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Dizzy Returns developer defends Kickstarter target

Oliver Twins scramble to clarify

Dizzy Returns developer defends Kickstarter target
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| Dizzy Returns

The developer behind the Dizzy Returns Kickstarter campaign has taken to the web to explain why it's asking for £350,000 in funding.

Last week, UK gaming legends the Oliver Twins appealed for funding for a new Dizzy game in what has become the customary fashion for cult gaming classics.

As with Broken Sword, Elite, and Shadowrun before it, Dizzy Returns will be made once its Kickstarter campaign has attracted sufficient support and funds from fans eager to see the game.

Or so the Oliver Twins hope.

Money talks

Some have questioned how the Dizzy Returns £350,000 funding figure - without which the game will be scrapped - was reached.

"At first glance it sounds like a lot of money to develop a game," Andrew and Philip Oliver acknowledge in a recent blog update on the Dizzy Returns Kickstarter page.

In the post, the Oliver Twins then contrast the fact that "teams of hundreds of people at large studios create AAA titles for consoles and PC and spend tens of millions of dollars in the process" with "independent developers creating mobile games for a fraction of that cost".

Apparently, the Oliver Twins' own games studio, Blitz Games Studios, sits "somewhere in the middle of those two extremes".

In other words, Dizzy Returns won't be some bedroom-coded pet project. It'll be made by a proper studio that employs "over 200 talented and creative people, with game teams typically made up of anywhere between 10 and 70 people".

The Oliver Twins assures their fans that Dizzy Returns will be anything but a simple revamp of the classic Dizzy games (one of which is pictured below).

"We have big things in store for Dizzy Returns that are far from simple," the boys say.

Just to drive that point home, the Oliver Twins proceed to explain exactly where that £350,000 would go, if that tally were successfully raised.

There'll be a team of at least 12 people - including dedicated designers, programmers, animators, artists, and an audio team - working on the game for a period of six months.

The game itself will be approximately five times bigger than the original games, with 10 times the number of puzzles and fully scrollable levels (the original games were flip-screen affairs). Many of those puzzles will incorporate modern physics-based mechanics, as well as light- and time-related solutions.

Eggs-citing stuff

Dizzy himself will be rendered in 3D, and the cast of characters will be fully voiced by professional actors. (Suggestions of egg-themed actors to play the parts will be welcomed in the comments section below. We'll start you off with Simon Pegg.)

So, that's where your £350,000 will go in Dizzy Returns, provided the Oliver Twins can raise that dough before the Kickstarter campaign ends.

With the Dizzy Returns Kickstarter tally sitting at £16,825 after four days and with only 24 more days left to go, it's not looking great.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.