Well this is a new one. Never seen a developer give up on their Kickstarter project before. In the unlikely event that you were following <a href='http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lootdrop/an-old-school-rpg-by-brenda-brathwaite-and-tom-hal' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Old School RPG, re-christened Shaker a little over a week ago,</a> you might be surprised to hear that the creators have given up on the project. They had a quarter of a million dollars and a target of $1M (achievable if they started really leveraging their credentials), but they had some truly ambitious stretch goals that I think they had their hearts set on. They said that they plan to try again after refining it, here's hoping that they're serious next time.
Making up for their exit is <a href='http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption</a> by Quest for Glory creators Lori and Corey Cole, a spiritual successor to that series. If you don't know Quest for Glory... well, I'm not surprised. It was a Sierra franchise that mixed Sierra's ludicrously unfair adventure game design with RPG mechanics with some success. I think it's because the puns were so awful that Piers Antony would have hesitated to put them in Xanth, as well as how the games handled the concept of heroism itself. Q4GIV in particular had some interesting things to say about heroes, villains and why you do the bad things you do. Here's wishing them the best of luck, and my $20.