Thanksgiving and Black Friday have come and gone, December is here, and that means it's time for one last roundup of crowdfunding campaigns in 2019. As always, we have no insider information or financial interest in any of these projects, and no one at Retronauts has been compensated for including anything on this page. Furthermore, we support the efforts of Kickstarter employees to unionize.

Alwa's Legacy
Platform: Steam, Nintendo Switch
Campaign ends: December 5
Estimated delivery time: April 2020
Minimum pledge to receive the game: SEK 200 (about $21 US - digital only)

Alwa's Legacy is a followup to Alwa's Awakening, an indie NES-esque Metroidvania about a girl exploring the land of...Alwa (I should have guessed). The sequel looks a lot snazzier - I'd say more SNES-esque - though the soundtrack retains an 8-bit chiptune feel thanks to composer RushJet1.

Guinea Pig Parkour
Platform: Windows
Campaign ends: December 6
Estimated delivery time: December 2020
Minimum pledge to receive the game: $15 US (digital only)

Video games in the 90s were known for two things: cute animal mascots and lots of platforming. No one called it "parkour" at the time, of course, but now that we have that word it's a good descriptor for all that wall-jumping! Guinea Pig Parkour looks like an incredible homage to 90s games, allegedly hand-drawn and designed entirely by one Jeff Mumm. Stating that the project began as a tribute to Aladdin on Super Nintendo, he adds "the strongest inspiration for Guinea Pig Parkour as a concept was my childhood desire to play a video game that felt like you were inside a cartoon."

Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld
Platform: it's a book
Campaign ends: December 13
Estimated delivery time: December 2019 (digital only)
Minimum pledge to receive the book: $5 US (digital only)

Pilgrim in the Microworld was a 1979 book written by David Sudnow about his personal fascination with Breakout on the Atari 2600. The book has been out of print for decades and Mr. Sudnow has since passed away, but Boss Fight Books - the indie publishing label focused on books about video games - is running this Kickstarter campaign to release a new edition of the book with a new foreword. The campaign has been fully funded and the ebook edition will be available later this month; paperback editions are due out next month in 2020.

(Speaking of books, An Itchy, Tasty History of Resident Evil is still being crowdfunded! It's full of interviews from people who made Resident Evil into the phenomenon that it is today, written by friend of Retronauts Alex Aniel! Don't miss out!)

The Warp Coin Catastrophe
Platform: Game Boy (Color)
Campaign ends: December 17
Estimated delivery time: March 2020
Minimum pledge to receive the game: $53 CA (about $40 US)

I don't know who "the Warp World crew" are but they have made their very own Game Boy game about solving a mystery, point-and-click style. The game is done and playable online right now but this campaign exists so they can print and ship physical cartridges to their fans, adding that "If the project is successful enough, this can also fund the creation of new episodes/cases for this game."

A Profound Waste of Time: Issue 2
Platform: it's a magazine
Campaign ends: December 19
Estimated delivery time: December 2020
Minimum pledge to receive the magazine: £20 (about $26 US)

After a successful crowdfunding campaign to release the first issue of A Profound Waste of Time (a magazine about video games, a medium near and dear to our hearts here at Retronauts) we now have a second campaign to publish a second issue. The cover art looks like San Francisco as imagined by Keita Takahashi who will be among the special guest interviews in the next issue. Upper-tier backers can also get Mr. Takahashi's autograph on their copy of the magazine.

Note that this is a magazine in the literal sense which means backers must pay for shipping and must actually pick it up in their hands and read it - no clicking, pinching, or tapping! Millennials be warned!

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