New month, new batch of shiny promises and sketchy pitches. Btw, moving forward, I’ll be adding campaigns from IndieGoGo as well. KEEPING THE ARTICLE TITLE, THOUGH.
Quick updates from last month’s picks:
- The board game Imminent Peril pulled the plug to relaunch in 2026. See you in a year, maybe.
- That cat survival game? Still radio silence! Dev hasn’t replied to DMs or comments. Looks like it’s going nowhere.
- Mythanos blew past its goal… then got suspended by Kickstarter. All pledges wiped—no clue why—if you’ve got the tea, spill it!
- Autonomica, that open world mish-mosh of feel-good vibes, somehow pulled in over a million. Cool, cool, good luck with that.
On to June!
🔥Worth Watching / Backing
💰 As One We Survive – I actually backed this one a year ago—and even did a livestream of it. (Demo has been updated since then, I’ll have to do a new video.) It’s still moving along, with progress updates and a backer-locked demo that’s… not bad! If you’re into top-down games, don’t mind a slower development pace, and want to support a solo indie dev doing real work, throw in a pledge and check out the demo. (And if you do, tell them Hashtag sent you.)
🚨 Red Flags, Question Marks, “Huh” Vibes
⚠️ LUMORA: Survival 2D Game – Honestly, this just looks like a cute, stylized crafting and exploration game wearing a survival tag for vibes. The goal’s a modest $1,100—meant to recoup development costs and cover self-publishing. It does seem like there’s some genuine effort going into the game itself… I just wish that extended to fleshing out the Kickstarter page. Details are light, and it shows.
⁉️ 90 Days Alone: Survive the Island – Not a game! This is basically someone trying to do an Alone-style “survive without human contact” challenge, except on a remote, uninhabited island in Indonesia. Supposedly, it’s not open to tourists or fishermen… so I’m really curious how he plans to lock it down for 90 days. ( Is the 25k for rent? Bribes? That seems low for an entire island, though.)
🚩Legend of Krigz – We all know how I feel about horror games trying to pass themselves off as survival, but pickings are slim this month, so here we are. This one’s DOA, though I would love to know what they planned to do with 68 grand.
⁉️ The Wings of Dawn – The campaign is complete, but here’s another stab at a multiplayer survival dragon game—but wait! The twist is that it’s also an open-world medieval survival game. More genres, more eyeballs! Naturally, there’s also PvP. It raised nearly $122k on IndieGoGo and briefly had a tech demo… which has since been pulled.
Didn’t hit Day of Dragons money, but hey—at least it hasn’t hit Day of Dragons drama. Yet.
🤯 Aftershock – I only included this because… it’s kinda wild. It’s a game supposedly releasing in 2027, being made by a 12-year-old developer, who also already has a studio name!?
Apparently, a lot of core systems are already well underway? What was I even doing when I was 12…
📌 Watchlist (Carried along each month)
🔥 SURVIVALIST: The Board Game – I have zero interest in board games. Negative a hundred billion million. But I’m going to back this one when the campaign launches. Even better—it can be played in groups or solo. (Lonely… I’m Mr. Lonely…)
👀 Lost Legions– You can check out the Steam page for the game here. Kinda feels like you threw ASKA and Medieval Dynasty in a bag and added a dash of Roman zest. Could definitely appeal to fans of both—it’s been racking up wishlist adds.
👀 WILDLANDS– I’ve been lurking in the Discord for… over a year and a half, I think? Info’s been sparse, but as of April this year, the devs have repeatedly reassured folks it’s still in the works. So. Twiddles thumbs.
👀 Lifeboat – A card-based survival game where you’re set adrift in—yep, you guessed it—a lifeboat. This KS campaign aims to fund and create an updated version of the game, which originally set sail back in 2002. Well-reviewed game, by the way. The funding goal’s already been crushed, and the campaign ends May 22nd.
👀 The Signal – Hey, this one actually exists! (Closed playtest, but still.) I’ve had hands-on time—it’s a little quirky, but kinda interesting. I’ll be watching for when the Kickstarter goes live.
👀 AETHUS– This game exists too—as a demo! I’ve tried it. Not really my scene—it’s way more into exploration and crafting than any real hint of survival. Kinda space Valheim-ish. That said, a small but dedicated community is forming.
👀 Opaldune – I’m very much team #mosthorrorshouldnotbecalledsurvival, but this game sounds interesting.
👀 WASTED Will Be Brutal – According to a recent post by the dev in their Discord, work on this title has been “slowed” in favor of their second game — a competitive multiplayer FPS.
Reading between the lines of their lengthy response, it sounds like they got ahead of their skis on this one. Rather than trying to rebuild the foundation mid-flight, they’re pivoting to the second title to build things properly — with the intent to apply what they learn back to Game 1.
See you next month for another Compass. If anything wild shows up before then, I’ll flag it in the newsletter—so keep an eye out.
Thank for the information. Am keeping an eye on Lost Legions and Wildlands. Gosh I’ve never had the guts to do Kickstarter. Been burned on so many games I bought that I just don’t do it Hehe.
Lost Legions may be a good pickup for you, eventually! 😂 We’ll have to see how it progresses. Backing on KS is like any other gamble- you win some, you lose some.
I’m so upset about the cat game. I wanted to believe. 😭😭
Lifeboat looks interesting. I’m normally not a huge fan of card heavy board games but I might keep an eye on that one!
WASTED seems like it may have been intended to have extraction shooter elements? Which I guess makes more sense to me to shift to a multiplayer FPS then, but when I first read that I was like “damn what a jump from survival to competetive FPS”. 🤣
So that other game they are working on, the FPS one, the demo is available. Can’t remember exactly what it’s called but you should be able to bounce off the developer page on Steam from W:Brutal