Our Story
My name is Steve Pastro and I am currently a Masters student at the Centre for Digital Media in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Over the past several years I have devoted endless hours to prototyping games for web and mobile platforms and am finally ready for the big show. I am currently developing an addictive puzzle game for iOS called Light Byte that tests your reflexes and memory by combining the excitement of a shooter with the colour-matching element found in old memory games.
As a student (and one who has incurred an incredible amount of debt), I am unable to release this game without your help! While I have been lucky enough to develop this game using an education license for the game engine Unity 3D provided by my school, I need to purchase my own licenses both from Unity and Apple if I want the game to ever see the light of day on the app store. All money contributed to this campaign goes directly towards the payment of these overhead fees, while I work full time at school during the day and full time at home on this game at night in order to have the app ready for release by the second week of March.
I wish I had the luxury of doing this completely on my own, but I need your help! I have and will continue to work day and night on the project to ensure it's completion, but without the requisite licenses it will all be for naught!
The Impact
I am confident this game has the potential to become a hit, and with your help will do all in my power to ensure that it does!
What We Need & What You Get
What I need:
While this project can use all the help it can get, here's the breakdown of where the money goes as it comes in:
First $100 - Covers the cost of the Developer License from Apple which allows one to publish something to the App Store.
Next $400 - Covers the cost of the basic iOS License for Unity 3D, allowing the game to be released commercially, but with a Unity branded splash screen and lacking several optimization tools.
Next $200 - Covers the cost of various plug-ins and toolsets from Prime31 which will allow the integration of features such as Leaderboards and Facebook and Twitter integration, and the optimization of assets to keep the file size small.
Next $2600 - Here's the big one: Covers the cost of the iOS Pro Unity 3D License, allowing the game to launch with a custom splash screen (ensures a professional feel from the outset), play full screen video, and take advantage of several optimization tools to ensure the game runs smoothly on all devices.
Above and Beyond - Any money made of the game will be split between PR and marketing spending to gain exposure and ensure the app succeeds, and the purchase of an iPad 1 so that I can begin work on an HD iPad version of the game and have a proper unit to test on.
THE PERKS:
I wish I had more to give to you wonderful people, but here's the best I can do for now:
$5 Donation gets you: A Light Byte themed Desktop Wallpaper (1440 x 900 pixels)
$10 Donation gets you: A 3-track (MP3 format) .zip file containing the game's soundtrack plus the Light Byte themed wallpaper.
$20 Donation gets you: Early acces to a beta version of the game playing on Mac and PC in a password protected .zip file, and the above items.
$50 Donation gets you: Beta Access to the game via Test Flight, your name on a "Special Thanks" page in the game, and the above items.
$100 Donation gets you: A one hour Skype conversation with me (time and date TBD and schedule dependent) where we can talk about anything you'd like, including how the game was made in Unity. You also receive all of the above perks.
Last but not least...
For the generous donation of $500: I will personally spend two complete work days (16 hours) prototyping a game of your choosing for iOS devices, and do my best to return to you a playable demo (of variable quality, depending on the game desired) in the form of a .zip file containing the entire Unity Project and source code upon completion. Again, you receive all of the above perks in addition to your brand new game demo :)
Other Ways You Can Help
Please spread the word and post this link to your Facebook and Twitter feeds. I love making games but with the money needed to be able to actually release them (not to mention the ominous cloud of student loans lurking ahead) I can't do this without you! It'd mean the world to me if you could help out in any way possible, whether it be via a donation yourself or just passing it along to a friend it truly means the world to me!
Thanks so much for reading my writeup and I hope you enjoy the game!
