The Banner Saga Kickstarter Project Update #9, $579,000 and Counting

With 65 hours to go as of this writing, the folks at Stoic have penned another update for The Banner Saga Kickstarter drive, which sets some additional milestones, and informs us they are hiring a technical UI artist and a game programmer to help with the title. Considering they have raised $579,206 so far, the orchestra at $600,000 sounds almost a given:

The Orchestra (at $600k)
Austin Wintory is currently working on the soundtrack and hiring on musicians but due to the cost of a full orchestra is still working with a combination of digital and live music. If we hit this goal we’ll be able to have a full, honest-to-goodness orchestral score, each instrument played by a real musician in a high-quality recording studio used by film legends like John Williams.

Then what are the promotional music prizes for?
Prizes like the score and the signature have helped us get this far and also double as a way to guarantee that your personal donation goes directly into funding the music for the game.

The Most Content on the Most Platforms (at $650k)
Like the port to iPad and Linux, if we hit this goal we’ll be able to make the game available on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. The funding will allow us to have additonal developers port the game, leaving us to focus on content development.

The additional content is just as important. This will give us the ability to add a much wider range of special events that can occur as you travel and really expand the scope of the finale to make it the biggest, most rewarding conclusion we can.

The Player-Owned Cities (at $700k)
If we meet this goal we’ll be able to add one of the coolest features we thought was way beyond the scope of our game. In multiplayer, players will control their own city, raising it from a modest village to a bustling city with visual customization and their guild crest flying on the walls. Over time, players can construct buildings that will allow them to recruit new units, trade for powerful items and ultimately fight for territory.

How does extra funding allow you to do this?
These stretch goals will enable us to contract additional work for programming, design and writing, in addition to taking some of the load off of us, allowing the team to focus on expanding the content. The limited hours in a day are our biggest bottleneck at this point!

And since we’re at the final stretch, they also have a video with the developers describing their experience with Kickstarter and the stretch goals accompanied by some music by Austin Wintory. Oh, and in case you happen to be nearby this Saturday, the team will be hanging out at the Pour House pub in Austin at 3 pm.