Games for girls aren’t always that easy to fund. Her Interactive has been making Nancy Drew mystery games on the PC for a long time, but to jumpstart its transition to smartphone and tablet games, the gamemaker has turned to a crowdfunding effort via Kickstarter.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based company launched its Kickstarter campaign yesterday and has so far raised more than $3,000 of its goal of $250,000. The company believes it will take that much to convert its newest PC game, Nancy Drew: Tomb of the Lost Queen, to mobile devices. The campaign will run until Sept. 11.
In a video on the campaign site, Megan Gaiser (pictured right), the chief strategy and creative officer of the firm, and Stuart Moulder, chief executive, say that fans have been asking the company for a long time to take its games to mobile platforms. The plan is to port the Lost Queen game to iOS (Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) and Android.
“Reaching a larger audience means that we can invest more in each Nancy Drew game,” the company says. “So everyone benefits from this move, whether you play our games on your PC, your Mac or a mobile device. But to port Nancy Drew games to tablets and smartphones, we need to raise some funds. That’s where you come in.”
The Tomb of the Lost Queen title, based on the best-selling Nancy Drew mystery books, has gotten good reviews on the PC and Mac and is one of the company’s most successful games to date.
Players can translate hieroglyphics, decipher ancient clues, uncover hidden chambers, reassemble artifacts, and solve ancient puzzles. But the new tablet and smartphone games will incorporate a touch interface. Nancy Drew has been around as a role model for women and girls since 1930, with more than 200 million books sold in 22 languages. Her Interactive’s games have sold more than 9 million copies, and Her Interactive has been around since 1995. It released its first Nancy Drew game in 1998.
The target amount isn’t a huge one, considering game designer Tim Schafer raised $3.3 million on Kickstarter. Then again, plenty of Kickstarter campaigns fail.