Last-gasp heroics for Republique Kickstarter

Republique, by Halo and Metal Gear veteran Ryan Payton, has just 16 hours left to raise $60,000.

Payton launched the kickstarter Kickstarter campaign a month ago, seeking to raise half a million dollars to bring a AAA, story-driven game, featuring full motion capture and voice acting to iOS devices.

If Payton can raise the $500,000, then investors have promised to front the remaining half-million for the game’s budget.

This is no ordinary crowd funding venture though.

Republique got off to a very slow start, and some suggest that its main idea – to bring a AAA game to iOS – is offensive to the core demographic of gamers, which supposedly resents the current mobile trend.

Payton seeks to prove that gamers are more open minded than that.

Life is too short to be working on the same game and same genre that everyone else is trying to perfect,” he told Develop in an interview chronicling the frustrations that drove him to found Camouflaj.

“I really want to make a game for a phone that, to me, was real. One that was story-based, one that was mature and sophisticated, something that has meat to it, something for adults.”

With mere hours to go, it remains to be seen if the gaming public will front the money needed for the project., but a surge of interest has made it too close to call.

"I knew it was a big risk to have this as our first game out of the gate, and I thought – hey, shouldn’t we do something less risky and get our feet wet? But Alex told me to just go for it,” said Payton.

But Payton feels creative freedom is worth the risk.

“When we looked at funding this, we did talk to both traditional and new-style publishers, but we want to retain full creative control of this project."

“Everyone at Camoflaj walked out of places where they felt they didn’t have the creative freedom to do what they wanted," he explained.

"What is the point of opening up an indie studio and giving up that freedom just for a publisher to bankroll you? I didn’t leave these companies to be told by a guy in a suit about 3,000 miles away to change the name of a character."

“It’s not an option. Not any more.”