Cotton Candy Cyanide recently surpassed their $30,000 AUD Kickstarter goal (approximately $21,250 American) for their Visual Novel Quantum Suicide. The scifi thriller still has over 2 weeks to go and it doesn’t look like it’ll be losing steam anytime soon. And speaking of Steam, the game has already been greenlit on Valve’s service of the same name. It probably helps that Quantum Suicide currently has a demo out that anyone can try (if their computer is decent enough to run it).
Quantum Suicide is a tale confined to the interior of the Everett, a spaceship on a mission to find a new home for humanity as the Earth is no longer sustainable. In the year 2092 mankind’s best and brightest were loaded aboard the ship to become mankind’s last hope. The crew knew that this was would be a journey that would last more than a lifetime; eventually they had children who became the next generation of explorers and scientists looking for a solution to humanity’s ailments. You are among those ship-born and along with your woo-able (it’s a word) colleagues you were learn the secrets of the Everett… and hopefully survive the twisted games of the malfunctioning AI.
The small Australian studio is trying to be as authentic as possible with their Japanese influences for Quantum Suicide: All the voice acting is in Japanese and done by professional actors, there are 30 different endings, each sprite has multiple poses and expressions, and you can choose to be male or female for all of your avatar needs. The dating sim aspects are in full effect as there are 3 men and 3 women (each with their own sexual preferences) that you can romance throughout the story. Most of the characters are modeled after usual anime tropes. For instance there’s the tsundere inspired Linguistics Officer Shizuka or the seemingly insufferable genius of the Medical Officer, Nikolas.
While there is the romancing aspect of the game this is not a hentai title. Cotton Candy Cyanide have said there will be some ‘suggestive content’ so if you’re looking for a more innocent dating sim, this is probably not your cup of tea. As an interesting aside, the two devs (Ashley Pearson (Nyx) and Tina Richards (MoltenCherry)) each are PHD candidates; hopefully this means that the crew positions such as agricultural engineer and linguist are a bit more fleshed out than your standard scifi fare.
Since Quantum Suicide has already been funded, there are a few stretch goals to make things interesting: $70,000 supports full voice acting (it’s only partially voiced at the moment), $95,000 (hopefully) brings a PlayStation Network port, and the final $120,000 adds animated cut scenes. Backer rewards range from the standard $100 collector’s edition to the more interesting $500 write-out-a-death-scene. There’s even an air freshener add-on which is new one for Kickstarter goodies.
It’s always wise to be careful when funding a crowdsourced project. With Quantum Suicide you have the option of trying out the demo first before giving away your hard earned cash. The campaign itself does look well put together and has an interesting Danganronpa like hook. Cotton Candy Cyanide actually tried a Kickstarter for their game last November and while that one was unsuccessful, they seem to have taken that experience in stride:
Of course, we did consider some other avenues in order to raise the funds required to make the game. A kidney goes for about $10k on the black market, and we hear witches pay pretty well for first-born children… We learned much from the previous campaign and gained 557 wonderful people who believe in this game. With the support of our backers, we are confident that we’ll successfully meet our target this time around!
Quantum Suicide is estimated to be coming out in June 2017 for the PC. If you’d like to fund the game you have until February 29th, 2 AM EST to do so.
