A word to the wise, particularly those independent game developers. We will be introducing new articles onto iPad Board Games, called Group Funders. These articles will bring your attention to a singular project that relates to either a digital or physical board game, which is seeking funding through crowd source sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and the like.

We are aiming to make this a highlight of the week, bringing one single game to our reviews on Fridays (let’s call it Friday Fun Funders or something inane!). If you have a project, or know of a project you think should be brought to our attention, please do so.

I should note, that while we are aware of big name companies who are now using the crowd sourcing model to launch new titles, I will have a preference to try and give some independent titles some publicity that they might not otherwise achieve.

Our first Group Funder title will be made available this Friday.

Sling your crowd funders to angelus dot v dot morningstar at gmail dot com.

Alien Frontiers

To start with, let’s introduce you to a kickstarter for Alien Frontiers.

Alien Frontiers is the product of Clever Mojo, who used Kickstarter to crowd fund the physical game in 2010. Now they are trying to make the digital leap and bring that game to you as an iPad port.

“AF raised nearly $15,000 on that first Kickstarter, but that’s just a drop in the bucket these days. The first printing of 1,100 copies sold out the day after it arrived in my garage. The second printing of 3,200 copies sold out a week after it arrived at my distributor’s warehouse. And we’ve sold through about half of the 3rd printing of 5,400 copies. Along the way, AF picked up several top slots on reviewers’ “Best Games of 2010″ lists and it was even selected by MTV Geek as one of their “Top 10 Games for 2010″.”

As of writing this, the kickstarter is about a third of the way to its goal and has just a little over two weeks to go. While I appreciate that the average person expects to pay perhaps $5 for an app, I think this is a good time to invest some of your money into independent development. You can even pledge as little as $1.

The image above represents a mockup of the game, and if you observe the video on the website, you’ll see that quite a lot of work has gone into the development already. A worthy project, I hope you’ll agree.

Review By: Angelus Morningstar

Completed a Masters of Jurisprudence at University of Sydney. I am an activist, dramaturge, and instigator of strange mind experiments. I’m a storyteller, and I mostly tell stories about people. These aren’t always stories you’ll find written down, they can be stories told over a coffee, told by firelight, told through art act and lifestyle. Of course, we all tell stories. We love our little fictions, lies and dreams – I just like to embellish a bit more than most. My current project of substantial size is called Eidolon. It can be found here: http://www.eidolon.me