“Cloudscape” ended-up being over 400% funded on Kickstarter

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Press release:
The open-world action-adventure and survival game “Cloudscape” enters its final days on Kickstarter after 4 weeks of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.

Chris Gottron’s (aka Konitama) reached the funding goal within the first 24 hours, and since then has gone past the initial goal by over 300%. Today, 3 days before the end of the campaign, Top Hat Studios announced they will publish the game on Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X and PC/Steam.

Cloudscape is the debut game of Chris Gottron (aka Konitama), a veteran animator artist from popular shows like Spongebob Squarepants, She-ra or The Fairly OddParents.

The game reached its funding goal of $50,000 on day one thanks to a campaign on Kickstarter that features exclusive digital and physical rewards including a physical edition for Nintendo Switch. Top Hat Studios is a New York-based boutique publisher with other successfully crowdfunded games under their belt, like SteamDolls or Ova Magica, as well as recently published indie titles like Synergia, Potion Party or Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story.

Inspired by classics such as Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, Cloudscape mixes survival, action, exploration and social mechanics. You play as Kumo, a Cloudling who wakes up ashore on a sunny deserted island.

You’ll have to explore the island and build a refuge for yourself, because this paradisiac place is not as uninhabited as it looks: monsters roam the island by night and will attack you on sight! You will have to gather materials to craft tools and weapons, forage and fish to get food, stoke your campfire to fend off the darkness of the night… You can perform actions such as mining, cutting down trees for wood, planting and harvesting resources amongst other things to build your farm and thrive on your island.

Eventually you will manage to leave it – in order to leave each island though, you’ll have to make your way through monster and trap-laden dungeons — consisting of both meticulously handcrafted setpieces and procedurally generated areas, in order to ensure a perfect balance between replayability and experience.

And that’s only the beginning of your real adventure! You’re not restoring a farm, you’re restoring the world. Society has become fragmented among these little parcels of land, and it’s your task to make them whole again.

You will keep exploring and finding ways to survive in every land you find, so as to expand your reach to multiple islands and bring them together, improving the life of whoever you find in your journey.

Every playthrough is unique in Cloudscape: with a mix of procedurally generated and carefully hand-crafted areas, every experience will be different, without losing the quality of a curated, designed experience. Combining elements of survival and Zelda-like combat and discovery-based gameplay, Cloudscape is the story of a little cloud who falls to a fragmented earth – and decides to turn it into paradise.

KEY FEATURES

Explore a rich world with new exotic locales and unlock many new resources, tools and abilities to help take you further into the world.
Farm, Fish, Forage and Craft as you brave the wilderness and try to bring heaven to earth!
A cute, whimsical art style created by a veteran of the animation industry who previously worked on childhood defining cartoons like Spongebob Squarepants
Many inhabitants to meet! Make friends, enemies or even find love
Fight to survive the night! Craft and uncover new weapons to help defend yourself in the dark, as well as through special dungeons made as a love letter to classic Zelda titles such as A Link To The Past.
Build a house, decorate it, fill it with stuff! Customize your look with different clothing
Catch bugs, tame and raise animals (you CAN pet the doggy!), learn to cook, dig for buried treasure, solve puzzles and uncover secrets
A special Nintendo Switch Physical Edition of Cloudscape available as a reward on Kickstarter! Konitama is working with a trusted partner with a track record of delivering on crowdfunded games to facilitate this.

ABOUT KONITAMA and Chris Gottron
Cloudscape is the debut game of indie studio Konitama, nom de plume of Chris Gottron. An experienced digital animator and artist, Gottron started his career working at Nickelodeon Animation Studio on a wide variety of shows, such as Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly OddParents, and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness.

He later transitioned to DreamWorks Animation Television, where he contributed to shows such as All Hail King Julien, Voltron, and Boss Baby among others. During his stint in the animation industry he also spent some time developing game apps and prototyping games, leading to his choice to retire from animation and begin a new career as a full-time game developer.

ABOUT TOP HAT STUDIOS
Top Hat Studios is a niche New York-based boutique publisher whose titles include Synergia, Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, Synergia, Potion Party, and kickstarted successes as Ova Magica, SteamDolls, and The Girl From Arkanya.

Having started as a genuine grassroots indie company with no external investment, Top Hat Studios now provides a holistic suite of publishing, business development, and porting expertise to indie developers and solo devs.