Unnecessary Sentience seeking necessary funding

Written by K R Parkinson — August 5, 2014 at 12:41

Who says video games can’t be educational? An upcoming point-and-click title Unnecessary Sentience looks to not only be a surreal adventure, it’s also indie developer Joe Richardson's Bachelor's degree project in animation. But he needs money to buy the right tools for the job, and that's where gamers (and their wallets) come in.

Although the game's plot is not yet fully formulated, Richardson promises that it will be “funny, and a bit daft”, with dark humor, satire, and “at least one reference to Monkey Island 2”. Richardson is currently toying with the idea of a science fiction theme, and he claims that the game will be “quirky and fun and lovingly hand-crafted… challenging-yet-logical… [and] stylistically unique.”

Produced entirely by Richardson himself, Unnecessary Sentience uses a collage-inspired art style that will utilize Adobe Flash. A free, browser-based test version is already available to play, though it isn’t fully indicative of the final game’s quality.

The game will be around an hour long, but a smaller game also demands a smaller budget, so a Kickstarter campaign has been launched with a goal set at a rather paltry £1,000. Interested gamers have until August 31st to support the project and snag a £5 DRM-free copy of the game.

Unnecessary Sentience is being developed for PC, but a port to Mac and other platforms is at least possible before release in July 2015. For more information, check out the Kickstarter project page.