in relation to game studios recently it's good to see that there's a lot of support coming in for the game.

@chibithor: I don't think they have given an exact date. But I believe the goal was around Summer of this year for the release. Then Beta for it will begin earlier, I am guessing April/May ish.

150K for A character is a lot.

You can count me in. Love Skullgirls and can't wait to try the new characters.

Figured I'd post a couple of updates here

• Big Band has been funded
• Linux version coming
• New stretch goals/tiers/rewards

Mike Z has also been talking about how the different mystery characters might play and someone at Skullheart made a list if you want info beyond what they look like. It's still mostly pretty unspecific though

I just don't understand why they would want to invest so much time and money to create a character that they will give away for free. While very admirable, this is after all a business and if they need to ask for donations to add just a single character to a game they put out then they're obviously not doing so hot and should probably concentrate on gathering funds instead.

In other situations, the people who create the DLC are paid already. Any money from the purchase of DLC sales go back to the "original funds". If they hit their funding and their numbers are correct then they don't need to charge for the DLC since everyone who worked on it got paid.

Another update and what a weird thing:

If the campaign reaches 725k, Lab Zero will license the Skullgirls engine to the Mane6 team (of Fighting is Magic) for free.

@humanity: They ARE charging for the DLC, but everyone who owns skullgirls for the first X weeks after it comes out gets it for free. And since they're getting the funds to do it ahead of time, that means it's a win win for everybody. Plus they get to drum up support and popularity for this game which is also good for both them and the players.

Actually, Skullgirls sold quite well, but unfortunately the original publisher, Autumn Games, became embroiled in a legal issue with City Nationl Bank over a loan for Def Jam Rapstar. Because of this, all of the the money Autumn Games has made, including the money that should have gone to what has become the Lab Zero team for sales of Skullgirls, have been tied up by the courts. So rather than throw in the towel and walk away from their dream project, they turned to their not insubstantial fanbase and it looks like it's paid off. They get to keep working on Skullgirls and we get more Skullgirls content.

@chibithor: So now my donation can go towards the continued development of Skullgirls and giving Mane6 a good engine for their new IP? I'm in. In all honesty, I think the 725k stretch might be difficult to reach this far into the fundraiser, but hopefully there'll be a big end-of-the-week push.

The last day they said they'll be doing a stream, not sure how long it'll last though.

They just reached 600k for the third character, see character profiles for voting here. I think I'm going for Minette, Annie and Isaac for the first round. MikeZ also made a video explaining Isaac some more since it seems it's his pick for the third character.

Isaac sounds fantastic. I like the idea of him playing with the timer. I haven't read all the character bio's but it seems like it'll be hard to be more interesting than the ideas they have for Isaac's time travel abilities.

Isaac has, by far, one of the most interesting concepts for a fighting game character that I've seen for a while, but I wonder how difficult it might be to fully implement. Either way, we've almost hit the 625K marker. If the last two days can keep up this kind of crazy momentum, we just might make it to 725K before the end.

Feng Feng Feng Feng Feng Feng

They reached 725k for Robo-Fortune character and Mane6's engine lisence!

There's one last stretch goal (apart from Robo-Fortune stage/story) for yet another character, though with 95k to go in 10 hours I don't know that they can reach it

They're only 30k away from their fifth DLC character! 2 hours to go, we need some big spenders to come in under the wire.

GO GIVE THEM MONEY NOW!

1 hour and 20k to go, I gotta believe!

5th character just funded.

YEARRRHSSSSHSHSHHSHSSSSSS

Now I have double the chance of getting Feng in the game!

Cool beans.

Now we wait.