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‘Caffeine’ Returns With Third Crowdfunding Attempt
If there’s one thing I can say about Australian indie developer Dylan Browne, the one-man team behind the sci-fi horror game Caffeine, is that he does not give up easily. Back in May, Browne launched an Indiegogo campaign, which only managed to raise about $3,200 of its hopeful $80,000 goal. A few months later, Browne returned with another crowdfunding campaign — this time on Kickstarter — that saw essentially the same results after raising $4,000 of its $70,000 goal.
This is where most folks would’ve seriously considered giving up, but not Browne. Content to see his horror game come to fruition, Browne has gone and launched a third crowdfunding effort where his first failed. And now, I do believe it has a significantly better chance at being successful.
The biggest change is the revised funding goal, which has been lowered substantially to a more modest $5,000. I played its demo back in April and really enjoyed the look of it. There wasn’t much in the way of plot or scares, but that’s the nature of ‘proof of concept’ demos.
If funded, Caffeine is now planned to come to PC, Mac, Linux and PlayStation 4. PS4 support was a stretch goal in the earlier campaigns, so including it among the main platforms was a smart idea.
The vibrant, futuristic art style is great, but I’m a fan of the premise, too. Caffeine follows a young boy — played by you — who finds himself alone on a caffeine mining vessel in outer space. Because this is a horror game, he’s totally not alone, though your guess is as good as mine as to what it is that’s stalking the poor kid. Of the numerous trailers that have steadily trickled out over the last three months, the only glimpse we’ve been given was of a shadowy humanoid figure, and I’m pretty sure that was just a placeholder.
If all of the above tickles your fancy, you can support the game here.
All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
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