Deadly Premonition dev's The Good Life has been successfully crowdfunded
Second time's a charm.
There's great news for fans of cats, dogs, murder mysteries, village life sims, photojournalism, and, possibly, Hitchin today: developer Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro's delightful looking The Good Life has reached its Kickstarter goal.
The Good Life, in case you haven't been following along, is a "daily life RPG" in which players take on the role of New York photojournalist Naomi, who "moves to a backwoods British town called Rainy Woods in order to pay off her massive debt".
Once in Rainy Woods, according to The Good Life's Kickstarter page, you can make money by taking photos, or you can "shear sheep, deliver milk, make jam and hay, do some gardening, or work as a bartender, a casino dealer, a miner, or even mine for cryptocurrency".
It basically sounds a bit like Animal Crossing, if Animal Crossing was set in a fictitious, Hitchin-inspired English town, full of grisly serial murders to solve, and with townsfolk that can magically transform into cats and dogs once a month.
As irresistibly odd as all that might be, things weren't looking too great for The Good Life at the end of April, with the game only having raised around half of its £455,297 Kickstarter target. Following some tireless campaigning and promotion by Swery in the last few weeks, however, that target has now been met and more - at the time of writing, The Good Life has secured £464,060, with 52 hours still to go.
It's great news for Swery and his development studio White Owls, which also includes Panzer Dragoon creator Yukio Futatsugi as creative director, and art director Noboru Hotta, of Rez and Machi Koro fame - particularly given that the team's first attempt at crowdfunding The Good Life on Fig regrettably ended in failure.
Instead of admitting defeat, however, Swery pledged to try again, stating in February that White Owls had "exhaustively analyzed and re-examined our [first] campaign and initial plan, and made many critical adjustments".
These adjustments included improved game design for The Good Life, an enhanced graphical style, and, crucially, actual gameplay footage for potential backers to see. At the time, Swery said, "When we restart the campaign [...] we believe from the bottom of our hearts that The Good Life will be a project that satisfies you all."
With backers evidently more than satisfied with Swery's revitalised pitch, development can now begin in earnest, with The Good Life currently scheduled to launch on PC and PS4 in Q3 next year. A recently added stretch goal could see the game come to Switch if the £586,000 target is reached, but that seems unlikely in the time remaining.
There's plenty more information to be found about The Good Life on its Kickstarter campaign page, if you're curious. And if your appetite is sufficiently whetted, you can even explore a small slice of the peculiar experience via its recently released PC demo.